About Aeroflex

Aeroflex Incorporated is a multi-faceted high technology company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets a diverse range of microelectronic and test and measurement products. Recognized for its space qualified and radiation hardened products used in satellite communications, the products support communication systems, networks and automatic test systems.

Challenge

Handling around 300 requests a week Aeroflex used multiple help desk solutions performing basic ticketing functions. Support was more reactive, rather than proactive, and the same problems were being solved again and again. Aeroflex needed a system that could reduce the level of effort required to resolve problems, leverage knowledge management and provide context of the call based on the underlying service.

Solution

“As a rapidly growing company we needed an enterprise solution that would scale well and service our needs across the entire organization from any browser”, said Mark Rodee, IT Manager at Aeroflex. “The total cost of ownership was an important factor, with a simple upgrade system, no full time administrator and support all ITIL best practices.”

“LiveTime provided a private cloud appliance that was up and running in less than 30 mins. After setting up a service catalog for our customers in LiveTime’s CMDB we were able to take requests in no time. We have been able to leverage the system beyond Incident Management and now use Change Management to help complete the lifecycle of the request when changes need to be made on the underlying infrastructure or service.”

“The main improvements have been to the service we have been able to provide and information we’ve been able to capture. Instead of flying blind on what issues are being raised, we can now effectively run our change management and desk side support operations through one system.”

“We ended up spending quite a bit more on licenses over a tradtional ticketing solution, but the quality of the product is much, much higher and provides many more features than grouplink.”

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.

The IT support team of HWL provide service to more than 200 employees, over four separate geographical locations. The IT department is centralized in Melbourne and prior to implementing a support application, incidents were received and managed via email. Due to the increase in staff size and office locations, it was decided that a more structured approach was needed to process support requests.

Aaron Elliott, HWL IT Manager, invested in LiveTime Service Management because it was easy to use for customers and support staff. The total cost of ownership made LiveTime an attractive option, especially since it included Service Level Management.

“The installation process was very simple with excellent support,” said Aaron. HWL IT issues are now logged directly via the LiveTime Customer Portal, which allows employees to monitor and update incident information.

LiveTime has allowed the HWL IT department to gain a clear understanding of the IT service desk usage patterns by employees, departments and office locations. “LiveTime Reports have provided great insight into how often employees call IT and what is required,” said Aaron, “it has also assisted in gauging training requirements.”

HWL’s implementation of LiveTime has enabled the IT department to provide a high quality support service to all employees. Incident activity audit trails allow IT to properly track tasks in the system, guaranteeing that service levels are maintained. This has ensured that the business has grown successfully, without increasing support staff overheads.

Located over multiple, geographically dispersed data centers, the Chockstone technicians are primarily responsible for the deployment of the gift and loyalty programs on a client’s existing Point of Sale (POS) platform. This role encompasses software and hardware upgrades or replacements, network troubleshooting and reporting on customer transaction activity and credit/debit settlements.

As part of its business model, Chockstone outsourced its POS support to a third-party provider who was not entirely familiar with the products, technology or field deployment requirements. Despite recurrent product training for the external support provider, the fundamental misunderstandings of product knowledge continued. This resulted in clients losing business confidence, as Chockstone were being held accountable for support issues that were not directly related to its products.

To better service its clients and improve business confidence, Chockstone decided to move the support service in-house. LiveTime Service Manager was selected as the support solution based on its total cost of ownership (TCO), customizable user interface and ease of use.

“Our initial configuration and deployment went very smoothly,” reported Chris Williams, Chockstone Call Center Supervisor, “and subsequent upgrades had no impact on providing support to clients.” Chockstone were most impressed by the service offered by LiveTime, “Their support has been outstanding and the LiveTime staff have been extremely responsive,” said Chris.

In-house support has allowed Chockstone to gain control over the support provided to the 400 plus monthly call load. “LiveTime gave us insight into field issues with our POS deployments,” noted Chris Williams. “Since we’ve rolled out our service desk, we’ve trained our support staff to write concise and informative incident notes for all our interactions with merchants,” Chris said.

Access to full audit trails and reports, such as Call Volume, Summary of Incidents by Problem Type/Technician, Cost by Team and monthly Billable Minutes by Company has enhanced business-to-business confidence. “Having the ability to search and pull the case history for a particular merchant has proven invaluable,” commented Chris, “we’ve gained a great deal of credibility with our clients when resolving technical issues and billing disputes.”

