Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and Novell Service Desk

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• published: 05 Nov 2014
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Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust replaced its support management solution with Novell Service Desk, reducing response and fix times and improving productivity for their mobile and dispersed workforce. About Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust (the Trust) offers both acute services, centered on North Devon District Hospital (NDDH) in Barnstaple, and community services across a network of 17 community hospitals and nine clusters. At any one time, the Trust supports 6,000 patients in their own homes and 600 people in hospital beds. It employs more than 4,300 staff and serves a population of nearly 500,000 with a budget of £209 million. Challenge In April 2011, the Trust acquired the commu­nity services serving Exeter, East and Mid Devon, as well as the pan-Devon specialist community services such as bladder and bowel, podiatry and sexual health. With 4,500 business users and 3,000-plus workstations under management, the Trust’s IT department faced the challenge of con­tinuing to deliver excellent support services to a far larger number of users. Cameron Stephens, IT Desktop Support Supervisor at the Trust, said: “In recent years, investment in IT in the Trust has increased and, combined with the effect of the merger, this has intensified demand for support services. We often had 50 people with requests of varying degrees of urgency calling the helpdesk simultaneously—putting huge strain on our telephone operators.” The Trust realized that its legacy support man­agement solution was no longer able to cope with the high service levels for this enlarged user base. In addition, the system lacked the flexibility to service support requirements for those staff using mobile devices. Geoff Smith, IT Strategy & Development Manager—IT Services, said: “The Trust’s services are spread over hundreds of square miles in rural Devon, so a support solution based on engineers physically traveling long dis­tances between sites was not a cost-effective proposition. We needed to re-think our ap­proach to help us deliver a more efficient service for users throughout the Trust.” Novell's Solution After reviewing support management solu­tions from different vendors, the Trust chose Novell Service Desk. “We selected Novell Service Desk because we were impressed with its built-in self-service portals,” said Cameron Stephens. “Furthermore, as long-term users of Novell ZENworks® Configuration Management, we realized that we could leverage our extensive catalog of Novell ZENworks assets to augment the ca­pabilities of the solution.” The Trust worked with a team from Novell to implement and configure Novell Service Desk. “Novell Service Desk is running in parallel with our legacy solution, and we are in the final stages of migrating to the new platform,” said Cameron Stephens. “The direct support we receive from Novell has been faultless—their engineers are always on hand when we need advice or assistance.” For more information visit www.novell.com