The Salvation Army selects Polymorph's service desk product

The Salvation Army, one of the largest and most diverse providers of social services in the UK and Ireland after the Government, has selected a new helpdesk solution from Polym orph – one of the UK’s fastest growing IT services companies – to manage the organisation’s International IT helpdesk calls. The solution, HelpDeskPro, eliminates multiple Lotus Notes call tracking systems to provide the Salvation Army with a unified repository for call data. For the first time, the organisation’s IT staff can now log, action and resolve incidents from across five international zones in under a minute – compared with up to four minutes with the previous system – via a Blackberry device.

The Salvation Army’s previous system was based on a number of different Lotus Notes and Excel spreadsheet applications, which were cumbersome and expensive. After investigating a number of Lotus Notes specialist and non-Lotus Notes suppliers, it chose Polymorph’s HelpDeskPro for its fully integrated service desk software and its comprehensive management reporting capability that analyses and processes data very quickly and effectively.

“From seeing what Polymorph’s HelpDeskPro solution could offer at the 2007 Service Desk & IT Support show, we knew we were on to a winner,” commented Mark Calleran, Chief Information Officer at the Salvation Army International Headquarters. “We were very impressed with the breadth of functionality Polymorph’s HelpDeskPro was able to offer in a simple and easy-to-use application. As we handle complex IT calls, ranging from hardware and software queries to support requests, we needed a solution that would help us not only gain control over these increasingly complex environments, but also allow both our experienced, on-site and roaming IT staff to deal with such requests more efficiently.”

“Once the system’s template was completed, things moved very fast!” Mark continued. “We were fully up and running on HelpDeskPro in just two days. Training only took a couple of weeks to carry out so there were no time lags between us implementing the system and us going live. Polymorph’s support professionals were also able to offer us many additional capabilities that we have incorporated into the solution. This added flexibility has proven really valuable to us to provide faster and more efficient call resolutions.”

HelpDeskPro seamlessly integrates with the Salvation Army’s existing IT infrastructure. Its fully integrated service desk software has enabled the Salvation Army to collate all necessary data from the very first interaction. The system provides automatic notifications of nearing warranty expiration dates, giving time to IT staff to action such requests. Staff can provide detailed incident reports – sorted by zone, country or call priority for example – but also extract information by department, expert or status much easier than its previous systems that relied on excel spreadsheets and manual input.

“These are exciting times to be working with the Salvation Army,” commented Steve Harris, Managing Director of Polymorph. “Having been chosen after a comprehensive selection process – and standing out from our competition – is a great endorsement of the skills, quality and capability Polymorph has to offer and we look forward to building on this international project.”