Case Studies > Cireson Apps Help Asta Managing Agency Deliver Effective Services to Users and Clients

Cireson Apps Help Asta Managing Agency Deliver Effective Services to Users and Clients

Customer Company Size

Mid-size Company

Region

Europe

Country

United Kingdom

Product

Cireson Platform
Analyst Portal
Outlook Console
Notify Analyst
Asset Management app

Tech Stack

System Center Service Manager (SCSM)
Windows-based infrastructure

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAM)
Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Facility Management

Use Cases

Remote Asset Management
Service Parts Management

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

Asta Managing Agency Ltd. establishes and manages insurance syndicates through the Lloyd’s market. They currently manage 8 Lloyd’s syndicates, with the capacity of 1 billion pounds. Asta employs 16 help desk professionals. They support about 400 users in 5 locations, and manage about 600 devices. The IT department supports their own users, as well as users of the syndicates they manage. About 90% of the company’s IT infrastructure is Windows-based.

The Challenge

Asta originally relied on the infraEnterprise help desk solution from EMC to support their users. Over three years ago, they also tried the Conduit cloud solution, but they were disappointed with the results. “Our engineers didn’t like using it,” said Pierre Smit, IT Service Manager. “It was cheap, compared to the old system, and clunky.” In the middle of 2013, the IT team decided to switch to System Center Service Manager (SCSM). The main motivation behind choosing SCSM was the licensing structure, making the solution affordable, compared to other options. Asta hired an external consultant to help with the deployment. Asta’s IT team was too busy with other projects, and they didn’t have a very good understanding of SCSM, which turned out to be more complex than they originally expected. Commenting on their deployment experience, Pierre Smit said, “It wasn’t the smoothest process. Service Manager is like a shell, where everything needs to be configured. It’s flexible, but not out of the box.” After struggling with SCSM for over 6 months, Asta’s IT team decided to try add-on products to ease their work with SCSM. They turned to Cireson at the beginning of 2014. After a positive experience with Cireson’s free tool, Notify Analyst, Asta’s IT team moved on to deploy other Cireson apps.

The Solution

“We deployed Cireson apps ourselves,” shared Pierre Smit. “It was straightforward and very simple.” Analyst Portal and Outlook Console are Asta’s two favorite solutions. Analyst Portal is a huge time saver because it allows multiple people to access reports for their own sets of users. Since Asta provides services to outside syndicates, before Cireson apps they had to manually generate and distribute activity reports. “We outsource IT services,” said Pierre Smit. “Before I had to export data and send our clients reports. Now we do it the easy way - they can simply log into the portal, and see the tickets themselves.” The Outlook plug-in is another valuable app that gets high marks from Asta. It has simplified the life of the IT department by allowing their analysts to collect and view tickets without opening up the console, resolving issues faster than before. Although they are still in the process of deploying the Asset Management app, the IT team can already appreciate the comprehensive features of the solution. “We’ve had similar solutions in the past, but they were not as good as Cireson’s. It is a more complete solution with a full set of features,” said Pierre Smit. Summarizing the benefits of Cireson, Pierre Smit said, “Service Manager worked for us only because of Cireson. Without Cireson, it would not have benefited us, because it is difficult and very time-consuming to configure. Cireson is the best tool we’ve had in 10 years.”

Operational Impact

The Outlook Console enables Asta’s analysts to access user tickets without leaving Outlook, making the resolution process faster and more convenient.
Cireson’s Analyst Portal enables different teams to access data of their own users at any time. Asta’s syndicate members no longer need to wait for reports to be generated and distributed by one person.
Most Cireson apps are designed to work out of the box. There is rarely a need to hire an external consultant to deploy the apps and train the users.

Quantitative Benefit

Asta manages 8 Lloyd’s syndicates with a capacity of 1 billion pounds.
Asta employs 16 help desk professionals supporting about 400 users in 5 locations.
The IT department manages about 600 devices.