Learn why replacing its service desk has enabled BBC Worldwide to see the future of support.

The BBC offers radio, television and online broadcasting to more than 200 countries worldwide and is available to almost 300 million households. BBC Worldwide is the commercial arm of the BBC, offering a range of media business across the world.

As the head of service management at BBC Worldwide, Andrew Hutchinson is responsible for the provision of effective and efficient IT service desk operations. A staff survey of their existing IT service desk provider highlighted major dissatisfaction. They were using a system that was restrictive and hadn’t grown with the requirements of the company. This resulted in Hutchinson seeking a new tool that would not only satisfy the needs of his staff, but would also deliver complete business process management functionality.

ICCM Professional Services was flagged to Hutchinson by a colleague, Emerson Freedman, service manager for BBC Worldwide, who had previously used ICCM’s e-Service Desk (e-SD). After reviewing several providers along with ICCM’s e-SD, Hutchinson decided that e-SD was the right solution for the task.e-SD copes with everything we aspire to do. With the foundation in place we were able to build different processes around our needs allowing us to leverage it in every aspect of our business, said Hutchinson.

By utilising e-SD’s processes, Hutchinson has made significant impact towards making the company’s whole operation run more efficiently. Less disruption to IT means employees in all departments operate with minimised distraction consequently increasing the whole organisations productivity and return on investment. Hutchinson is also able to utilise the self-audit facility where end users can verify the assets they hold and update any discrepancies, resulting in dramatic cost saving as the need for physical audits are reduced. This mechanism supports cross charging and ensures that the compliance and governance obligations are met.

Timing of the implementation of e-SD couldn’t have been better as Hutchinson was facing an internal audit. With thousands of incident calls per month, e-SD has enabled Hutchinson to consolidate all data on the demands that the business made on IT. Additionally, Hutchinson is responsible for IT service operations for all their worldwide offices. e-SD is currently being rolled-out to all their locations. “Being web-based has made the introduction of e-SD to our other locations very streamlined. Having the same service desk in our main hubs, London, New York and Sydney has also facilitated 24 hours IT support. This has allowed me to align processes globally,” insists Hutchinson.

Perhaps the most conclusive sign of improvement has been from Hutchinson’s own people. “I’ve never needed convincing about the quality and flexibility of e-SD. It’s 2000 times better than our old system,” comments Tony Knight, application support, BBC Worldwide.
The final word goes to Andrew Hutchinson. “IT problems in this business can be catastrophic. With e-SD we can identify single points of failure and instigate corrective management. e-SD also helps us identify IT problems before they happen allowing us to act proactively not reactively.”