Newport Beach, CA – November 26, 2007 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of ITIL certified Web 2.0 Service Management, Help Desk and Customer Support Software, today announced the appointment of H@rlock Srl as a reseller for the Italian market. Milan-based H@rlock is a leading supplier of compliance solutions that also provides ITIL training and consultancy services. Giving significant focus to the pharmaceuticals industry, H@rlock will resell LiveTime Service Manager and LiveTime Help Desk throughout Italy.

“We look forward to introducing LiveTime’s products to our customers,” said Huub Commandeur, H@rlock’s Business Development Director. “LiveTime Service Manager’s ease of use and low TCO are unusual amongst enterprise-level software products and I’m sure these benefits will be of considerable interest to the markets we serve, especially to the many Italian SME-sized organizations that need to address the same enterprise IT challenges, but with smaller budgets. With LiveTime’s ITIL-Based solutions we can offer exactly this!”.

“Italy’s a challenging market where it’s essential to make the right partnerships. H@rlock’s business fits very well with ours and I look forward to a long and fruitful partnership.” commented Mike Fellows, Managing Director of LiveTime’s EMEA operations.

About H@rlock Srl

Founded in 2001, H@rlock is a leading supplier of compliance solutions in Italy serving a range of industry sectors including pharmaceutical, finance, manufacturing and food retailing. H@rlock solutions address corporate data & information flows, document management and process & compliance management to allow companies to gain full electronic control over their business processes and to monitor compliance with FDA, Sarbanes Oxley, SEC, Privacy Laws, GxP and other regulations.

H@rlock’s Compliance Suite is a combination of Software Applications and Training & Consulting Services built upon a solid foundation of implemented ITIL-based IT Service Management processes & services. H@rlock is also a long-term provider of ITIL-Based education & implementation services supported by a suite of leading-edge IT Service Management Tools, helping companies to manage their IT in a structured way and to obtain ISO-20000 certification. For more information visit www.harlock.biz.

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 – April 11, 2006 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of J2EE based Service Management software announced today that it has attained Principal Partner status in the Sun™ Partner Advantage Program, for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). LiveTime Software qualified for this level by meeting Sun’s stringent criteria for excellence as a supplier of Service Management solutions, and by committing to tight technical alignment with Sun.

By achieving Principal Partner status, LiveTime software joins a distinguished list of ISVs that are developing optimized applications for the Sun platform. The benefits to Sun customers include access to a broader range of pre-tested, optimized solutions; investment protection and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) through collaborative engineering between Sun and its partners. It also offers Sun customers a higher level of predictability and support as Sun rolls out its latest technologies and software upgrades.

Specifically, LiveTime Software has developed its LiveTime Service Management solutions to run seamlessly on the Solaris™ 10 Operating System (OS). LiveTime delivers open standards service management software that supports Configuration, Incident, Problem, Change and Service Level Management. Its processes support IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Sarbanes-Oxley best practices, are 100% web based and include solutions for Help Desk, Support Desk and Service Desk organizations.

“Sun continues to be one of the leading innovators in our industry and the platform of choice for many of our top tier customers,” said George Vossos, CTO, LiveTime Software. “Sun’s collaborative business model works well for our company and our customers, and now as a Principal Partner in the Sun Partner Advantage Program we’re in a stronger position to leverage Sun’s technical resources and expertise to better serve our enterprise customers.”

“We congratulate LiveTime software for attaining Principal Partner status and welcome them to this very exclusive level of the Sun Partner Advantage Program and we greatly appreciate their commitment to the Solaris 10 OS on x64 platforms,” said Stephen Borcich, vice president of Partner Marketing at Sun. “Innovation is a team sport, and we look forward to collaborating with LiveTime across every phase of the application lifecycle to optimize their products for the Sun platform.”

About the Sun Partner Advantage Program

Introduced in September, 2005, the Sun™ Partner Advantage Program, for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), is designed to make it easier for ISVs to get the resources they need to go to market faster on the Solaris 10 OS, link with Sun’s Marketing, extend their sales reach, harness the expertise and connections of Sun’s partner ecosystem, and help grow their business. The Program helps create an increased level of collaboration among Sun and its ecosystem of technology partners. By participating in the Sun Partner Advantage Program, ISVs receive simplified, programmatic, Web-based access to the resources they need to help them succeed in each stage of the application life cycle: design, development, deployment, and operation. For complete details about the individual offerings that are available, go to http://www.sun.com/partners/isv.

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.