About Philadelphia Schools

The School District of Philadelphia is the eighth largest school district in the United States and services more than 250,000 students, 30,000 staff and 350 schools. Its mission is to provide high quality education that prepares, ensures and empowers all students to achieve their full potential.

Challenge

Committed to raising student achievement levels, the District implements wide reforms and restructuring measures and this extends to the facilities and infrastructure that underpin their education programs. Being an essential element, Information Technology is expected to perform at peak availability levels to enable students and staff to achieve at their highest level.

To this end the District has over 100 technicians managing 1000 service and support calls a week. Using Remedy as their service management tool, Philadelphia Schools found it was non-intuitive with high administrative overheads, and needed extensive maintenance support on each upgrade cycle. In an effort to better invest their time and financial resources, and after extensive research, they decided to replace multiple Remedy Servers with a single instance of LiveTime’s Service Management (ITSM) solution. 

Solution

LiveTime now provides a single point of contact for all help desk enquiries and is a centralized resource for Knowledge Base solutions, empowering technicians, staff and students when experiencing IT issues. A mission critical part of the District’s infrastructure, LiveTime’s Private Cloud Appliance provides more than 99 percent uptime and facilitates the rapid resolution of incidents.

With its single click upgrade process and reduced administration requirement, LiveTime allows technical staff to focus on adding value within the IT environment, resulting in lower incident volumes and improved service management processes. In addition to cost savings made from a lower annual maintenance fee, the reduction in training requirements have further benefited the IT budget’s bottom line.

“Since using LiveTime we have experienced shorter ticket times, quicker resolution in the field and easier access for the staff via the customer portal,” said Mr Edston Detrich, Help Desk Manager, School District of Philadelphia.

Newport Beach, CA – October 30, 2006 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of ITIL Service Management, Help Desk and Customer Support Software, today announced that LiveTime Help Desk has been selected by UNIONBAY to deliver best practice service and support to its customers.

UNIONBAY is a rapidly growing apparel marketing and distribution company located in Kent, Washington. Its alternative sportswear clothing line is available at all major department stores across the United States such as Macy’s, Nordstrom, Robinsons May, Kohl’s and JC Penney. The highly motivated employees support a diverse range of customers servicing the continental United States.

UNIONBAY’s existing help desk solution consisted of a custom-built application for project management and informal incident tracking communications. In seeking a more comprehensive solution, management required detailed reporting, accountability and improved customer service. Additionally, UNIONBAY needed a system which was capable of growing with the organization rather than one which continually required replacing technology. Giving end users the ability to submit and monitor progress of all requests from any location and desktop was also essential, and something that no other vendor could provide. LiveTime was selected for its standards-based approach to customer service, utilizing ITIL best practices, and unparalleled ease of use for customers, technicians and management.

“Our users are very happy with the user interface and are now confident that their requests will be handled in a timely manner. As a manager, it is great to finally have a big picture of all our requests.” said Craig Roberts, Technical Services Supervisor at UNIONBAY.

Since the LiveTime system has been implemented “technicians have been able to better understand and identify which tasks take up the most time and to identify opportunities for improvement” said Craig.

Decision challenges included demonstrating both the need for and the ROI to non-IT management. However the compelling total cost of ownership (TCO) and unparalleled depth of features offered by LiveTime made the selection process much easier.

Newport Beach – March 8, 2005 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of J2EE based Service desk software, today announced the availability of LiveTime Help Desk version 3.5 and LiveTime Support Desk version 3.5. Driven by customer requests, this release includes more than 35 new features designed to expand the breadth of the product while simplifying the user experience. The introduction of Quick Calls and customization options, combined with strengthened support for IBM WebSphere and DB2 make this a significant release.

