PRS for Music, the not-for-profit membership organisation that collects royalty fees from music users on behalf of writers and publishers, is extending its use of Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM Enterprise IT service management software in support of its Quality Operating System (QOS) initiative. PRS for Music now has over 100 licences for Hornbill's service desk software, supporting its adoption of ITIL best practice for Incident, Problem, Change and Release Management. PRS for Music states that using Hornbill's IT service desk software has enabled it to provide an effective shared service, reducing costs and minimising risk across the business - key elements that helped take the PRS for Music service desk to the finals of the 2009 Service Desk Institute Awards.

Supportworks ITSM Enterprise, which has been used by PRS for Music to support over 800 internal IT users for several years, is operated both internally and by ISG Technology, the selected third party partner that supports the PRS for Music systems infrastructure under the terms of a Managed Services contract. Using Supportworks ITSM, the IT teams at both PRS for Music and ISG are able to view support data centrally, improving the management of queries and reducing the duplication of support tasks.

Richard Turner, Business Analyst at PRS for Music said; "Under our QOS initiative, all of our IT support teams will be following standardised processes for Change, Release and Problem Management. Supportworks has an interface that helps us to understand and support the business better and is very easy to use with minimal training.

"Having a central database to record data enables us to manage the workloads and interact more easily across the different IT teams; the goal is to further improve IT service provision to the business once complete. With more meaningful data, we can assess the impact of changes across the entire infrastructure. This improved management and knowledge will help us to work more efficiently, improving our service desk availability. We are in the process of streamlining our operations to provide clearer communication that benefits our users and adds value to the business."

Supportworks ITSM Enterprise will support the IT teams in adopting ITIL best practice and standardising processes, replacing the different approaches and methods that each team employed when working in isolation. Faults and calls will be logged against the central Configuration Management Database (CMDB), accessed by the IT service agents and developer support teams. The IT department also intends to introduce the Customer SelfService web-based helpdesk for users to make requests for service or search to resolve common issues.

Frank McIlroy, CEO of Hornbill Service Management said; "Adopting ITIL best practice challenges organisations to review their working practices; it can transform IT from a passive technology provider to a true added-value business partner. PRS is a prime example of a Hornbill customer maximising use of IT resources while also improving service delivery. Supportworks ITSM Enterprise has been designed as a management tool to both support processes and centralise desks, enabling companies to gain big wins from ITIL adoption. A streamlined, efficient support service benefits IT staff, users and ultimately the bottom line."

NOTES TO EDITORS

PRS for Music is home to the world's best music writers, composers and publishers. Formed as The MCPS-PRS Alliance in 1997 with the PRS for Music brand adopted in 2009, the organisation brings together two royalty collection societies; MCPS and PRS. It exists to collect and pay royalties to members when their music is exploited in one of a number of ways - when it is recorded onto any format and distributed to the public, performed or played in public, broadcast or made publicly available online.

PRS for Music is one of the world's most efficient combined rights collecting operations. Offering its members more money, more often, at less cost and its customers the most efficient means by which they can use music.

For more information, please visit: www.prsformusic.com