Towergate Partnership, the largest independently owned insurance intermediary, has selected Hornbill's comprehensive service management system to support over 3500 staff based in 100 different locations nationwide. Towergate uses Supportworks ITSM to provide a centralised service desk which is outsourced to Maxima, an IT shared service provider. This enables the support of Towergate employees who use desktop products and niche applications to service customers with over 200 specialist insurance products. Towergate claims that using Supportworks ITSM has enabled them to improve incident and change management both for in-house applications and hosted third party IT systems.

Towergate selected Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM for its ability to support ITIL processes and its easy integration with existing systems. According to Trevor Clements, Technical Project Manager at Towergate Partnership; "With Supportworks ITSM we now have improved management of our IT environment. Towergate Partnership has seen exponential growth by acquisition over the last few years and with this we have more staff and also many more niche trading platforms to support."

"As a large company we require enterprise-scale infrastructure and toolsets. Supportworks ITSM enables us to both support staff with system problems and plan any changes with careful resource allocation, minimising the impact upon users and the business."

The IT team uses Supportworks ITSM to ensure seamless workflow and integration between systems, including in-house applications and those hosted by third parties for specialist insurance – including marine, holiday homes and classic cars. Hardware and software changes are managed using Supportworks ITSM workflow processes to minimise system downtime. Users can call the service desk to log faults or queries either by phone or via the on-line staff portal.

Towergate IT Management also uses data from reports generated by Supportworks ITSM to proactively plan resources, undertake customer surveys and set departmental Service Level Agreements.

Fraser Fisher, Business Development Director, Maxima said; "Hornbill's solution is very easy to use and provides us with the flexibility that we need to provide a customer-focused outsourced IT support operation. Supportworks is increasingly popular with our customers. Many are asking us to use Supportworks as the platform meets their needs to provide a centralised service desk."

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems commented, "Supportworks has been designed to provide flexible out-of-the-box IT Service Management functionality, based on a central platform enabling the provision of a seamless outsourced service and support model.

"Towergate Partnership are experiencing rapid growth and like many organisations, saw the need to adopt ITIL best practice alongside diversified or outsourced support models. Supportworks is flexible and is easily able to support these more complex, distributed support models to meet the challenges of providing support services to more people, more cost effectively."

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NOTES TO EDITORS
About Towergate Partnership
Towergate was established in 1997 to provide insurance in niche markets ranging from holiday homes to cherished cars. It has expanded and broadened its product range to over 200 – the widest range of specialist and traditional products in the UK market.

Towergate is now Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary, with over 3,500 committed staff operating out of 100 UK offices. Towergate's reputation for innovation, progression and dynamism is backed up by recognition from the Sunday Times as a Profit Track 100 company. Executive Chairman, Peter Cullum is a former winner of the 'UK Entrepreneur of the Year' award and is the current M&A 'Deal Maker of the Year'.
Key dates
1997 - Towergate Underwriting Group founded
2002 - Folgate Partnership founded
2005 - Towergate Underwriting & Folgate Partnership merge as Towergate Partnership
2006 - Restructure into distinct underwriting and retail broking divisions

For more information, please visit:
www.towergatepartnership.co.uk

About Maxima

Maxima was established over 20 years ago and has enjoyed strong organic growth supplemented with carefully selected acquisitions. Maxima provides quality systems integration and managed services to support clients over the full lifecycle of their IT investments.

Maxima's expertise now spans many software platforms and industries. The foundation of its commercial success is based upon a client base across the UK, Ireland & North America, with over 1000 clients, across more than 2000 sites, who consider Maxima as their trusted IT partner.

For more information please visit: www.maxima.co.uk