Government Technology

Service Management software from Hornbill enables organisations to provide excellent customer service while benefiting from the economies of consolidation on a single technology platform. Supportworks’ service desk software templates are designed for rapid deployment within any employee or customer support environment, including ITIL-compatible IT Service Management, IT Helpdesk, Customer Service, HR and Facilities Management with the flexibility to build additional desks at minimal extra cost. Hornbill’s software supports thousands of commercial and governmental sites worldwide. Hornbill was founded in the UK in 1995 and has US offices in Dallas.

Public sector customers include Kent County Council, London Borough of Havering, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Plymouth City Council, London Borough of Waltham Forest, BT CSD (Suffolk County Council, Mid-Suffolk District Council) Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Wirral Health Infomatics Service, London School of Economics, London Metropolitan University and The National Archives. Other high profile customers include Atos Origin (Athens Olympics 2004, Torino Winter Olympics 2006 and Beijing Olympics 2008), Greggs, Comet, House of Fraser, Halfords and Camelot.

Hornbill was awarded the Service Desk Institute’s ‘IT Service and Support Technology Supplier of the Year’ for 2008. The judges said:
“Hornbill expressed a vision in the way it interacts with its customers that was particularly compelling, with a clear focus on simplifying what is essentially a convoluted process, to the greater benefit of the customer.
The importance of the ‘human touch’ was a common theme amongst the finalists, but Hornbill has taken the concept of ‘people serving people’ to a particularly mature level. They exhibited a commitment to ensuring this is always at the forefront of every engagement with its customers.”

“Winning ways” included: Sophisticated technology with a ‘human touch’ vision; Multiple points of contact with customers to collate feedback and understand exactly what is being said; Strong attention to, and investment in, account management to reinforce the ‘human touch’, backed up by continuous development of the Hornbill community through problem management group, forums, user groups to name but a few.

More examples of Hornbill customers in government can be found at: www.hornbill.com/solutions/iss/foi/

Case study: Continuous Service Improvement at Plymouth City is fuelled by ITIL and Hornbill

In a bid to save money and better serve its citizens, Plymouth City Council has gone live with six ITIL disciplines and is introducing improvements to existing and new processes using elements of both ITIL v2 and v3 with Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM. The disciplines already deployed include Service Desk, Incident, Change, Configuration, Problem, Request Fulfilment, Access Management and elements of Service Level Management. The ICT Service Delivery Team at Plymouth is also currently working on Release as well as Event Management and Knowledgebase.

Mel Gwynn, Operational Service Delivery Manager at Plymouth City Council commented, "Plymouth City Council is committed to using the ITIL framework. It helps us improve service efficiency, improve system availability, allow prioritisation of services, and ensure better quality assurance. This enables the Council to save money while better serving citizens. Supportworks ITSM has enabled us to implement ITIL in a phased manner. We have now largely completed implementing many of our processes and are now looking at where we can adopt elements of ITIL v3 to provide further improvements. Supportworks ITSM supports this approach allowing us to mature our existing ITIL v2 processes and adopt new ITIL v3 processes at our own pace."

As part of the project to deliver a more efficient service to its customers, Plymouth ICT has implemented a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) where every Incident, Problem and Change is linked to a Configuration Item (CI). In achieving this, the quality of data has been improved at point of capture and within the system. As a result the department now has full visibility of CIs that are causing issues, and can react more quickly.

The ICT Team has also implemented a customer SelfService portal where the top 15 most frequent service requests are standardised, each with its own form to ensure the correct data is collected. Any callers to the Service Desk are encouraged to use the SelfService facility wherever possible, which reduces the load on the Service Desk and eliminates time wasted requesting further information.

To provide even greater levels of efficiency, Service requests that are subject to Line Manager authorisation have been automated within the system. Line Managers now receive an email which includes a link to the SelfService portal, where they are able to approve the request and the approval is captured within the system for audit purposes.

Mel Gwynn commented, "Service delivery performance has definitely improved when compared to our old way of working. This is down to the combination of Supportworks ITSM and the fact that we have revisited our processes, streamlined and automated them using the ITIL framework."

For more information
Tel: +44 (0) 208 582 8282
www.hornbill.com
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