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Infra software enables LexisNexis Butterworths' blueprint for IT best practice

The Reed Elsevier Group is a global information provider comprising of four separate operating divisions with 36,000 employees worldwide. LexisNexis, the legal business division, provides information for the legal, corporate, government and academic markets. Its legal publishing brands, including Butterworths in the United Kingdom, are leaders within their respective markets. The division's combined publishing portfolio provides access to 4.1 billion documents from more than 34,000 sources of reference.

With three main offices in the UK, LexisNexis Butterworths publishes information in online, print and CD-ROM formats. A team of 70 Information Systems (IS) professionals based in Woking, Surrey supports 1,100 end users, predominantly editorial staff including a mobile sales force and a growing number of home workers. The IS team also maintains a mission-critical server room (webfarm), which houses the servers that deliver the company's online products.

Global IT initiative

The company's incumbent helpdesk software, which provided basic call logging functionality, was increasingly unable to meet the company's needs. Analysts could not easily prioritize or track the status of open calls, or share knowledge with other teams. In addition, Change Management was largely paper based and could not keep pace with the growing complexity of the IT infrastructure and webfarm. The IS team was also increasingly required to support the business by providing audit information for Data Protection and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

At the time, the parent company Reed Elsevier was commencing a worldwide IT initiative to centralize and globalize the way its business divisions work together. The decision was taken to standardize around a single IT Service Management (ITSM) application based on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practice methodology. Following ITIL Foundation training and certification for the entire IS department, LexisNexis Butterworths was chosen to pilot Reed Elsevier's global IT project.

Unfortunately, the ITSM product initially selected by LexisNexis Butterworths failed to meet expectations. The success of the project relied upon the selected product integrating with LexisNexis Butterworths' asset discovery tool and multi-domain Active Directory structure. It became evident that a more flexible system with better connectivity tools was required. The initial pilot was abandoned, and LexisNexis Butterworths' turned to Infra Corporation's integrated IT Service Management application, infraEnterprise.

LexisNexis Butterworths' Service Delivery Co-ordinator Holly Boyle comments, "infraEnterprise fully supports all ITIL disciplines and our move towards IT best practice. Crucially, Infra software also allowed seamless integration with Active Directory and LANDesk, so we could rapidly populate our Helpdesk database with customer and asset information already available in other systems and easily update and maintain it."

Due to the 100 per cent web-based architecture of infraEnterprise, Reed Elsevier colleagues located in the United States were also able to log on directly and monitor the progress of the project. Within a couple of days LexisNexis Butterworths and Reed Elsevier were confident that Infra could provide out-of-the-box Active Directory integration.

"After the failure of the initial pilot project, we had to get results fast. We had an extremely tight target to implement Infra in just nine weeks, but the Infra team worked as hard as we did, if not harder and their enthusiasm and confidence was infectious. They pulled out all the stops to complete the installation on time and on budget and even beat our milestones for Active Directory and LANDesk integration" explains Boyle.

Seamless integration

Infra's easy integration with key systems enabled LexisNexis Butterworths to populate a single Configuration Management database quickly and easily with user information automatically imported from Active Directory and asset information from LANDesk.

Through the synchronization of the Infra Database with headline information from the LANDesk database, LexisNexis Butterworths tracks laptops, desktops and servers automatically. Portable and home user assets are now linked to users and integrated into the Change Management process for starters and leavers, providing an audit trail and minimizing asset losses. LexisNexis Butterworths also store non-physical assets such as company-owned domain names, supplier details, support contracts and software licensing information.

Increased efficiency

The IS department operates a frontline Helpdesk of four analysts with second line support provided by desktop specialists in each office, in addition to teams focused on security, networks and servers and several software development teams. The success of the Infra system has expedited the move to a Single Point of Contact support model (SPOC), whereby the IS Helpdesk now handles frontline support calls for other areas of the business, including HR and Finance applications. As a result of streamlining, there has been a 100 per cent increase to 4,000 in the number of calls logged monthly, yet Helpdesk staffing has remained constant.

LexisNexis Butterworths Helpdesk assesses all incoming support calls and assigns a Priority and Problem Type. Once a call is logged as a query, a request or a fault, the Helpdesk can route the call appropriately, but continue to track it through to closure, capturing valuable customer service data. Improved reporting statistics on staffing have also enabled the department to demonstrate the impact of a staff vacancy on average fix times and help to justify replacement staff.

The SPOC enables a more efficient use of resources across the business and provides a consistent customer service experience across different business groups.

According to Neil Dunabie, HRMS analyst, at Reed Elsevier, Infra is now a single point of reference for all issues regarding HR system support. "Infra has significantly reduced the amount of time we spend tracking support calls and increased the level of support that users receive. They speak directly to an IT support specialist who has an all-round knowledge of multiple systems and infrastructure, not just the HR system, PeopleSoft."

Productivity has been further improved by the use of the Infra Knowledge Bank, which makes it straightforward for analysts to locate and share information. Equally, user self-service has freed up analysts to do more proactive work - currently 10 per cent of calls are now logged directly by users via a branded Customer Portal and this percentage continues to grow on a monthly basis.

Protecting business revenues

Infra's Advanced Workflow module for Change Management has enabled LexisNexis Butterworths to protect the availability of the company's mission critical webfarm servers.

The webfarm powers LexisNexis Butterworths' subscriber websites, which generated more than a third of the UK company's total turnover in 2005. Today the risk of changes to these servers can be assessed prior to implementation. As a result there has been a reduction in the number of incidents of unplanned downtime to revenue generating services - despite the addition of many new applications over recent months.

According to IT Services Manager Mark Wilkinson, "Since implementing electronic Change Management via Infra, our webfarm availability has been running at virtually 100 per cent. The value of this to the business speaks for itself."

Business advantage beyond expectation

In addition to improving Helpdesk productivity, implementing ITIL best practice has delivered a significant business advantage for LexisNexis Butterworths. As part of the Reed Elsevier group, LexisNexis Butterworths must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation, which mandates the provision of detailed audit trails showing access to financial systems. Non-compliance with this regulation can result in the loss of company reputation, fines and even custodial sentences.

Using functionality from Infra's Advanced Workflow module, access to Finance applications are authorized, recorded and available for audit. Managers can view individual users' access privileges to systems covered by Data Protection and SOX compliance regulations. Mark Wilkinson explains, "Infra has allowed our SOX and Data Protection audits relating to access to become a mere box-ticking exercise. With the workflow for the processes managed via Infra, we were able to comply with our legal obligations at no additional effort - or cost - to the business."

Wilkinson concludes, "Looking at the project as a whole, I'd say that Infra managed to do in nine weeks what their competition failed to do in six months."

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Infra provides ITIL Service Management and Help Desk solutions including Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, Release Management, Service Level Management and Availability Management software.