With 16,000 employees, the mission of Sutherland Global Services is to outsource their client's business processes so they can focus on core competencies. Pamela Martz manages a couple of key Sutherland teams: the Global Service Desk and Network Operations Center. She's done some amazing things to streamline the process. (And we've got the Juicy details.)

About The Company

Founded over twenty years ago in 1986, Sutherland Global Services provides world-class business process outsourcing (BPO) services that enable clients to manage their customer relationships (www.suth.com).

The Challenge

• Geographically dispersed team and user base
• Needed to more accurately track software licenses
• Needed a more flexible & robust help desk tool

The Results

• Contacts per helpdesk ticket have fallen from 1.7 to 1.2
• Web tickets have increased from 300 per month to over 6,000 per month due to ease of use for endusers and ability for helpdesk technicians to more quickly close tickets
• Increased ability to maintain software compliance and save on software licensing costs by removing unnecessary software

The Participant

Pamela Martz - Manager, Global Service Desk and Network Operations Center, Sutherland Global Services

The Interview

ALTIRIS: Describe the organization of your IT department.

Pamela Martz (PM): Our IT team consists of well over 100 people, divided between the different sites globally. All of our core teams, and our core data center, are here in Rochester. We have 23 helpdesk technicians currently divided between four different countries – U.S., Mexico, Philippines, and India.

ALTIRIS: How many locations? Number of desktops? Number of servers? OS’s? Hardware brands?

PM: We currently have about 21 offices in 5 countries, with about 16,000 employees. As for hardware, we currently have a little over 10,000 desktops in the company, and over 250 servers spread out among all of the 21 sites. We have both Compaq Proliants, and Dell servers, with the majority of our servers running Windows 2000. On the desktop we’re using HP, Dell, and Gateway. We currently support the Windows XP operating system, although we also do have some installations of Windows 2000.

ALTIRIS: What has been your process in the past for tracking software licenses? What specific challenges were you experiencing?

PM: One of the biggest challenges for any company is being reported for having invalid licenses installed. We wanted to protect our company and be able to much more easily track our licenses. Prior to bringing in the Altiris solution, we were trying to track licenses on spreadsheets and using reports out of an inventory solution to see what was installed. Among the issues we were running into was that old inventory might be listed in the database, but the license might no longer be installed, while other machines didn’t have the agent installed to be able to pull the inventory information. We needed a different solution.

ALTIRIS: What vendors/solutions did you consider?

PM: We looked at license compliance solutions from LANDesk, Centennial, and Altiris.

ALTIRIS: What were the key reasons you selected Altiris?

PM: We chose to go with Altiris because we were able verify that we had the agents installed on all of the computers, look at all of the software that was installed and compare it to our purchases, and be able to report back on who was using the software packages. The majority of the competitors didn’t have the ability to show how many licenses were purchased and compare that to the number that are installed.

ALTIRIS: Describe the implementation process. How long did it take? Did you utilize Altiris Professional Services or an Altiris partner to help with the implementation or did you implement yourself?

PM: We worked with XCEND. They were here for two weeks during the initial implementation for Compliance Suite for Windows, and did all of the architecture, installed the server, and got everything installed and fine-tuned for our environment. An XCEND specialist worked with us to add approximately 10% of our PCs to the inventory, and made sure we had a good understanding of how to enter our remaining contracts ourselves. Things went very smoothly. The XCEND consultants gave us everything we needed so that we could be prepared when they got here, and went right to work. The Dell sales team that we worked with was great. They made sure we had the appropriate hardware so we were able to run everything we needed.

ALTIRIS: What was it like working with XCEND?

PM: They really seemed to know what they were doing and were very helpful. They made sure we had all of our lists upfront so everything would be ready to go when they got here. One of the challenges with our implementation of Compliance Suite for Windows was that more than half of our PCs are overseas. Trying to get on video conference to train all of the different techs was one of the bigger challenges. We were very happy with XCEND. They have done a great job of project management and follow up with us, making sure that we’re all set. We still have XCEND consultants that will answer questions for us when we need help, so they’re there. They make sure that you’re taken care of.

ALTIRIS: How long has the solution been in place?

PM: The Altiris Compliance Suite for Windows was implemented in September 2005. We implemented Helpdesk in April of 2006.

ALTIRIS: What led you to start looking at the Altiris Helpdesk solution?

PM: When XCEND was here, handling the Compliance Suite, I spoke with their consultant a little bit about our helpdesk challenges and showed him our in-house application. His comment was that everything that we wanted to do, everything we needed to do was available in Altiris. So we took a look at the Altiris Helpdesk Solution, and about 6 months later purchased it.

ALTIRIS: Why did you decide to implement Altiris Helpdesk solution?

PM: We moved to the Helpdesk Solution because we needed to track our change management much more effectively than we had been. With the different certifications that we have, we had to be able to set owners for the tickets, and yet still have them assigned out to groups. Being able to have a fully functional portal for our end users was also extremely important to us. Our previous application did not give us that functionality. Users could create tickets on the web, but they couldn’t modify them, and couldn’t always get to them to view the status. There was no knowledge base tied to it. There were just a lot of things that weren’t there. I would have to say that one of the most valuable things to us in Altiris is the My Helpdesk console which empowers our users. It definitely helps us cut down the number of contacts per ticket.

ALTIRIS: Did you work with XCEND again for the helpdesk implementation? How did things go?

