Travelex exchanges CA Technologies for Landesk to speed up service desk response times
Switch will reduce costs and give more control to the business, says global IT service desk manager
Foreign exchange provider Travelex has chosen Landesk's support desk management solution to replace CA Technologies' software in order to speed up service desk response times, reduce costs and allow the company to gain more control over its processes.
Cherrie Pinner, global IT service desk manager at Travelex, said that the firm's service desk supports the entire business - a user base of 7,000 people, incorporating 600 mobile and desktop applications.
"We cover everything from the Microsoft Office suite to custom-built order processing systems," she said.
"We wanted to empower our administrators to enhance our support processes in line with the changing requirements of the business. The challenge was that our previous support desk management software [from CA Technologies] was essentially a black box, and we were heavily reliant on the vendor for modifications. As well as increasing our costs, this reliance on the vendor meant that changes were taking a long time to implement," she said.
Travelex selected Landesk's solution to replace CA's software, and Pinner said that the foreign exchange company was most impressed with the solution's "rich functionality at a cost-effective price point".
"Landesk Service Desk delivers all the benefits of our previous tools - including a self-service portal for our users, mobile application support and tight integration with our reporting platform - straight out of the box, and without the need to purchase additional modules," she said.
Another benefit, Pinner added, is that Travelex can use the Landesk software to make workflow changes and therefore help to minimise the company's reliance on third parties. In turn, this could help cut Travelex's operational expenditure substantially, she said.
More than 450 support staff at the company are currently using the Landesk solution, and the vendor is still working with Travelex to tweak the solution to fit the needs of the organisation.
"The Landesk team is currently helping us redefine key processes based on feedback we've had from the IT support teams, which will help make their work easier," said Pinner.
"Ultimately, we intend to use the Landesk tools to make process changes ourselves, which will help us to respond quickly to changing operational requirements," she added.
According to Pinner, simple IT issues such as unlocking a user account can be resolved swiftly thanks to the new solution. Previously, such an issue would have required the firm's support teams to save and close the ticket, and then retrieve the ticket to close it.
"With Landesk Service Desk, our teams can simply check ‘resolve on creation', and the ticket is logged automatically without the need for additional manual processing. In many cases, Landesk templates enable us to streamline incident resolution and enable our teams to work more efficiently," said Pinner.
"It opens the way for greater levels of automation in our support workflows. Currently, if a member of the business logs a request for a new piece of software, we work with the procurement team to confirm if the company owns a valid licence for the software or if we need to purchase a new one, apply the licence to the machine in question, and then update our back-end systems accordingly," she explained.
Travelex is now looking to extend its use of the Landesk solution to cover its call centre and HR departments.