Case Study
Ginsters ‘self-service’ desk
from Sunrise Software
satisfies employees’
appetite for IT support
Leading brand in pastry market uses
Sostenuto IT Service Management
solution to support over 2000
employees nationwide
www.sunrisesoftware.co.uk
Ginsters
G
insters is the UK brand leader of
the chilled savoury pastry market
and is one the nation’s favourite
brand of snack food. Located in Callington,
Cornwall, the Ginsters family founded the
company in 1968 and with a staff of 30
people the family produced hand crimped
Cornish Pasties.
Like all businesses, Ginsters places great store in
its commitment to quality, both in its products
and its operations. The company has recently
invested in a new IT Service Desk system from
Sunrise, Sostenuto IT Service Management ITSM,
to support 2000 employees across the group’s
17 operational and distribution sites.
,,
Since being acquired in 1977 by Samworth
Brothers Limited, Ginsters has grown from
strength to strength and now employs over
750 staff producing over 3 million products a
week. Today Ginsters is firmly recognised as
an established leading brand and is constantly
looking for new innovative ways to ensure
customer satisfaction.
Fran Reilly, IT Support Technician at Ginsters’,
said; “Until we implemented Sostenuto ITSM
we had no way to track user calls or to meet our
KPIs. We liked the look of Sunrise’s software as
it had a straightforward user interface and it is
relatively easy to configure to our needs, while
still allowing us to adapt to ITIL® best practice
processes. Its modular structure also means that
we can readily adapt it to support the needs of
other service departments.
The
installation of
Sostenuto was
smooth and
straightforward
and achieved
very quickly with
the help of the
Sunrise team.
,,
“We also really liked the Iguana self-service web
portal, to enable our end users to log and track
their own queries independently. It has enabled
us to provide a really flexible and accessible way
to support our end users, freeing our agents to
focus on resolving issues.”
The investment was initiated by the IT team,
which was finding it increasingly difficult to
manage requests from IT users across the
business, whether located in its manufacturing
sites, head office or its sales offices. IT support
was fragmented, with incoming emails and
calls for service or support dealt with in an
unstructured way, with no clear record of
outcome.
Streamlining work processes with ITIL
Ginsters selected Sunrise’s Sostenuto software
for its modular functionality and easy-to-use
interface and configurability, following a review
of several shortlisted solutions.
© Sunrise Software Ltd
www.sunrisesoftware.co.uk
Account administration requests were made on
paper forms which were signed and passed to
the IT team for action. Tracking progress and
completing requests was both time consuming
and difficult to monitor. Recognising the need
for automated processes and clear audit trails,
the IT team took the decision to investigate
Service Desk systems that could help them
record, track and manage requests and enable
them to report back to the business on KPIs.
Smooth rollout helps get
end users on board
The IT team installed Sostenuto in January 2011,
phasing the roll out to users across the different
parts of the business over a period of six months.
The team invested a lot of time informing
the different parts of the business, to clearly
communicate the benefits of the new way of
working prior to full scale adoption.
Self-service portal gets top marks in
end user survey
Currently Sostenuto is used for Incident
Management and Knowledge Management,
with plans to introduce Change Management
over the next six months. All staff log and
track their own support or service calls using
the Iguana self-service portal, accessed via a
shortcut on their desktop.
Feedback on the self-service portal has been
very positive, with annual survey results
indicating that it has contributed to users having
an improved IT experience overall.
“The self service portal means that all our users
have full visibility of their own incidents – what
they have logged and the status,” explained
Reilly. “Since using Sostenuto we have been
able to prioritise and deal with calls much more
efficiently, providing a much better, quicker
service, with the same resources.
“We have been able to draw reports on our
activities and feedback against our KPIs to the
business and include feedback from our annual
user survey. Over 80% of users are using the
portal, with more than 60% claiming it has
improved their overall experience of using IT.”
“The installation of Sostenuto was smooth
and straightforward and achieved very quickly
with the help of the Sunrise team,” explained
Hargrave. “We then wanted to take the time
to roll out in a measured way to ensure a clear
understanding and adoption of the system
amongst our end users and ensure its success.”
As well as supporting the 750 employees
that work for Ginsters, the IT team of 13 also
provides a support service to staff in other parts
of the Samworth Brothers business. In total, the
team supports over 2000 employees located
across four manufacturing sites, Westward
Laboratories, which provides microbiological
and chemical testing for the food industry and
16 sales offices.
The ability to increase efficiencies and improve
the end user service has not only fed into the
KPIs, but also enables the IT team to look at
continuous improvement. They have been
able to collate common problems experienced
by users and identify where training may be
required, recommending appropriate actions.
Sharing best practice across the
organisation
The success of Sostenuto has encouraged the
IT team to recommend how other support
functions within the business might benefit from
adopting a similar approach.
“We have had tremendous support from
Sunrise over the past eighteen months,” said
Reilly. “With the benefits we have seen there
is no doubt other teams could adopt the ITIL
service desk approach and improve efficiencies
companywide.”
,,
“Our workload is now much easier to manage,”
said Chris Hargrave, IT Support Supervisor at
Ginsters. “We have changed the structure of
our department to provide 1st, 2nd and 3rd
line support. With Sostenuto we can allocate
calls and tasks to different lines of support
according to workloads and can track progress
to completion with a full audit trail. It helps us to
manage individual workloads as well as identify
training needs for our support technicians,
which we simply couldn’t do before.”
Over 80%
of users are
using the portal,
with more than
60% claiming it
has improved
their overall
experience of
using IT.
,,
Ginsters
About Us
Established in 1994, Sunrise provides
applications which underpin business
processes across its customers’
organisations. A privately held, UK
based company, Sunrise has a highly
successful track record in IT service
management, customer service
management and business process
management with fully configured
applications designed around best
practice guidelines.
Available as either on-premise or Software
as a Service (SaaS) Sostenuto, Sunrise’s
flagship product is totally web-based which
harnesses modern technology with inbuilt
resilience. Sostenuto is a comprehensive
software tool which offers a high degreeof
flexibility, allowing organisations to change
or introduce new processes through simple
configuration.
Sunrise Headquarters
50 Barwell Business Park
Leatherhead Road, Chessington
Surrey KT9 2NY, United Kingdom
T +44 (0) 20 8391 9000
F +44 (0) 20 8391 0404
[email protected]
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www.sunrisesoftware.co.uk