Disabled charity overhauls IT support

Disabled care charity Leonard Cheshire has started using a helpdesk system to improve IT advice for frontline carers.

The organisation, which provides an array of support to disabled people including care homes, supported living and day services, needed the system to track IT incidents more effectively.

The helpdesk function was comparatively informal, using a shared mailbox for logging support requests, says Carole Thornton, Leonard Cheshire systems analyst.

'We had some processes for dealing with the issues as they came in, but it was incredibly difficult to track the history of an incident or prioritise jobs effectively,' she said.

'Not only did this put the IT department under considerable pressure, it also made it impossible to set deliverable expectations and communicate them effectively to the rest of the organisation.'

The system, known as Oxygen, is playing a vital role in the IT department's support of other computer-based initiatives the charity is working on, says Thornton.

'For example, our systems are used to coordinate the schedules of visiting support workers, so it’s vital to ensure that any period of time that the systems are not running effectively for these workers is kept to an absolute minimum,' she said.

'We can now prioritise, escalate and track calls to the service desk far more effectively than with our previous approach.'

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Further reading

• Buckinghamshire outsources doctor's computers
  
• Salvation Army to upgrade helpdesk system
  
• Social work - wikis and blogs provide IT support and sharing