"Westway is very satisfied with the hosted service and benefits provided by Giva. When comparing all of our IT vendors, Giva's commitment and passion in maintaining its products and providing excellent customer service is 'best in class' and clearly distinguished above the rest of our vendors.
- Peter Griffiths, IT Director, Westway Group, Inc.
Westway Group's Results Using Giva's Cloud ITIL-Compliant Change Management Software
Giva ChangeManager provided Westway Group with:
- 70% decrease in labor costs by tracking IT changes with Giva
- 80% decrease in IT auditing costs estimated for next year's public accounting firm audit
- Significantly increased IT infrastructure uptime
- Real-time Trend Reports, Dashboards, Charts, and Metrics, which enable visibility of all global Requests for Change
- An affordable and easy to customize solution that is ITIL and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOXs) compliant
- 100% uptime using the cloud computing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Giva ChangeManager
About Westway Group, Inc.
Westway Group, Inc. (NASDAQ WWAY) is a leading provider of bulk liquid storage throughout North America and Europe. Westway operates an extensive global network of 54 operating facilities providing 348 million gallons of storage capacity and produces 1.7 million tons of liquid feed supplements annually.
Giva has enabled our team to reduce the amount of time spent on change control process by approximately 70%.
Using Giva, we estimate an 80% decrease in IT auditing costs for next year's public accounting firm audit. This translates into a significant savings in labor and hard dollar auditing costs for the company.
When comparing all of our IT vendors, Giva's commitment and passion in maintaining its products and providing excellent customer service is 'best in class.'
- Peter Griffiths, IT Director, Westway Group, Inc.
Westway Group, Inc. Case Study
Peter Griffiths, IT Director, Westway Group, Inc.
The Challenge
In 2009, Westway went public and as a result was subject to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOXs) compliance and other Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules and regulations. Previously, IT change management was monitored using a number of controls and processes. However, as a publicly traded company our auditors required a comprehensive life cycle audit trail for all IT changes. To meet regulatory compliance and decrease costs Westway needed to implement a system for tracking IT change requests, approvals, planning, testing and implementation with documentation for any change to our global IT infrastructure.
Prior to using Giva, a tremendous amount of manual effort was required to track IT system changes through the system life cycles. This manual effort costs business line managers and the IT department considerable amounts of time and effort and kept valuable resources from addressing strategic projects benefiting Westway's operations and revenue. Because the company did not have centralized change management, changes were tracked using Excel spreadsheets, documents and emails, which had no reporting capabilities for identifying trends and patterns, making it increasingly difficult to manage a complex global operation. With the additional regulatory requirements mandated by Sarbanes-Oxley, change management was becoming increasingly time consuming and costly.
The Solution
Westway reviewed a number of leading change management industry vendors before selecting Giva ChangeManager. Because Westway is a geographically dispersed organization covering North America and Europe there was interest in adopting a hosted solution. In addition, organizational objectives mandated the implementation of an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) compliant system adhering to change management industry standards to ensure the system met with the approval of the senior management team and the auditors. At the same time, Westway did not want to spend a lot of time and money customizing a system so a turnkey approach was very appealing.
Giva ChangeManager is ITIL compliant and was easy to implement. There was no programming required nor code to write for configuration and customization. Giva provided full assistance in setting up the system to meet our specific requirements using standardized templates, process flows and worksheets. This approach helped determine the Request for Change (RFC) fields and workflows that needed to be included, and allowed us to tailor the RFC form to meet Westway's needs. Giva's default RFC form contains 29 fields and is in strict compliance with ITIL standards. However, we did not need all the fields required by ITIL. Using the point and click user interface, we could easily customize Giva.
Giva also includes the option for using an integrated knowledge base module, Giva KnowledgeManger, to store frequently used documents, templates, test plans, standard operating procedures, etc. Furthermore, Giva has the flexibility to seamlessly integrate Giva ChangeManager with their IT help desk module, Giva HelpDesk.
Before signing a contract, we performed a 30-day production trial of Giva ChangeManager and that convinced us that the product had the capability for meeting our requirements.
Why Giva?
One important requirement for us is the ability to obtain real-time information in order to monitor and prioritize IT changes. Giva's reporting capability is extensive and provides a variety of charts and graphs for visual representations of the data. To satisfy auditing requirements, Westway runs reports that extract samples of RFCs and Giva ChangeManager provides all the necessary documentation for the audit teams resulting in fewer questions and lower costs.
Westway has a team of approximately 40 business line managers and IT employees using the system in North America and Europe. Giva has enabled our team to reduce the amount of time spent on change control process by approximately 70%. Using Giva, we estimate an 80% decrease in IT auditing costs for next year's public accounting firm audit. This translates into a significant savings in labor and hard dollar auditing costs for the company.
Also with Giva, Westway has improved IT infrastructure uptime since changes are closely tracked. In addition, the cross-functional visibility of upcoming changes minimizes conflicts and helps identify potential issues before the modifications are implemented.
Giva provides first-rate customer support. Knowledgeable account managers help with configuration changes to fine-tune the system on a regular basis and the Giva technical support team is very responsive to questions and requests and solicits feedback to continue improving the application.
The end results of implementing Giva ChangeManager are significantly decreased labor costs, reduced auditing fees, and increased productivity. The product is flexible and robust, packaged with outstanding service and support. Westway is very satisfied with the hosted service and benefits provided by Giva. When comparing all of our IT vendors, Giva's commitment and passion in maintaining its products and providing excellent customer service is "best in class" and clearly distinguished above the rest of our vendors.
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