German public broadcasters award contract for service desk and onsite support

Pliezhausen, May 07, 2019. DATAGROUP has won the public tender for the reallocation of service desk and onsite services of the ARD, the joint organization of Germany’s regional public-service broadcasters. The contract with a term of at least four years including the option of a four-year extension has an overall volume in the double-digit million euro range.

From September 1, 2019, DATAGROUP will successively take over service desk and onsite support services for the stations of the ARD as part of IT outsourcing. Service transition to DATAGROUP will already be initiated at the beginning of May and will take a couple of years due to the ARD’s heterogeneous structure.

The members of the ARD are all independent public-service broadcasters – nine regional public broadcasting agencies (BR, HR, MDR, NDR, RB, RBB, SWR, SR, WDR) as well as Deutsche Welle (DW) and Deutschlandradio (DLR) as Germany’s international public broadcasters. Eight broadcasters and one radio station have given a binding commitment to this contract, the others can join the contract optionally. The maximum number of supported IT users amounts to approx. 45,000 employees at the stations. DATAGROUP employees will be directly on the site of the broadcasters’ main locations. The regional facilities will be looked after by the onsite support network throughout Germany.

The service desk is the central contact for all IT-related issues. It receives and handles the inquiries of all users in order to fix the employees’ IT problems at their workplaces as fast as possible. If this is not possible by way of remote maintenance, onsite support will ensure rapid troubleshooting to guarantee smooth IT operations.

“We have been awarded this contract because of an economically convincing concept which we were also able to create on the basis of our relevant reference and experience”, commented DATAGROUP COO Dirk Peters. “Thanks to our ten years of service for the NDR (North German Broadcasting) we know the needs of IT users in the television and radio industry back to front. Live programs and content management systems require fast response and a corresponding service capability. We are proud that the ARD will use our service throughout Germany.”