Surrey Based service management software provider are selected by nationwide building materials company and announce a new improvements to their Service Desk solution…

Specialist Service Management software Sunrise Software have recently been selected by the Nicholls and Clarke Group as they move to improve their customer service standards through the implementation of an improved IT infrastructure. With a team of over 550 employees based within 24 offices nationwide, the Nicholls and Clarke Group are recognised as leaders within the building materials sector operating as manufacturer, distributor and retailer. With a diverse range of activities and locations within the organisation it is of course imperative that their back office systems are robust and that integration between divisions is as seamless as possible to allow operations to remain effective.

In acknowledgement of this Nicholls and Clarke have already established an impressive approach to IT Service Management and ITIL best practice and the addition of Sunrise ITSM will further enhance this effort.

Narendra Joshi, Head of IT at Nicholls and Clarke explained “Previously we used a home grown Service Desk system. However, in an ITIL compliant environment like ours, where all IT staff are ITIL trained, we felt that we needed to make the investment in a platform that would rise to meet our operational standards and grow with us into the future.”

The decision to work with Sunrise followed on from an extensive review of the solutions available
Before selecting Sunrise based on a blend of their technology, people and also the company’s pragmatic and understated approach.

“We liked the flexibility that the software platform’s modular approach presented to us,” added Joshi. “It means that we can take a phased approach and grow across the business. The browser based interface is ideal for our environment and, coupled with the software’s integration with social media, showed Sunrise to be a really forward thinking company.”

A phased service management implementation:

The implementation will initially begin in the IT department, where Sunrise ITSM is providing a comprehensive Service Desk solution that will be especially beneficial in supporting the group’s ITSM best practice approach. The system will provide support for each of the 100+ merchant trade account, desktop, manufacturing, distribution, ERP and financial systems that need to be maintained across the 24 sites.

Nicholls & Clarke then plan to create a software Asset Management system heavily based around ITIL best practice to support the creation and management of a group-wide software library so that the IT team will be able to track and manage software versions, license management and renewals planning by using Sunrise ITSM’s reporting functions.

The next step will include extending the rollout to the customer services team; providing a support desk infrastructure to track and monitor operational and business issues ranging from pricing enquiries to business processes, order queries and web order support.

Geoff Rees, Sales Director at Sunrise Software commented “organisations like Nicholls & Clarke that have seen strong organic expansion often out-grow their existing software systems. The business benefits of moving to a fully integrated Service Management Platform that can span all service and customer facing functions, without the overhead of maintaining an in-house developed system, are wide-reaching; enabling the business to operate more efficiently, provide better customer service and better information to support commercial business decisions.”

New iteration of ‘Wall-board’ Service Management Software

Meanwhile the Surrey based software company have also released an improved version of their web-based portal, which includes improved visual displays and trends analysis of key performance data

The latest version of ‘Sunrise Wallboard’, which displays metrics for Service Desk performance, includes improvements to the display of critical operational KPIs as well as a simplified, easier to use interface.

It has been updated to include new FusionCharts libraries enabling animated and interactive data displays, new chart types for enhanced data visualisation, and has improved compatibility with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 to meet customer demand. Also included within the new version is an enhanced aggregation engine to enable multiple data sets to be compared over time to enable trends analysis - for example tracking the volume of Incidents logged by month according to severity and displaying this on a chart.

Sunrise Software’s Product Director at Neil Penny, commented:

“Visual Service Desk metrics are critical to an organisation when providing real-time data on which to base informed decisions. We have enhanced Wallboard, which is available across all our Service Management products, making it easier for our customers to use it to its full capacity, supporting decision making and efficiency. This latest version has been designed with the user in mind, with increased capabilities for data analysis and providing more choice for how data is displayed. It puts more control into the hands of the Service Desk, enabling them to fully interrogate, analyse and display critical performance data.”