CASE STUDY
a site authority who might be a human
resources manager, a home manager,
hospital director or the head of a school.
Site authorities access the Service Manager
self-service catalogue where they can choose
from a menu of service requests and track
their service requests in a single view. “The
self-service portal is very well-used,” she said.
“We have dealt with 2,500 service requests
since our go-live date in August 2016.”
The Priory uses automation to speed the
delivery of a broad range of IT service
processes. One of the first workflows to be
automated was a new user request, either
for an employee or a service user. The
request encompasses multiple steps such
as setting up user accounts and access,
configuring applications, and streaming
tasks to infrastructure and purchasing
teams as required, all of which are now
sequenced appropriately.
The user reaction has been positive. “We got
very good feedback on the new user request
process from the site authorities,” she said.
“Everything they needed was in one place.
And that was a real time-saver when there
are in excess of 50 new-user requests a day.”
Prior to Service Manager, the site authority
filled out a form, but IT often had to call
back to get more information. The service
desk had tried to accelerate the painstaking
manual process by creating tickets for other
teams to complete the request. “Sometimes
one request could generate five tickets all
for different teams, so each could progress
their part separately. It was confusing for our
users and for us.”
“With Ivanti Service Manager, we’re 90%
better than we were before,” said Sarah.
With Service Manager, The Priory has
a platform that will scale and adapt as
its business continues to expand and as
it matures its IT service management
processes. The service desk handles about
400 tickets a day and the volume is growing.
Clair Dunn, The Priory Group’s IT Director,
commented: “Implementing Ivanti Service
Manager has increased the efficiency
of the IT team, consolidating processes
and supporting us in our ISO27001
accreditation, which we achieved following
the implementation.”
www.intelligentcio.com
Intelligent CIO Europe spoke with Clair Dunn
who expanded further on the benefits of the
Ivanti solution:
Can you explain how the ticketing
system works and what it deals with
on a daily basis?
The Priory Group’s IT helpdesk receives over
400 new Incidents and Requests each day
from our users working in hospitals, care sites
and schools owned by the group. Their IT
issues can include anything from first line
password resets up to third line network
outages. We are the ‘one-stop shop’ for
all IT service needs and with Ivanti Service
Manager, we can quickly and effectively
allocate tickets to different teams and
automatically alert the IT helpdesk of any
outages or high-priority tickets. We are
constantly evolving and finding new ways
to streamline how each of our teams work
– an out-of-the-box software solution that
fits a helpdesk team won’t necessarily fit
a purchasing team, but with Ivanti Service
Manager we have been able to include the
changes needed to make the solution work
effectively for everyone.
How did you assess which
solution – out of the three being
evaluated – best suited for the
organisation’s requirements?
Our current ticketing system was out of
support so anything we purchased had to
have an established, secure company behind
it. Those we chose to review were measured
against ‘industry standards’ and they were
all recognised names. Another consideration
for us was that their support desk should
operate in our time zone and that
communications and physical visits could be
arranged easily. We also required a product
that ran in an Internet Explorer window
rather than an installed client, as well as on
servers where the specification was known
in advance so that we could factor this into
our costs.
We had strong ideas about what we wanted
and although we accepted they wouldn’t
all be available out-of-the-box, the product
we chose had to ‘hint’ at the possibility of
achieving all our requirements. It was only
Ivanti that was able to provide a sustainable
sandbox that we could work in to develop
ideas and explore.
What specific requirements did you
have when looking for a solution?
Any solution we chose had to provide the
benefits of our existing helpdesk ticketing
software at the bare minimum. The
obvious parts of this were: ticket creation
via email, portal and telephone services,
and automated responses returned to the
customer when they made a request.
Furthermore, we specifically have the
concept of Site Authorities at The Priory
Group. Site Authorities can authorise things
to be done, created or changed for their sites
where it is inappropriate for those things
to be requested by any member of staff.
Examples would be new account creation or
purchases of equipment (or anything with a
security or fiscal nature).
How does the solution
improve efficiency?
Our site authority systems means we don’t
have to waste time emailing different people
to receive approval on higher level requests.
RESEARCH SHOWS ONE OF THE MOST
COMMON IT SECURITY THREATS IS
USERS SHARING PASSWORDS, OFTEN
DUE TO FRUSTRATIONS ASSOCIATED
WITH INEFFECTIVE IT SUPPORT.
INTELLIGENTCIO
65