In Melgaço, a small municipality in Western Portugal, the economic recession has presented CIO Andre Alves with daunting challenges. Alves has implemented SysAid to not only provide technical support to all of Melgaço's municipal workers but has also employed ITIL best practices with SysAid to organize food hand-outs, charity operations, and much more.

1. SysAid Success Story: Melgaço Municipality, Portugal
http://www.sysaid.com SysAid Technologies Ltd. 1 Hayarden Street, P.O. Box 1142, Airport City 70100, Israel
Toll Free (U.S.): 800-686-7047 • Fax (U.S.): +1 (617) 507-2559
Tel. (Israel): +972 (3) 533-3675 • Fax (Israel): +972 (3) 761-7205

2. Taking SysAid CIO Andre Alves aligns people
and technology to do “more
with less” in the Portuguese
Beyond the Municipality of Melgaço
World of IT and
Becoming an While the economic recession has made the job of nearly every CIO
Agent of Change
in the world more difficult, the situation is particularly dire for Andre
Alves, CIO of Melgaço, a tiny municipality in Northern Portugal.
“We’ve had many difficulties in our day-to-day lives here in
Melgaço,” explained Alves. “Everyone, including the IT department,
has had to do more with less. Not only must the Melgaço IT team of
four technicians provide technical support to 308 municipality
workers spread throughout the city, but they also assist the Red
Cross, fire departments, and local health services that serve the 18
parishes surrounding Melgaço. Daily responsibilities range from
fixing the internet in one moment to organizing the logistics of
charity food hand-outs the next. The common thread in all of
Melgaço’s IT operations has been what Alves calls “untangling
knots.” Members of the community have struggled with
miscommunication, disorganization, and gaping inefficiencies, and
in an economic environment where every euro is precious, this
translates into money wasted.
Doing More with Less is an Economic Crisis
Because the Red Cross had difficulty organizing their food, clothing,
and footwear distribution processes, for example, needy
community members arriving for lunch could easily receive three
meals instead of one, depriving others of any food at all. In addition,
Melgaço does not own enough cars for all members of the city
council, and because fuel is expensive, it requires planning and
coordination if a municipality representative needs to drive
somewhere. Lack of communication often caused people to
unnecessarily travel in separate cars and waste money on fuel. Alves
knew that Melgaço could not continue to function with such
inefficiencies and needed a tool to make the provision of services
easier and more cost-effective.
SysAid Success Story: Melgaço Municipality, Portugal
http://www.sysaid.com page1

3. “ Implementing SysAid’s
service desk and CMDB to
Getting Costs Under Control with the Succesful
Implementation of SysAid
In early 2010, Alves adopted SysAid to establish better practices
within his IT department and implemented it with the help of
handle incidents and Adquam, a SysAid partner in Portugal. As Alves explains, “Adquam’s
track Melgaço’s network experience in service management, ITIL, and other issues allowed us
to avoid common implementation mistakes. It was the support of
elements allowed the Adquam that enabled the realization of my vision in one, accurate
shot.”
Melgaço IT team to reach
”
Implementing SysAid’s service desk and CMDB to handle incidents
new levels of efficiency. and track Melgaço’s network elements allowed the Melgaço IT team
to reach new levels of efficiency. Alves then realized SysAid’s
incident management tools could be applied far beyond Melgaço’s
ITdepartment to help all levels of the municipality.
With reports from the Reports & Analysis module that demonstrated
the great improvements his IT department had made, Alves
succeeded in convincing the city council president to expand the
use of SysAid organization-wide.
With the ultimate goal of aligning people, processes, and
technology, Alves now uses SysAid to not only manage the IT team’s
technical support activities but to also establish a “culture of service”
throughout Melgaço.
One of the first moves for Alves and his team was to use SysAid to
track the municipality vehicle inventory. When a council member is
planning a trip, he or she now logs in to the End-User Portal via the
F11 hotkey and submits a service request under the category
“Reserve a Car.” With a centralized record of all municipality cars that
are currently in use, the IT team checks availability, and then
responds to the end-user with a scheduled date and time for the
council member’s trip.
SysAid Success Story: Melgaço Municipality, Portugal
http://www.sysaid.com page2

4. “ In the context of crisis,
SysAid has helped us
In addition, Alves has given several members of the Red Cross
administrator permissions to help them organize the Red Cross
food distribution process. Employees distributing food now report
via email the amount of food they serve and to whom. Via email
identify and track integration, these emails are logged as service requests in SysAid’s
help desk for administrators to review and evaluate. As Alves
inefficiecies that we phrased it, “With proper procedures in place, fewer people are able
have... I see that SysAid to ‘bypass processes’ of the Red Cross.”
has helped our IT team Future Plans: Manage All Municipality Services with SysAid
The success of Alves’ initiatives has convinced city council members
act as a true agent of to further expand SysAid’s implementation throughout Melgaço.
change in Melgaço.
” By early 2011, he hopes to expand the catalog of available services
so that SysAid will be used to organize electricity services, manage
the municipality’s gardening, and much more.
“Imagine we add electricity as a service catalog to SysAid,” says
Alves. “We give the manager of Melgaço’s electricians administrator
permissions, and he can then know at all times where his
electricians are located and which tasks they must accomplish. Not
only will it help increase efficiency and cut costs, but it will
essentially change the way all managers in Melgaço view service.
This will of course be to the benefit of everyone in Melgaço.”
With this incredible vision of how SysAid can be used to improve
the quality of life of all municipality residents, Alves plans to next
implement ITIL change management processes with SysAid. Alves
explains it best with, “In the context of crisis, SysAid has helped us
identify and track the inefficiencies that we have. Thus, we are
optimizing our operations. By replicating the example IT has set
throughout the rest of the organization, I see that SysAid has
helped our IT team act as a true agent of change in Melgaço.”
SysAid Technologies Ltd. 1 Hayarden Street, P.O. Box 1142, Airport City 70100, Israel
Toll Free (U.S.): 800-686-7047 • Fax (U.S.): +1 (617) 507-2559
Tel. (Israel): +972 (3) 533-3675 • Fax (Israel): +972 (3) 761-7205
SysAid Success Story: Melgaço Municipality, Portugal
http://www.sysaid.com page3