London School of Economics opts for ITSM

The London School of Economicshas implemented an IT service management system that is compliant with ITIL.

The university is using the Hornbill Supportworks system to assist its 85-strong IT department in providing support through a range of channels. These include phone, email, text chat and walk-in sessions for its 11,400 staff and students on the main campus and 10 residential sites.

It uses Supportworks to log all IT incidents, as well as implementing problem and change management. The software will also support a new self service helpdesk portal that LSE is launching this autumn.

The system also highlights peaks and troughs in workload, and demonstrates patterns of call and user volumes, so that maintenance is only carried out at the least disruptive times.

James Hargrave, IT user support manager at the university, said the software was helping with service levels, in spite of recent increases in call volumes. “This has been achieved within existing staffing resources as a result of working more efficiently,” he said.

The software was chosen based on ease of use, scalability and its user interface, he said, adding: “We were looking to introduce some ITIL processes and needed a solution that could handle change and configuration as well as incident management.”