Case Studies > Harris Federation Centralizes IT Support for 36 UK Schools with Service Manager and Cireson

Harris Federation Centralizes IT Support for 36 UK Schools with Service Manager and Cireson

Customer Company Size

SME

Region

Europe

Country

United Kingdom

Product

Cireson Asset Management
Cireson Business Management Solution
Cireson Analyst Portal
Service Manager
Spiceworks

Tech Stack

Centralized Help Desk Support System
Automation Tools
Data Mining Tools
Asset Import Tools

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Analytics & Modeling - Data Mining
Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Facility Management
Business Operation

Use Cases

Remote Asset Management
Predictive Maintenance
Process Control & Optimization

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

Harris Federation is a non-profit charitable organization that operates and manages a network of 36 primary and secondary schools in and around London. The IT department at Harris Federation employs 35 workers, supporting about 20,000 students and staff members in 38 locations. They also manage about 12,000 devices. The organization is dedicated to providing high-quality education and ensuring that their IT infrastructure supports this mission effectively. With a significant number of students and staff relying on their IT systems, the need for a centralized and efficient IT support system became paramount. The Harris Federation's commitment to improving their IT services led them to seek out solutions that could streamline their operations and enhance the support provided to their users.

The Challenge

Before Harris Federation moved its entire network of schools to System Center Service Manager, the IT support system for the entire organization was decentralized. Each school had its own way of supporting their staff members and students. Some of the secondary and primary schools used the Spiceworks solution, while others employed a combination of spreadsheets, email, word of mouth, or staff notice boards. Lance Ball, Head of Service Delivery, said, “There was no central repository for the incident data collected from those academics, therefore the IT management team at the Harris Federation had little visibility of the various incident trends, which made it difficult to manage and improve the IT support service.” The end users simply weren’t getting the support they needed, leading to frustration and long periods of disruption to their work. With the help of Service Manager, Harris Federation was hoping to consolidate the IT support service for all the schools in the network and gain visibility into the IT support requirements at each school (including the number of support people needed, the type of support requested, etc. The collected data would enable the team to monitor trends, as well as improve the IT support service. While searching for ways to simplify the management of Service Manager, the IT team came across Cireson’s apps. “We discovered a couple of Cireson products freely available on the Internet and found this very useful. Further research into Cireson revealed them to be an obvious partner,” said Lance Ball.

The Solution

After Harris Federation tried a free app they were happy with the results and moved on to deploy Cireson’s Business Management Solution. The flexible Analyst Portal is one of the company’s favorite apps because it enables Harris Federation’s employees to centrally manage all user requests from their office, or on the go. “The Analyst Portal provided a user friendly interface for admin, teaching and IT support staff, which meant staff could log and manage their IT support tickets from a single web-based portal that was accessible to staff at all academies,” said Lance Ball. The next logical step to gain more automation benefits was to tie together the management of all IT assets. Cireson Asset Management and Asset Import enabled Harris Federation to easily import and automatically keep track of their IT assets (hardware and software tools and apps, software licenses, warranties, lease contracts, etc.) “Using Asset Management and Asset Import together means allows us to schedule asset import and update tasks at less busy times, thus removing some of the need for manual auditing,” commented Lance Ball. Harris Federation’s end users have seen a huge improvement in the way their incidents and service requests are being resolved. The speed and accuracy of the IT team has improved significantly, due to better automation of all the main tasks. “The IT team as a whole is very lean, so automation is a huge benefit to us. The IT management team now have visibility of the number, type and complexity of IT support requirements at each Academy. With Cireson, we can now monitor, measure and improve the IT Support service that we provide,” concluded Lance Ball.

Operational Impact

Harris Federation has achieved streamlined management of all assets across their network of 36 schools, allowing for more efficient and proactive operations while reducing unnecessary costs.
The IT team now has more clarity on which issues should be resolved, enabling them to focus on assigned tasks and leading to much faster resolution of all issues.
The centralized help desk support system introduced accountability benchmarks for the IT department and created a plan for future improvements.
The flexible Analyst Portal allows employees to manage user requests centrally, whether from their office or on the go, providing a user-friendly interface for admin, teaching, and IT support staff.
Automation of main tasks has significantly improved the speed and accuracy of incident and service request resolutions, benefiting the end users.

Quantitative Benefit