Pilkington overhaul reaps rewards

Expanding glass manufacturer plans to build on its in-house IT services

Glass manufacturer Pilkington has saved £6m since overhauling its IT services infrastructure to support a significant international growth programme.

The company has centralised its IT infrastructure and brought outsourced services back in-house in a modernisation project that started in 2000.

Information services centre manager Mike Stops says Pilkington found outsourcers too inflexible to deal with a period of huge change in the business.

‘We made the cost argument that because Pilkington was going more global, we didn’t want to get in with an outsourcer and then be forced to keep altering and renegotiating our contract,’ he said.

Bringing IT in-house has brought flexibility, allowing the company to introduce new countries or applications without having to go through protracted contractual discussions with a third party, says Stops.

Pilkington is using an IT service management tool from supplier Touchpaper to handle inbound support calls, which Pilkington manages in-house.

This has allowed the manufacturer to maintain information services support staff numbers at about 400. The number of calls to the helpdesk has remained static even though the company has been growing.

Pilkington plans to introduce the upcoming version of the Touchpaper tool to cut costs further and improve services to its users. The manufacturer is also installing SAP software across its global operations.

Stops says this will provide a clearer view of what is happening across the whole company.

‘For example, if a customer in Spain says: “I need lots of windscreens in this design,” instead of rigging an entire plant to fulfil that, you can look around the world to see where you already have in stock what the customer needs,’ he said.