How to you empower an entire, knowledge-based workforce through IT?  As we move into the era of software-defined enterprise architecture, changes made in the IT department are boosting productivity across the company as a whole.  Services are getting smarter as software becomes self-aware, enabling a business to learn more about its own processes and make improvements accordingly.  IT services provider Unisys has been actively improving the workforce for some time, recently landing a deal with Royal DMS to power its internal IT help desk.

Royal DMS pegs itself as a ‘science-based company that, through various acquisitions and organic growth, expanded to a number of different segments including health, nutrition and electronics. The company sells everything from dietary supplements to paint, resulting in a global workforce of some 22,000 employees.  That’s a lot of workers to support, considering that the majority serve in knowledge-based positions whose productivity relies in great part on the company’s internal IT infrastructure.

Under the agreement Unisys is setting up a single-point-of-contact help desk, through which its service reps will offer tech support in seven different languages Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. These representatives will be based in four different centers across Amsterdam, Budapest, Bogota and Sao Paulo, which will be linked with DMS’s existing service desk in Nanjing, China.

The contract was awarded to Unisys’ Dutch subsidiary.

“We are pleased to provide DSM with a solution designed to improve its end users’ productivity, satisfaction and contribution to the business,” says Karl Anzbock, Head of Global Managed Services in EMEA, Unisys. “We are proud that our advanced analytics and resolution techniques will now be available to benefit DSM’s entire workforce through integration of Unisys’ services capabilities with DSM’s.”

Enterprises all over the world are finding the task of supporting thousands of workers on technological side a difficult one, and companies like Unisys are more than willing to ease the burden. Zendesk is just as enthusiastic – the hosted help desk provider recently raised $60 million in funding from Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank and a number of other VCs. The company disclosed plans to expand to Europe on the back of the round.