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Infra's ITIL-ready global Service Desk is just the tonic for Golden Ventures

Golden Ventures is a privately owned administrative services company that provides services on a contract basis to nursing homes and other healthcare companies throughout the U.S. Services include billing, finance, human resources, information technology, government relations, marketing and communications. As part of its technology resources, Golden Ventures utilizes a first-level support desk located overseas.

Serving more than 500 client locations and nearly 40,000 employees, an upgrade to a web-based IT Service Management solution had become a key priority for Golden Ventures. Not only was it time-consuming and impractical for the IT department to carry out the individual client upgrades and installs for the company's existing solution, it was also proving difficult for the existing Service Desk to keep track of the organization's assets, particularly laptops and PDAs.

Switching to a browser-based IT Service Management solution would significantly reduce the cost of upgrades and provide easy access to job sheets and information for Golden Venture's sizeable roaming IT workforce. A fully integrated Service Desk with a federated Configuration Management Database (CMDB) would additionally offer the organization the visibility of assets across all departments that it required.

Having already developed audit procedures for Sarbanes Oxley compliance, the organization now also wished to formalize and streamline Change Management processes enterprise-wide. Implementing an integrated ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Service Management solution presented a golden opportunity to centralize and automate best practice processes both within the IT department and across other non-IT helpdesks focused on business support.

100% web-based ITIL solution

Golden Ventures decided to undertake a detailed review of the IT Service Management marketplace. After looking at solutions from leading suppliers the Infra system was selected.

Golden Ventures IT Service Desk Administrator Julie Stilley explains, "First and foremost, infraEnterprise is 100 percent web-based, so we knew it would be very fast to implement as it removes the cumbersome issue of client installs for the Service Desk."

"Furthermore, Infra could clearly provide the flexible functionality, easy customization and user-friendly Customer Portal we required. It also allows us to readily implement fully integrated Change and Asset Management in the future."

Just a few months down the line, Golden Ventures' new Infra Service Desk went live. Using infraEnterprise discovery tools, the IT department began to rapidly populate the new Configuration Management Database (CMDB) with existing user data. Administrator and user training was also provided by Infra, enabling the frontline IT Service Desk team to hit the ground running.

According to Julie Stilley, "As a department, we were already committed to ITIL best practice. With infraEnterpise up and running, we were delighted at how the software proactively supported our drive to improve service delivery."

Global Service Desk efficiency

The Golden Ventures IT department is responsible for maintaining computer systems across all of its clients' facilities - ranging from business processes such as collecting payroll records, the computerized time clock and the accounts payable system through to PCs, monitors, printers, desktop applications and specialty healthcare applications.

Each week the frontline Service Desk team of 20 people handles an average of 2,000 support calls. Using Infra, it is extremely easy to escalate calls through to second- and third-line support, track calls through to closure and automatically produce reports on type, length and origin of calls. Custom surveys and reports based on first- and second-level support have been implemented allowing for the measurement of customer satisfaction levels. The web-based system also enables the roaming IT support team to access assigned calls and related knowledge online from a browser.

Golden Ventures has also launched a Customer Portal, which has yielded significant efficiency gains.

"Previously we could only offer a really basic portal," explains Julie Stilley, "Now we have a fast, fully functional solution that allows our customers to log calls in an appropriate format. A high percentage of calls now come via the portal. This has boosted productivity and made it much easier for us to keep customers informed of progress both online and using the integrated email updates."

The portal is used for a variety of calls, such as custom call screens which function as security forms. Prior to the Customer Portal implementation, all security forms required a paper trail backup and were most often faxed directly to the security department. Using the custom call forms, the department has gone to paperless submission, resulting in immediate receipt and more efficient tracking, thus alleviating the possibility of lost forms.

Support for multiple Service Desks

Partitioning within Infra also enables other departments to use Infra's functionality while ensuring that users see only data relevant to their particular business area. Already Golden Ventures' Associate Service Centre uses Infra to handle benefitrelated calls, while the Medicare Compliance team can create and track tickets for issues requiring investigation.

According to Julie Stilley, "Infra's easy customization has proved a great hit with the wider business. For example, if a department needs answers fast to resolve a business issue, we can easily create a customized survey for them."

In 2004, the IT department produced a rapid-response survey for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, which urgently needed to know how many flu shots were required by nursing homes. Using Infra has freed up resources across the enterprise with the IT department now able to act as a central point for customized reporting, application and integration support.

Fully integrated Change and Asset Management

Golden Ventures incorporated Infra Change Management for the approval and tracking of routine Change Requests such as requests from nursing homes for new PCs - linking the movement of inventory in and out of the warehouse with Change Requests. infraEnterprise is also used to manage Changes to the IT infrastructure, such as the addition of a new server. The impact of Changes can be assessed prior to implementation, thus safeguarding critical business systems from unplanned outages.

Golden Ventures has plans to use the Advanced Workflow in infraEnterprise to further automate Change Management procedures. In addition, they will shortly implement a barcoding interface to enable details of all equipment received into and shipped from the warehouse to be scanned into the system.

The healthcare company has also recently implemented Infra Asset Management, which allows assets to be linked to individual employees, ensuring accountability and minimizing inventory losses. Most recently, they introduced a system to track leased equipment by their lease schedules. Much of the computer equipment used by the organization is leased and lease payments can now be allocated to individual departments, providing increased financial control of organizational assets.

"From the administrator standpoint," maintains Stilley, "I feel that we have just scratched the surface of Infra's deep functionality; the system is both powerful and flexible and it is very easy to make customizations and enhancements that yield impressive improvements."

"Infra has certainly lived up to our high expectations. The company's global Service Desk solution represents excellent value for money with no compromise on capability," she concludes.

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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.