A complex IT requirement

The company has 450 staff working with over 100 different business systems that are housed on 150 servers. The systems in use at Flextech provide applications for viewers, for instance the applications behind the ‘red button’. They have systems for scheduling advertisements, for scheduling programmes, for building promos for future programmes, and for feeding information back to the advertisers. The systems are very specialised for the media sector with some bespoke to Flextech. In addition the Technology & Broadcasts Services team also supports the usual desktop office applications, networks, printers and other peripherals.

The helpdesk supports all these business systems and applications, so it is a huge learning curve for new people joining the team. Even the set up of some of the systems is complex, for instance they have seven different environments for the Channel Management system, a live version and then different variations of test and development environments where they try out different ideas.
Due to the mission critical nature of the business applications these are assigned a higher priority for helpdesk support.

Fast-start ITIL
Flextech wanted to combine systems for helpdesk (incident and problem management), configuration management and change management. The previous helpdesk software was old, and had not been upgraded in several years and the Lotus Notes database had no real search facilities.

Tim Drew, Project Manager at Flextech commented, “We had no real processes before we started down the ITIL path. Supportworks has provided us with pre-defined processes to get us started. We have summarised details for incident, change, problem and configuration management so all the key staff understand the principles.

“For configuration management we have taken the ITIL guidelines and amended them to suit. For incident, change & problem management we were able to use them without modification. Supportworks has helped significantly to speed up this process and turn the theory into reality.”

Supportworks was easy to use with its Outlook based look and feel. It was priced within budget – some competitors were knocked out on price. Also, the team at Flextech felt that Hornbill was better placed to provide a more personalised service than some of its competitors. The team knew that they would need post-sales support, and this is exactly what they have received from Hornbill.

Another important point for Flextech is that Hornbill had a clearly defined roadmap for the product so they could clearly see the direction in which Supportworks was being developed. Flextech were particularly keen on the planned Visual Configuration management database and Calendaring facilities, these were not available in the version that they purchased, but they could see that these facilities would be ready in the next release.

One system to cover them all
The frontline helpdesk consists of four people, backed up by 2 applications support analysts and 8 technical analysts, all managed by the Infrastructure and Security Manager. The front line helpdesk analysts deal with the calls as they come in, logging the incidents. They are then allocated to the appropriate team for resolution. The technical analysts also have project work. If incidents, problems and support related calls are escalated they can generate development work, so ideally all these disciplines should be covered in one database. Supportworks covers operational and project work in one place, so no one person gets over burdened.

The helpdesk is taking about 200 calls per week from staff based in two locations in London’s West End. This has increased since going live with Supportworks because everything now gets logged where before it didn’t.”

Business benefits
The IT team expect to see a reduction in calls to the helpdesk when web self service is introduced in the first half of 2006. Reporting is not yet being fully utilised, but the team is already seeing considerable advantages over the old way of working. They are able to see changes to a particular system for the last week, which is very helpful for diagnostics and trouble shooting. As they get used to the system they are looking to build some bespoke reports, and Hornbill will be helping with this.

The team is now able to deal with incidents much more quickly because they can search for previous resolutions. They are now able to select the configuration history of servers and check them every month to see if there are an excessive number of changes etc., and if so, then review.

Tim Drew commented, “What we really like about Supportworks is that it helps us to provide a better service to our customers, and it is easy to manage. The systems administration is straightforward and we are able to make minor customisations, like screen layouts, ourselves without the aid of specialist developers.”

When Flextech TV was purchased by NTL Telewest (formerly Telewest Broadband), a NASDAQ quoted company, life became even more complex for the IT department. Now Flextech has to conform to the Sarbanes Oxley legislation, which means keeping audit logs for all communications systems. With Hornbill’s Supportworks, Tim and the team are confident that they have the systems to support them to do just that.

Business Benefits

• IT systems in the media sector are very complex, giving helpdesk staff a steep learning curve, Supportworks helps to support this learning curve.
• Supportworks brings all areas Change, Configuration, Problem and Incident management together.
• Supportworks ITSM ITIL-compatible solution was ideal because it gave guidelines and a framework to work with.

For more details on Supportworks ITSM, visit www.hornbill.com