Trinity House: Signalling the way with Numara FootPrints
Piloting Trinity House’s IT function towards greater efficiency is a key driver
Reading, UK (July 20, 2009) –
Numara® Software, Inc., a leader in service desk management solutions, announced today that its Numara® FootPrints® service management solution has been chosen by the highly respected maritime organisation Trinity House to help improve its service desk efficiency and enable the business to move towards adoption of the ITIL® service management framework.
Gaining greater operational efficiency in challenging times is an important factor for Trinity House. After seven years with one aging help desk solution, it was time for a change to provide improved support to Trinity House’s numerous users, as Trinity House’s IT Support Manager Steve Page explains:
“We have had a basic help desk package for over seven years which had served us well, but was beginning to restrict us moving forward with our processes. It was decided to upgrade or replace that package with a more up-to-date solution offering additional functionality. After a competitive tendering procedure, Numara FootPrints was chosen as the package to use.”
“One of the key factors in our decision was alignment to the ITIL best practice framework. We wanted to move more towards the ITIL process framework as we could see the benefits this can bring if implemented in a sensible and controlled manner. Although we looked at other packages, we needed a solution that was already fully supportive of ITIL, but was flexible enough for us to adapt to our business model whilst being scaleable enough for future expansion and changes we may make down the line. These requirements helped us choose Numara FootPrints.”
Trinity House’s main concern has been the safety of shipping and the well-being of seafarers since it was granted a Charter by Henry VIII in 1514. It is the General Lighthouse Authority (GLA) for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar, and its remit is to provide aids to navigation to assist the safe passage of a huge variety of vessels through some of the world’s busiest sea lanes. To meet its obligations, Trinity House deploys an array of aids to navigation, ranging from lighthouses to a satellite navigation service. Its responsibilities also include the annual inspection and auditing of those navigation aids provided by local port and harbour authorities and those provided on offshore structures, such as production platforms or wind farms.
Trinity House’s ongoing requirements included the support of around 350 users, typically on-site operations staff, such as technicians going out to lighthouses, lightships and buoys. Steve Page continues:
“We have ten IT staff supporting those 350 users who generate 600+ calls a month from services based at four locations and a sprinkling of home users. We have a depot in Harwich, our head office in London, another depot in Swansea and a forwarding base in St Just, Cornwall. Additionally, we have three support vessels which have satellite broadband for email and maintenance management use – meaning our users are scattered around the country.
“Calls include providing technical support for operational and engineering staff – both mechanical and electrical – in typical areas such as password & access management, hardware issues with desktops, laptops & PDAs, software problems including email, Microsoft® Office, document management, CAD drawing packages and tailored maintenance & accounts software. The range is typically broad. Besides ITIL best practice, another of our goals was a desire to bring various methods of recording configuration items & their changes into a central database (CMDB), which is a repository of information related to all the components of aninformation system. Having a CMDB of assets within Numara FootPrints means we’re now able to associate assets to incidents which in turn will improve our problem and change management.”
Other key features that persuaded Trinity House to adopt Numara FootPrints are its Service Catalogue, the use of Numara® FootPrints® Mobile, and its ability to control organisation processes.
“We believe using the Numara FootPrints Service Catalogue will help us cut out a lot of paperwork and automate the workflow process for hardware & software requests and provide the necessary audit trail.” says Steve Page. “Using Numara FootPrints Mobile means our IT technicians can update incidents while they are out and about in the field, saving time and reducing the requirement to return to base so often. We like the flexibility & scalability that Numara FootPrints’ offers in that it can be extended for use in other business areas, such as Facilities and HR, which we intend to investigate further soon”.
For more information on Numara Track-It!, please visit www.numarasoftware.co.uk.
About Numara Software, Inc.
Serving over 50,000 customer sites worldwide, Numara Software is a global leader in providing practical software solutions for service management to IT professionals. From a single technician running a help desk to 1000 technicians managing a complex service desk, IT organizations of all sizes trust our award-winning solutions, featuring Numara Track-It! and Numara FootPrints, to track requests, automate workflows and support internal and external customers.
Unlike other complex, difficult-to-implement, and costly products, we offer robust, affordable and easy-to-use solutions that can be quickly deployed without disruption to your business. Our flexible solutions can be implemented right out of the box or configured to match your unique IT environment and business processes. They can also be leveraged to support non-IT operations, such as human resources and facilities, allowing you to optimize your investments in licensing, maintenance, training, and support.
We’re passionate about helping people successfully manage their IT environments. To register for a one-on-one guided walkthrough, attend a webinar or download a trial, please contact the UK sales team on: 0800 195 2373 or visit: www.numarasoftware.co.uk.
For further information:
Paula Elliott
C8 Consulting Ltd for Numara Software
+44 (0) 118 9001132
paula@c8consulting.co.uk
Source: Numara