A more efficient future for the BBC
As the head of service management at BBC Worldwide, Andrew Hutchinson is responsible for the provision of effective and efficient IT service desk operations.
Having a service desk tool that operates smoothly is of the utmost importance to Hutchinson as his IT support staff use this systems throughout the day as their main way of logging Incidents. A staff survey of their existing IT service desk provider highlighted major dissatisfaction. They were using a system that was restrictive and hadn’t grown with the requirements of the company. This resulted in Hutchinson seeking a new tool that would not only satisfy the needs of his staff, but would also deliver complete business process management functionality.
ICCM Professional Services Ltd (ICCM) was flagged to Hutchinson by a colleague, Emerson Freedman, service manager for BBC Worldwide, who had previously used ICCM’s e-Service Desk (e-SD). After reviewing several providers along with ICCM’s e-SD, Hutchinson decided that this was the right solution for the task. “e-SD copes with everything we aspire to do. With the foundation in place we’re able to build different processes around our needs allowing us to leverage it in every aspect of our business,” he explained.
By utilising e-SD’s processes, Hutchinson has made significant impact towards making the company’s whole operation run more efficiently. Less disruption to IT means employees in all departments operate with minimised distraction consequently increasing the whole organisations productivity and ROI. Hutchinson is also able to utilise the self-audit facility where end users can verify the assets they hold and update any discrepancies, resulting in dramatic cost saving as the need for physical audits are reduced. This mechanism supports cross charging and ensures that the compliance and governance obligations are met.
Timing of the implementation of e-SD couldn’t have been better as Hutchinson was facing an internal audit. With thousands of Incident calls per month, e-SD has enabled him to consolidate all data on the demands that the business made on IT. Additionally, he is responsible for IT service operations for all BBC’s worldwide offices. e-SD is currently being rolled-out to all their locations.
“Being web-based has made the introduction of e-SD to our other locations very streamlined,” says Hutchinson. “Having the same service desk in our main hubs, London, New York and Sydney has also facilitated 24 hours IT support. This has allowed me to align processes globally.”
Perhaps the most conclusive sign of improvement has been from Hutchinson’s own people. “I’ve never needed convincing about the quality and flexibility of e-SD. It’s 2,000 times better than our old system,” comments Tony Knight, application support for BBC Worldwide.
“IT problems in this business can be catastrophic,” Hutchinson adds. “With e-SD we can identify single points of failure and instigate corrective management. e-SD also helps us identify IT problems before they happen allowing us to act proactively not reactively,”
ICCM was originally established in the mid 1990s to provide consultancy services to organisations wishing to improve their service desk function. ICCM realised most solutions on the market did not offer the level of functionality being demanded by the industry, and for that reason researched other technologies to deliver benefits over existing application vendors. ICCM identified Metastorm BPM as an exciting process-enabling technology that seamlessly delivers a high performing orchestration engine and web interface that ensures compliance and adherence to any underpinning process. This enabling technology incorporating ICCM’s e-Service Desk truly transforms the way in which service management applications deliver value to a customer.
Today, ICCM’s core objective is to provide revolutionary software and superior services to organisations aspiring to Best Practice Service Management. Rather than the legacy application development- driven approach that many vendors in the market have adopted, ICCM’s forward-thinking approach blends their first-class service desk tool with the functionality of business technology in the form of Metastorm BPM. This collaboration delivers unparalleled service mManagement capabilities across all industries and business functions in almost every geographical region.
The Company’s value proposition to customers is four-fold:
Accelerated ROI: ICCM’s e-Service Desk can deploy more ‘out of the box’ products more efficiently and effectively than our competitors. Many vendors will sell solutions at a loss as they profit from reoccurring services and upgrade costs. At ICCM we believe customers who wish to be self-sufficient should have the tools to do so. Furthermore, we believe scalability and a solutions ability to grow and adapt with your business is essential to any investment. e-Service Desks BPM platform is developed around scalability and does not have the limitations of application-driven technology.
Process-led technology: ICCM’s e-Service Desk tool, coupled with the business process functionality of Metastorm’s BPM solution, delivers a radically different approach to service management. By developing its technology from the process up around the ITIL framework ICCM’s solutions allow customers to tailor processes around their company’s actual needs giving better value and ensuring a smooth implementation into any environment.
Flexibility: Working with ICCM our customers experience flexibility unprecedented by our competitors. Our system easily integrates into existing software but also evolves for future environments. Additionally, our flexible pricing modules allow companies of all dimensions to find a pricing structure that suits their needs, whether that be process, nNamed, concurrent or role-specific. Our flexibility goes further still; being 100 percent web-based technology allows full access for remote working service teams, including wireless PDAs and Blackberry devices. Our self-service portal gives customers a window into the status of their service request any time or place.
Service and support: At ICCM we thrive on a culture that provides outstanding service and support to our customers. We deliver on this commitment from initial deployment through to everyday operation. Our ITIL best practice consultants deploy your software and are readily available to offer their acute technical knowledge and broad experience to your service management programme. In addition, we encourage an active user group community by providing regular user group sessions, customer days and forums. We rely heavily on input from our customers, enabling us to align customer feedback to our product road map. We also believe our customers are entitled to service and support when they need it. Our global support network and our extended support hours allow us to offer assistance around our customer’s schedule.
The BBC was originally launched in 1922 and is now recognised as the world’s largest broadcasting corporation, employing over 28,000 people in the UK alone. The BBC offers radio, television and online broadcasting to more than 200 countries worldwide and is available to almost 300 million households. BBC Worldwide is the commercial arm of the BBC, offering a range of media business across the world.
The BBC solution
The solution:
- e-Service Desk
License model:
- 250+ Licensed Service Desk Agents
Notable features:
- Customer portal self audit for CI’s
- MAC/PC supported environments
- Major incident management
Locations:
- Global deployment – follow the sun
- Integration to SMS & Microsoft Active Directory
- Supporting 100+ active services
Database:
- MS SQL Server 2005
Phase 1 deployment:
- Incident management
- Major incident management
- Problem management
- Service requests
- Service catalogue
- Task & resource management
- Customer portal