Quick Calls
The introduction of Quick Calls in LiveTime Help Desk will allow supervisors to setup templates for common problems and solutions. This enables cases to be logged quickly, assigned automatically, and resolved in a fraction of the time it would normally take. “The savings in time and resources are significant,” said Dr. Darren Williams, CEO of LiveTime Software, “they have a major impact on support team effectiveness and best of all, the ROI is immediate.”

Customizable
LiveTime continues to emphasize open standards and universal access with complete support for Cascading Style Sheets level 2 (CSS2) and HTML 4. This enables users to have total control over the look and feel of the product, with access to every template in the system. There are currently three levels of control available, ranging from simple branding, through the standard administration console, to page style and content using any text editor. This gives users unprecedented power normally reserved for consultants.

Performance
Performance has been another key focus in this release with support for connection pooling and primary and secondary caching architectures. “This significantly boosts performance with high concurrent access of more than 50 technicians and thousands of users,” said Dr. George Vossos, CTO of LiveTime Software. Version 3.5 also includes ‘self-healing’ and diagnosis for complete auto-recovery under high traffic conditions.

IBM WebSphere and DB2
With continued focus on vendor neutrality LiveTime now includes complete support for IBM DB2 UDB v8.2 and later running on Solaris, Linux and Windows platforms. The ability to support DB2 UDB allows an enterprise to standardize its Service Desk on the IBM technology platform. This release also includes enhanced support for IBM’s WebSphere J2EE application server.

About LiveTime Solutions
LiveTime Support Desk provides the functionality to run a highly efficient and cost-effective support operation, and LiveTime Help Desk enables delivery of quality customer service, even in the most complex IT environments. These customizable, browser-based service management solutions combine best-in-class software with core Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) best practices, the industry-standard framework for IT service delivery and support.

Both products continue to lead the industry by delivering comprehensive, vendor neutral, zero footprint, web-based functionality. As all-in-one solutions they are designed to save time and money for any organization offering either internal or external customer service.

Cheltenham, UK – October 12, 2004 - Leading web-based help desk management tool, LiveTime Help Desk, has been successfully implemented by Conwy & Denbighshire NHS Trust (C&D). According to figures published in a new case study released today, LiveTime Software’s pure internet help desk solution has provided significant return on investment over the past six months, reducing unresolved calls by 90%.

Replacing a previously outsourced service, C&D deployed LiveTime earlier this year to power its IT help desk team who are responsible for supporting over 6000 users at 60 Sites around North Wales. The task of bringing the C&D help desk in-house required support staff to learn a new product, adjust to new management, work new shift patterns – all in a new location. These major challenges made the flexibility and intuitive workflows of LiveTime crucial to the success of the project.

“On viewing LiveTime, we were immediately attracted by the product’s ease of use and reporting features,” said Anne Martin, Support Development Manager, C&D NHS Trust. “The IT team was also very impressed by the product’s efficient call logging and management, and the pure internet architecture based on standard technologies.” Ms Martin reports that since converting the help desk to LiveTime, open calls have been reduced from over 1,000 to no more than 100. C&D has also capitalised on LiveTime’s open architecture by implementing links with internal asset management and HR systems.

“With LiveTime, C&D were able to meet their most important goal of smoothly bringing the new IT help desk up to speed within three months – from initial workflow analysis, through a complete asset audit right up to decommissioning the outsourced service,” explained UK-based Mike Fellows, Vice President of European Sales for LiveTime Software. “Due to the solution’s ease-of-use and flexibility, C&D has also saved money, increased employee efficiency and improved case close rates.”

Ms Martin commented that, as a manager, she never used the old system but often uses the accessible reporting tools that are an integral part of LiveTime Help Desk. “Being able to generate my own reports quickly and easily has been a great help with managing support calls and the support team.” In reference to LiveTime’s approach to customer service and support, she emphasised that it is, “refreshing to work with a company that is listening.”