PM: Yes. XCEND came in for two weeks, and we were able to get everything up and running and ready to go in that period of time. They did all of our project management, helped make sure we had all of the information organized the way we needed it done, and they worked on some of our problem areas. One of our in-house developers did the initial customization and it actually didn’t take very much time for him to be able to do that. The documentation that was there from Altiris to be able to do the customizations was very clear, and very easy to work with. In addition, the XCEND professional services consultant gave him a few tips and answered some questions. By the time XCEND left, we were fully functional. The only thing that stopped us from actually going live at that time was being able to get everybody else trained in all of the locations. XCEND was here at the end of January 2006; however, we chose not to go live until April 2006, because I needed to bring one of our employees over from India to learn Altiris first so that he could go back and train all of our folks there while I trained everyone here.

ALTIRIS: How many tickets are you logging per month? How does this compare to the number you were handling previously?

PM: When we started, we were doing about 10,000 tickets a month. Now we’re doing almost 17,000 tickets a month and we still have the same number of helpdesk staff – we didn’t need to ramp up our staff. We’re able to handle the load with the staff that we have simply by redirecting where issues are handled, allowing the technicians to handle what they should be and letting the application to do the majority of the work. With Altiris, the features are built right in that allow you to build the rules and route tickets automatically. Without Altiris, our IT group would not have the ability to be as cost-effective as we currently are. We would still be struggling with a lot of our software purchases and tracking. And helpdesk techs would still be spending a lot of time trying to decipher all of the emails and figuring out how to contact people and getting all of the correct information into the email tickets.

ALTIRIS: Have you seen any improvement in first call resolution?

PM: First call resolution rate right now is at about 40%, and while I know that sounds low, it’s actually a very good number for us. Our helpdesk is currently covering everything for our company, so we handle the computers, network, servers, phones, dialers, facilities-related issues, scheduling issues, etc. All of it comes through us. So to be able to actually close 40% of our tickets as a first call resolution is very good for our team. In April prior to going live with Altiris, we were at about 1.7 contacts per ticket. By September we were down to 1.2, which saved us approximately 7,800 contacts per month on existing tickets, so that was huge for us. Altiris has allowed us to better utilize our helpdesk staff.

ALTIRIS: What types of issues and incidents are you using the Altiris helpdesk solution to manage?

PM: Our global service desk supports all of our internal employees with their IT service management. We’re a onestop-shop, and handle facilities-related issues in addition to IT issues. Our users can call one number and we can find out who handles their issue and route them to the appropriate group. Prior to Altiris, our helpdesk would take phone calls, emails, web tickets, and voicemails. Out of about 10,000 web tickets that were created every month, only about 300 of them were created directly by the end user through a web console or web interface. Since we moved to Altiris, a little over 6,000 out of almost 17,000 tickets created each month are actually created directly by end users through the My Helpdesk console.

ALTIRIS: What are the greatest benefits you have received from using Altiris for software compliance?

PM: The biggest benefit from using the Altiris compliance suite has been better management of our existing licenses. We’re no longer purchasing software we don’t actually need. Running a compliance report lets us know how many licenses are installed compared to the number we’ve purchased, so we instantly know whether we have 10 available licenses or need to purchase more. This allows for better management. Because our needs in IT are constantly changing, one of the things that really hooked us on Altiris was the fact that they have so many different solutions that can do pretty much anything we need, and we can plug them all into the same server and they will integrate together and work together. With a lot of other products you can create the connectors to work with the other applications, but it’s not easy. It’s not seamless, and they’re certainly not made to work together. Being able to have everything run off the same server, or even on different servers, straight out of the box, and be able to forward information back and forth and know that it’s going to work together because it’s designed to work together is a definite bonus.

ALTIRIS: How closely has the Altiris Helpdesk solution met your original expectations?

PM: All of our expectations of what the Helpdesk was going to be able to do for us have been met – in fact, they’ve been exceeded. We knew that we were going to be able to better utilize of our helpdesk techs, but Altiris Helpdesk has also allowed us to process more of the incoming tickets and utilize our staff to handle more of those first call resolutions. Our process has changed very little. The difference now is the tools we have to make it all work together the way it should. We’ve had to make a few minor changes to our process to accommodate the new tools; however, the base processes are still the same.

ALTIRIS: Did you have to do much customization to the Helpdesk solution?

PM: The Altiris application met almost 100% of our needs, right out of the box. We only had a couple of small issues that were easily resolved. We wanted to get information for our end users on all of the different types of items that they opened tickets for, which we accomplished using Altiris’ knowledge base framework, and just created knowledge base articles for those items. Because we handle issues for items other than PCs or discoverable assets, we needed to be able to route for locations that were not connected to a discoverable asset. We resolved this by adding a location field tied to the location of the person submitting the ticket, which allowed us to route the ticket to the appropriate team based on the user’s location together with the relevant category and subcategory.

ALTIRIS: What advice do you have for others facing similar challenges you have faced?

PM: For anyone who’s had similar challenges to ours, and are facing the same types of daily issues, my recommendation would be to really look at the Altiris products. They fit together so well. They make it easy to interact between them and manage everything from one place and to integrate it so that it all works together seamlessly. I don’t believe there are any other competitors who can do what Altiris can do all in one framework without having conflicts. Another thing I would recommend would be to use professional services. Don’t try to do it yourself. These products are huge. They are capable of so much. Being able to have someone come in and point you in the right direction to get everything organized so that you can get everything implemented and have a smooth rollout is extremely important.