CASE STUDY: Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust SECTOR: Healthcare MSM integrated IT Service Management software solutions have been adopted by organisations across many diverse sectors worldwide; from public services to publishing, from travel to telecoms and from entertainment to education. Raising service requests using Marval MSM self-service - a key tool to support service improvement The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital (SATH) National Health Service (NHS) Trust, United Kingdom was formed in October 2003 following the merger of two former Hospital NHS Trusts. The Trust is the main provider of acute hospital care for almost 500,000 people from Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and Mid Wales. The hospital employs around 5000 people, all of whom are potential customers of the Informatics Department. The department also provides support for a number of external, smaller hospitals, Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and other specialist areas such as orthopaedic hospitals. The SATH Trust implemented MSM v12, Marval s integrated, 100% web-based, ITIL process compliant and ISO/IEC 20000 compatible software solution to help achieve its service improvement goals of delivering professional, economic, effective and efficient customer-centric IT support services for its customers. Core activities of the SATH Informatics Department, consisting of over 40 personnel, include; IT and infrastructure support, IT development, data analysis and reporting, and IT training. It is also responsible for looking after hardware, everything from configuring and rolling out new PCs, repairing PCs and supporting software applications. The infrastructure includes networking, servers, wireless networks, data storage and looking after two data centres. Page 1 of 6
SATH and MSM Giles Madin, Informatics Support Team Manager, SATH We are primarily using MSM for incident management, service requests and tasks. We are also making strong inroads in using the product for configuration management. We ensure that our asset information is up to date. A recent task is to record all the warranty information for each asset into the tool. Knowledge management is also an area we are developing we have a formal task in place for two of our technical support team to add at least one knowledge item into the system per week. I want these items documented. Many of our support personnel have specialist knowledge that needs to be available to all, should they be unavailable for whatever reason. I need that information within the system so someone else can access it so we can share that knowledge. In addition, SATH Informatics are also introducing change management in a formalised and structured way. The department has recently set up an Information Change Advisory Board (ICAB) which meets every fortnight to review planned IT changes or potential changes, which will then be mapped against the change process within Marval MSM. MSM web self-service Giles Madin, In just 6 months we have 30% of our customers regularly using our web self-service portal, particularly for reporting incidents. We have plans for channel ordering of products such as PCs and software through self-service. This will give us more control as an IT department. By actually purchasing the equipment, it will provide us with better forward planning. Once ordered, we can plan and schedule the installation and set up, and make sure that the correct licences are in place. Within the NHS, there is a lot more responsibility on individual trusts to look after licensing now, with movement away from a centralised model, which is a key factor in this change. Self-service streamlines the process; it has reduced the number of phone calls into our Service Desk by 30%, a definite cost benefit. I plan to encourage more of our customers to use self-service and I have set a target of increasing the user base from 30% to 50% within 12 months. Personnel using self-service have found it easy and intuitive, particularly the Facebook and Twitter generation. Page 2 of 6
MSM out-of-the-box Like most organisation s adopting MSM, SATH has taken the expansive, out-of-thebox functionality as a starting point and complemented it with additional utilities to suit the organisation including: Linking their own asset discovery tool with Marval MSM s Asset Discovery Integrator Event management using software that monitors all their systems, picking up critical events and automatically raising those events as requests within MSM Reporting and Dashboards Giles Madin, One area of functionality I have used extensively is Marval s excellent management reporting and dashboard tool, MSM Xtraction. I particularly like the real-time information. I feel it is something we are currently only using to about 50% of its potential. One of our challenges was load-balancing our work between two sites. MSM Xtraction s graphic representation instantly helped us see the number of requests that were going from one site to the other. This enabled us to easily and evenly spread the load of service requests between our support personnel, providing a better service to both sites. Year-on-year the number of service requests for the department has increased. This in part is due to capturing better information through the tool, but generally, with more services offered they are receiving more requests. Within 12 months the department has received over 42,000 service requests. These can be quite varied and could be anything from installing a PC to creating an email account, to setting up a server or answering a request for information. Giles Madin, We need to fine tune the information that we gather and record it into MSM. My mantra to the guys is quality in quality out. With good information, we can look at trends and analyse the data. Equipped with useful facts, we can make informed decisions to make improvements, reduce the number of calls and target areas to try and improve our service delivery. When we bought this product in we were practically starting from ground level. My primary objectives in the first year were to get good quality information into the system and to efficiently resolve requests within our Service Level Agreement timeframes, even with the increased volume of requests. Page 3 of 6
Why did SATH choose Marval MSM? Giles Madin explains why Marval s solution was chosen, As the main IT service provider to the Trust, we had out grown our previous in-house developed support tool and needed a mature, industry tested solution that would help us better manage our activities and processes. Primary considerations for implementing Marval s process-driven solution included: Introduction of a formal, centralised, single support system for incident, service request and change management Achieving higher levels of first time fix rates with help from the tool using the known error database Creating an operational Single Point of Contact and effective first line Service Desk team Becoming more proactive Delivering quality management information and meaningful reporting Implementing simple customer self-service request logging via the web Clearly demonstrating value for money and quality Providing performance measurement, Service Level Management monitoring and escalation We considered a number of solutions very carefully over a 12 month period and Marval came out on top. The key factors in the decision were a system that we could understand, was scalable and that would help us deliver significant benefits and efficiencies to the IT team and the wider organisation. The fact that MSM is very ITIL centric ticked another box, as we felt it was important to have a framework that would help us work towards a more standardised and best practice approach to our IT business activities and operations. Also, the system crucially had to offer value for money and the supplier we dealt with needed to give us sufficient confidence that they could deliver and meet our needs both now and in the future. It was also competitive in terms of price; it basically ticked all the boxes we were looking for. Page 4 of 6
Room to grow, develop and improve Other departments within SATH have discovered that MSM can be used effectively beyond IT Service Management and they can see the benefits to them as well. The tool is being partitioned for their Telecoms department to start using MSM in their own right. MSM is an extremely versatile and comprehensive product; there is a huge amount you can do with it to deliver quality services. We chose to use a phased approach, adopting selected processes at a time, which once established, we will look to build on with additional processes, concludes Giles Madin. Pictured (from left to right) part of the Service Desk Team; Darren Slade (IT Support Engineer), Mark Bolam (Service Desk Manager), John Williams (IT Support Engineer), Giles Madin (IT Support Manager) Page 5 of 6
About Marval Marval is committed to the ongoing development of integrated IT Service Management (ITSM) software, consultancy and education. It is a single-source supplier for all your ITSM needs, designed to improve service quality, productivity, customer satisfaction and reduce costs. MSM - an ITIL process compliant and ISO/IEC 20000 compatible, integrated software solution ensures a reliable IT and service infrastructure, increased productivity and adaptability in service provision. It has been implemented by organisations across many diverse sectors worldwide. MSM is used by internal and external support and by providers of outsourced and managed services. Marval is a major practitioner, innovator, thought leader and contributor to Best Practice and standards in ITSM and is co-author of ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000. It has been helping customers deliver service excellence since 1989 and understands what it takes to become a world-class service team. Marval is an ISO/IEC 20000 registered company supporting internal and external customers to international standards. Contact us now to discuss how you can improve your service Marval and MSM are Registered Trade Marks of Marval Software Limited. The Swirl logo is a trade mark of the Cabinet Office. ITIL is a registered trade mark of the Cabinet Office. Marval also recognises the trade mark rights of any 3rd party trade mark owners mentioned in this document. Page 6 of 6