Kent County Council, one of the UK's largest, most diverse councils has successfully implemented Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM (IT Service Management) software. The solution is used by 150 ICT operations staff to support 10,000 council staff located in over 500 different buildings around the county. This first phase of the implementation also provides staff with access to a SelfService portal via the council intranet to check the status of their incidents and service requests. In addition, customised portals have been created to provide SelfService to users in the Adult Social Services and Children and Families directorates. These two departments have their own specialised applications and requests for support for these are now passed directly, via the customer SelfService portal, to the relevant support analysts. Providing customers with access to the service desk has created efficiencies, resulting in savings equivalent to a full time member of staff on the central Service Desk.

Kent County Council carried out a detailed selection process, including a proof of concept exercise, evaluating solutions from their incumbent supplier Touchpaper, alongside Remedy and Hornbill. Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM was the preferred choice, as it was the most user friendly and easiest solution to use, as well as meeting the Council's functional requirements out of the box.

Paula Davies, Service Desk Manager at Kent County Council commented, "We particularly liked the apparent simplicity of Hornbill's solution. It handles quite complex and powerful processes while making it very easy for the end user. This ease of use, particularly in the management of priority calls and SLAS has, we believe, enabled us to manage our workload better resulting in faster response times to customers."

The second phase of the implementation, which will commence early in 2009, will cover the introduction of the Configuration Management Database and Change Management. When this is completed the Service Desk anticipates far more effective communication with users of the 600 applications that it currently supports. Paula Davies explained, "With the introduction of the Configuration Management Database we will be able to align services to people. This means that we will be able to segment our customers so that they only receive alerts and communications about relevant applications and services. The Council-wide recognition, that our customers are different and so need different services, was one of the key elements that resulted in the Council achieving a Customer Service Excellence award. Supportworks ITSM will help us to maintain and extend this level of customer service commitment."

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems commented: "Kent County Council operates as a multi-million pound business with a hugely diverse customer base spread over a large geographic area. Supporting staff providing such a wide range of services requires a strong customer service ethos – which Kent County Council demonstrates admirably – coupled with efficiency and attention to detail. Kent has harnessed Supportworks ITSM to help it meet its challenging customer service targets by automating and streamlining as many processes as possible, while ensuring that customers still receive an individual service."

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NOTES TO EDITORS:

About Kent County Council

Kent County Council is one of the largest councils in the UK, employing over 44,000 full and part-time people. It has achieved a four star rating from the Audit Office in its annual Comprehensive Performance Assessment for the last six years.

The council provides a wide range of services including; maintaining roads and highways; processing and recycling half a million tons of rubbish each year; educating 200,000 children; running libraries; providing adult education; and providing youth and community services. It provides care packages for older and handicapped people, and for children requiring 'looking after' including arranging foster care.

Kent County Council is based at County Hall in Maidstone with over 500 other buildings across the county.

For more information please visit:
www.kent.gov.uk