I first met Andy Gilbert in person at our Hornbill Insights event last year. Wessex Water had just wrapped up the final stage of their ITSM tool selection process, and although they had selected Hornbill for IT, the solution had not yet been implemented.
As Andy explained his ITSM vision and his plans for Hornbill, it was clear that the service management function at Wessex Water had a high level of maturity, and clear goals around service improvement and optimization. Less than six months after their go-live, I contacted Andy and asked him to share how they were getting on, and this is what he had to say:
- Can you give me a brief background of who you are and what your role is at Wessex Water?
My name is Andy Gilbert and my role is Service Management Consultant, which means undertaking Service Architecture and overseeing our ISO20000-1 framework at Wessex Water.
- Which Service Desk tool was in place at Wessex Water before you deployed Hornbill for IT?
Prior to deploying Hornbill, we used an open source tool called OTRS.
- What were the business drivers and reasons for implementing a new solution?
We were looking for improvements in how our customers engaged with us as a service provider, and we wanted to drive the efficiency and effectiveness of our own team members through automation and process improvements.
- What was your first impression of Hornbill for IT?
Hornbill’s capabilities were aligned with most tools in the upper end of the ITSM tools market. What was different is that Hornbill seemed to really give our service management team the ability to be self-sufficient when implementing improvement opportunities.
- What other solutions did you consider/shortlist before choosing Hornbill Service Manager?
We looked at ServiceNow, Cherwell and Microfocus SMAX.
- What was your impression of Hornbill during the selection process?
We found the team approachable, supportive, and knowledgeable on the Hornbill platform and service management best-practice.
- What would you consider your biggest personal success coming out of the project?
For me, with my service architect hat on, seeing the Business Service Catalogue come to life within Hornbill has been great. Hornbill has allowed the service management team to be IT enablers. Deploying and updating processes and workflows is fast and easy, which delivered some quick wins within the wider IT team.
- Since you went live with Hornbill Service Manager, how has it gone?
The transition to Hornbill has gone very well. Feedback from customers about self- service has been very positive, and our IT agents have seamlessly started fulfilling IT processes in the new tool, all within three months.
- Can you highlight three things that you love about Hornbill?
The three things I like best are:
- Hornbill’s continual delivery model, which means that new and improved functionality is incrementally delivered, without any of the usual software upgrade pains.
- Hornbill’s business process designer means that we can easily implement service improvement opportunities and be self-sufficient.
- Hornbill’s people, and their collaborative approach to partner-based relationships.
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- If you had a magic wand, what is the one thing you would change about Hornbill right now?
I’d like to see tasks made visible in the ‘my requests’ view, so I have only one place to go for all Hornbill activities.
I would like to thank Andy for sharing his experiences, and would add that he’s being incredibly modest about what he, and his team have achieved within such a short timescale.
I am aware that Wessex Water is weeks away from implementing an innovative top-down and bottom-up approach, which leverages automation to map out services and their dependencies within their CMDB, with specific views to deliver business and technical perspectives of their IT services.
Wessex Water is also an early adopter of Hornbill ITOM, and I look forward to checking in with Andy in the next few months, to catch up with their progress on automating IT operations.