Newport Beach, CA – July 7, 2003 - LiveTime Software is now shipping version 2.0 of LiveTime Support, the company’s J2EE web-based technical support and helpdesk solution. Known for its high performance, scalability and ease of use. LiveTime Support 2.0 was successfully previewed at the Helpdesk and IT Support (HITS) industry trade show held in London, May 2003. The new version is now available at entry level pricing of $4995 (£2995). Further pricing and an online demonstration version is available at www.livetime.com.

The new features of LiveTime Support 2.0 reflect LiveTime’s commitment to providing an affordable, web-based helpdesk and support system which improves the performance of customer service operations.

“Our experience shows us that there is a significant market opportunity for moderately priced yet high quality support product that can keep up with the dynamic needs of any growing company. Technology investments are being heavily scrutinized in the current economic climate and customers need to know they are going to get a rapid ROI.” said LiveTime Software CEO, Dr. Darren Williams.

In version 2.0, LiveTime Support retains its trademark qualities of intuitive interface, rapid workflow and ease of use. Using the open standards based J2EE server architecture provides customers with zero lock-in and runs on all major platforms including Solaris, Windows, MacOS X and Linux.

Unlike many competing products, LiveTime Support offers a comprehensive range of features out-of-the-box with no hidden costs for essential functionality including reporting, service level management, knowledge management and asset management. Additionally, it supports all major databases (Oracle, Microsoft’s SQL server, MySQL, FrontBase, OpenBase, PostgreSQL) and does not penalize Enterprises with additional license fees when switching between commercial databases.

LiveTime Support 2.0 adds a powerful new escalation engine and intelligent knowledgebase searching, using “fuzzy logic” to expedite the problem resolution process. New features for LiveTime Support include enhanced reporting capabilities, PDF reporting and SMS notification, as well as the Bug Reporting Gateway and job timers.

Commenting on the positive feedback from customers and analysts, Dr Williams said, “We have been overwhelmed by the strong demand for this new approach to support and helpdesk systems. Our open standards based technology means our customers can leverage the power of J2EE and leading application servers such as BEA’s WebLogic, IBM WebSphere or open source servers such as JBOSS.”

The new features of LiveTime Support version 2.0 include:

• Intelligent knowledgebase searching, in the form of “fuzzy logic” search techniques allows users to locate relevant cases rapidly and facilitates accurate and timely problem resolution. Files saved as attachments in any of the following formats are automatically indexed and available for searching: PDF, MS Office, StarOffice, RTF and HTML.
• New cases can be automatically created with the Bug Report Gateway. Through a simple URL query system and pre-defined arguments you can create facilities in your software that use the gateway to automatically log cases in real time should your program’s own error-routing mechanisms detect any type of problem. This ensures the issue is on a path to speedy resolution.
• Integration with MS Active Directory Services (ADS) and LDAP standards allowing support staff to circumvent the login process, giving them immediate access to LiveTime Support.
• LiveTime Support’s new Escalation Engine allows system administrators and lead technicians to create multiple service layers. By acting as a sub system of the application, the escalation engine helps to prevent backlogs on the lead technicians’ desk and ensures fulfillment of service promises by automating parts of the support process and introducing configurable escalation layers. If a request has not been processed in a timely manner, it will be automatically dispatched to the next person in the management chain.
• Upgraded reporting functions allow “alerts” and notification to be routed via email and SMS services so that real-time status reports can be delivered to managers and administrators at scheduled frequencies. Reports can be customized to provide optimum presentation of information depending upon content and recipient request, making critical business information easily accessible.
• Administrators and technicians can now publish reports in PDF. Schedules can be set up to generate and distribute reports automatically to technicians, managers or relevant employees as required.
• Job timers have been included to allow accurate tracking, reporting and accounting of each case and each technician’s workload.
• Fast and easy deployment and installation. In version 2.0, installation is now even more efficient with full automation of most deployment and configuration tasks. LiveTime Support simply integrates into most commercial middleware and databases requiring minimal set-up and configuration, which significantly increases the speed of deployment, usually in only a few hours.