Leading UK biscuit maker United Biscuits (UB) is using a a new IT service management platform to support 4,000 users at more than 15 UK and international locations, and save £25,000 a year into the bargain.
UB, which owns the McVitie’s, Jacob’s, Carr’s, Jaffa Cakes, Mini Cheddars and other brands, is using the Sostenuto ITSM system and Iguana self-service portal from Sunrise Software. It is being used to support users in the UK, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland.
Since deploying the system UB says it has "significantly boosted IT efficiency" and expects to save in the region of £25,000 every year.
Based at UB's headquarters in Liverpool, the new Sostenuto ITSM service desk delivers round-the-clock support to employees, with UB’s third party support partners in India also accessing the system to manage incidents around the world.
Gary Devaney, IT service manager at United Biscuits, said: “The time had come to create a more dynamic service desk environment that could deliver faster, more efficient IT services to help staff tackle the challenges of our expanding international business activities head on.
"Sunrise was streets ahead of the competition. It met all our requirements for simplicity and flexibility and all within a cost-effective package.”
UB’s 40-plus strong IT team is using Sostenuto ITSM to develop robust and consistent processes for incident, change and problem management across the organisation.
Using Sostenuto, UB's IT department can create new fields, develop the right security framework, handle all their own trouble-shooting, and then report back on the performance of the service desk themselves, without accruing additional costs from external consultancy or add-ons.
UB employees are able to log their own issues via the Iguana web-based self-service portal. In addition to saving time and reducing the number of calls coming into the service desk, the introduction of self-service has given users complete visibility of how their incidents are being handled, and the ability to track progress from beginning to end.
Using Sostenuto has also significantly improved UB's change management process. Requested IT changes are now sent automatically by email to managers with sign-off authority, who simply accept or reject them at the click of a mouse.
The speed and simplicity of the process means that far greater numbers of changes are approved and subsequently administered than ever before, said UB.