Communication and Asset Control Increases with Samanage Integrated Asset Management and Service Desk Solution

Samanage is now SolarWinds^® Service Desk.

Challenges

As a service desk, the IT department at J.F. Brennan Company had users submitting requests multiple ways. Some requests were going to one member of the team, others to multiple members of the team, or the incident would go unreported altogether. “With over 300 employees, our tracking system of spreadsheets, databases, and emails could not keep us on top of our tasks or bigger projects,” said Caleb Rose, IT coordinator.

Communication across the team was difficult, while the software assets and license tracking were complicated. “We had everything in different places and then we had a Microsoft audit,” said Brian Jerzak, IT director. “We had the information, but none of it was at our fingertips. It took us a lot of time and resources to gather it.”

Jerzak and his team did not have an efficient system in place for follow up and ensuring that requests, incidents, and issues were resolved in a timely manner. “It was surprising that even among a small team like ours we still had communication issues,” said Jerzak. “We didn’t have a centralized view into what we were doing. We needed the ability to track solutions and not reinvent the wheel every time we resolved a problem.”

Initially Rose and Jerzak began their search for a new solution that would help resolve the  software asset management piece. As they began the process of searching for a new IT asset management solution, they realized that what they also needed was a comprehensive  help desk software solution. As the size of their user base was growing, so was their inventory of IT assets. They needed the ability to centralize and control what each IT team member was working on and how that affected the service level across the company.

Solution

Rose began searching for service desk and software management options, and were focused in on these specific capabilities:

He engaged with some of the biggest players in the ITSM space, like BMC, Cherwell, and ServiceNow, and participated in demonstrations of each software product. “At the end of the day, the bigger products weren’t the right fit our environment.” said Rose. “And with many of the unified software asset management and service desk options, it seemed that a lot of the solutions were either half baked or not a good combination together.” The IT team at J.F. Brennan Company also wanted to avoid heavy integrations.

“We needed a sensible balance of service desk and asset management,” said Rose. “It came down to the Samanage integrated service desk and asset management solution, which covered both bases well.”

Benefits

The IT team at J.F. Brennan found that Samanage provided them with a simplified software and hardware tracking system, and the ability to look into a device without pulling a file has allowed them to quickly understand what state each asset is in. And, the team has seen even more substantial changes and progress since moving to the Samanage.

“In the first four months since deploying Samanage Service Desk, we had more than 700 incidents entered and resolved,” said Jerzak. “That really confirmed to us that what we were doing in the past was not adequate as a department. We didn’t have anything like that tracked.” Jerzak and Rose can now report and prioritize what is important on a day to day basis and prioritize their time based on the impact to the end user and the company as a whole.

The snapshot view of the team’s service desk and IT assets in the Samanage dashboard has allowed the team to do some quick reporting, and has provided visibility into what the team is working on and forecasting what their days and weeks might look like. “It’s reassuring to see and know that each ticket is being addressed,” said Jerzak.

Outside of the IT department, end users at J.F. Brennan Company have found a straightforward way to submit the details of their requests. “The Samanage Service Catalog has made it easier for our users to give us the information we need upfront,” said Rose. “We’re looking into expanding that to HR for new employee onboarding and terminations, as well as to finance for changing payroll and benefits information for a user.”

The biggest change that Jerzak has seen within the IT department is the speed at which the team can communicate with each other and end users. “The requester can now keep track of their incident status,” said Jerzak. “The users are always aware of what’s going and are assured that we’re addressing their issues in a timely and professional manner through Samanage.” The user base at J.F. Brennan Company can see that each request is important and taken seriously, instead of having to call and consistently double check on status. The IT department is much more structured and looked upon as a legitimate entity of service in the organization with Samanage in place.