Success Stories
Barnardo’s shows IT cares with VMware's Service Manager.
As one of the UK’s biggest children’s charities Barnardo’s works with more than 100,000 children, young people and their families in 394 specialized projects in local communities across the UK. This includes work with children affected by today’s most urgent issues: poverty, homelessness, disability, bereavement and abuse. Barnardo’s believes in the potential in every child and young person, no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through.
Given the aims of the organization and the wide range of projects undertaken, for Barnardo’s there is no such thing as a typical ‘customer’ of IT services. Based near Ilford in Essex, the organization’s IT Service Management team supports over 7,000 users across the UK. An incoming call could be from HQ staff, a regional office, a charity shop worker, or even related to children using one of the applications specially designed for them.
Many years ago, Barnardo’s decided to align with ITIL best practice with a view to developing IT processes that would better support these diverse requirements. However, it soon became evident that such processes would be difficult to implement using the charity’s existing help desk system.
Ease of customization with VMware Service Manager
Accordingly, the management team went to the market and evaluated a wide range of leading service desk systems, before selecting VMware Service Manager for its 100% web-based platform, ease of customization and automation of ITIL processes. At the same time, VMware Service Manager was overwhelmingly voted number one by the company’s service desk analysts, who had undertaken their own usability review.
Having taken the decision to go with VMware Service Manager, Barnardo’s and the vendor’s project team were able to complete initial implementation of the new service desk within just seven weeks.
Ashley Hanson, Head of IS Service Management at Barnardo’s comments, “VMware Service Manager ticked all the right boxes, providing everything we required to support the ITIL processes we had already developed and a clear way forward in the longer term. We were able to get up and running extremely quickly with the Configuration Management Database, Incident and Problem Management and Integrated Knowledgebase.
“We cannot praise the VMware Service Manager project management team highly enough for their dedication in helping us achieve what was a very ambitious go live date of just seven weeks.”
During the build-up to implementation, VMware Service Manager provided intensive staff training, ensuring that Barnardo’s staff were quickly able to make the system work the way they wanted it to, without a heavy reliance on consulting services. One example of a simple customization that paid off straight away was the link between the Charity’s existing EPO system and the VMware Service Manager system.
Hanson explains: “As a charity, it is obviously very important that we provide cost-effective solutions and achieve a clear return on investment. The EPO link is a prime example of how flexible the VMware Service Manager IT Service Management Solution is, and how it enables us to leverage current resources without the use of specialist developers.
“Thanks to this easy customization, service desk analysts can immediately view the status of every user’s PC or laptop, including disk space available and software installed, which makes for much more efficient call-handling.”
85% of calls resolved by the frontline
The single-point of contact service desk logs around 1,000 support calls per week, ranging from software queries and service requests to fault reports and password resets. Using the new VMware Service Manager system, the frontline service desk team consistently achieves a first-line resolution rate of 85%. Other calls are routed to specialists within the group and tracked through to closure.
Since implementing VMware Service Manager, half of all calls are now received via emails, which are automatically logged within VMware Service Manager. Recent customer surveys have indicated that customers appreciate having the option to contact the service desk this way. As part of the process, users now receive automated acknowledgements and have the ability to request an update to their profile on VMware Service Manager where new equipment or software has been added.
The Knowledgebase is also proving an early success, enabling calls to be linked to known errors and providing an easy means for knowledge articles to be created or existing articles to be updated. There are plans to introduce a branded Customer Portal and the growing database of knowledge will be a key deliverable of this new 24/7 self-service system.
VMware Service Manager Dashboards - an ‘absolute dream’
Enabling the service desk team to monitor performance is another key deliverable of the VMware Service Manager solution. The system provides up to eight customizable dashboards on any screen, allowing vital indicators such as call levels and categories of calls to be easily monitored - an “absolute dream” in the words of Ashley Hanson.
“The VMware Service Manager dashboards have proved so useful to the IS team that they are being widely adopted by other groups within the IT department,” he maintains.
A next step will be to build on service level management capabilities within VMware Service Manager to drive further efficiencies.
Hanson explains: “Smart automation is the key to freeing up the service desk to focus on proactive Service Management. This is an area of great potential we will definitely be focusing on in the coming months, alongside availability and capacity management.
“ VMware Service Manager has a refreshing partnership approach focused on helping customers to build the system that they need. Our investment in VMware Service Manager has provided a firm basis for delivering best practice IT Service Management and for embracing future challenges such as our planned migration to ITIL 3.”
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