The Hillingdon Hospital NHS Trust has selected Supportworks ITSM from Hornbill to underpin IT service management provision to 2,400 nurses, doctors and administrative staff across two sites. The Trust will go live with Incident and Problem Management initially and plans to roll out a customer Self Service web interface to staff, enabling them to log their own calls in the second phase of the implementation. This is anticipated to reduce the number of calls taken by the Service Desk significantly from its current level of 1,000 calls per week, enabling the IT team at the Trust to provide a faster, more efficient and more proactive service.

Tony Anstis, IT Services Manager at The Hillingdon Hospital NHS Trust said; "We wanted to streamline our operations in IT and to provide a more proactive service to our customers while working to ITIL best practice. To do this we needed a Service Management platform that would enable us to keep track of the requests that we have each day, evaluate the types of calls and work more efficiently as a team. The automated workflow processes will enable us to provide a faster, more organised service while freeing up staff to work on more strategic work like bug fixes, development work and longer term projects."

Mr Anstis continued, "We evaluated several products via a tender process. They were judged on criteria which included usability, functionality, flexibility and value for money. It was also important to us that the culture of the vendor fit with our own ensuring a willingness to work together. Hornbill came out top, particularly in the usability of the system."

Supportworks ITSM, which will replace an existing system that has been outgrown by the Trust, will be supplied by Hornbill with a specialist ZENworks connector which will enable the remote management of machines and assets and improve data quality. Supportworks ITSM’s powerful reporting will enable the Trust to easily identify trends and problem areas, for instance it can provide the top 10 issues and the top 10 callers at the click of a button. This visibility will enable the team to see clearly how much work is being done and will identify key strategic areas so that development work can be channeled in the best direction for maximum benefit.
The second phase of the implementation will also include email integration so that callers may email requests for assistance, and the details of their call will automatically populate the Supportworks system. This will save further time for the Service Desk agents.

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems, commented: “Technology is a great enabler, and as the whole of the public sector, including the NHS, start to see cut backs across the board, it is crucial for IT to be able to provide efficient services to support the organisation. SelfService portals and encouraging customers to help themselves is a quick way for Service Desks to reduce their call rates and gain extra time to provide better service aligned to the business needs of the organisation. Supportworks has been designed not only to be easy for the service desk to use, but to provide an intuitive look and feel for end customers encouraging them to try self help before picking up the phone to the Service Desk.”

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NOTES TO EDITORS
About The Hillingdon Hospital NHS Trust
The Hillingdon Hospital Trust is the main provider of acute healthcare to over 300,000 residents within the London Borough of Hillingdon. Its services are provided from both the Hillingdon Hospital and Mount Vernon Hospital sites. The Trust has an annual budget of over £169 million and employs over 2,400 members of staff working to deliver high quality healthcare to the residents of the London Borough of Hillingdon, and increasingly to those living in the surrounding areas of Ealing, Harrow, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire giving the trust a total catchment population of over 350,000 people. For more information please visit: www.thh.nhs.uk