Wolters Kluwer Health Taps Alloy for IT Service Solution

International Publishing Company Provides Seamless IT Service and Support to Employees in Three Different Countries with Alloy Navigator

Wolters Kluwer Health, a division of Wolters Kluwer, is a provider of information for health professionals, students, allied health providers and the pharmaceutical industry. Headquartered in the United States, Wolters Kluwer Health maintains operations across Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific.

The Challenge

As an international company with global operations, Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand relies on its service desk platforms in each country to support multiple users throughout its various locations 24/7. In 2005, the Auckland service desk, which supports the Auckland, Japan and Australia offices, realized they had outgrown their Track-It! service desk solution. The product offered limited scalability for a rapidly growing company.

“With Track-It! there were too many manual processes when creating tickets for users over the phone,” explained Brian Leybourne, Operations Engineer at the Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand site. “Even after being created, tickets would simply sit in a queue for our technicians to randomly select. There were no alerts, notifications or escalation capabilities that would help resolve these tickets in a timely fashion. The bottom line — we needed a system that would grow with us, rather than a product we would outgrow.”

The Solution

In early 2005, Mr. Leybourne and the local IT team evaluated a number of solutions in an effort to find the best product that could support its help desk operations. After battle-testing these solutions, the company selected Alloy Navigator from Alloy Software — a leading provider of service and asset management software solutions.

“Most of the solutions we reviewed were very costly,” explained Mr. Leybourne. “In terms of pricing, Alloy Navigator offered the best value and richest functionality.  With a feature set comparable — if not more expansive — than its competitors, choosing this product was a no-brainer.”

According to Mr. Leybourne, Alloy Navigator was extremely simple to install and fully deployed within weeks. The product is currently running on a SQL 2000 database server with IIS installed for the Web portals. End users can create help desk tickets using the Self-Service Web portal via Internet Explorer 6 on XP clients, while technicians can access the Alloy Navigator on the main desktop application or over the Internet.

At Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand, Alloy Navigator is utilized for a variety of business processes. More than 200 users access the system from the company’s Auckland, New Zealand location, and 50 additional users from offices in Japan and Australia. Primarily, Alloy Navigator is being used as the company’s incident tracking system. Employees at the Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand, Japan and Australia locations use the web portal or e-mail to log a ticket. This ticket is then automatically assigned to a technician based on a category. The technician then takes ownership of the ticket and maintains responsibility for it until the issue is resolved.

“We support more than 250 staff members located in New Zealand, Japan and Australia, all from our Auckland site,” explained Mr. Leybourne. “Alloy Navigator allows us to support these 250 staff from one centralized location. We manage all aspects of IT support from help desk to level three issues, equipment rollout/maintenance, server support and much more.”

In addition to its primary use, Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand has customized the solution to meet the needs of its growing business in New Zealand, Australia and Japan. According to Mr. Leybourne, the company prepared more than 200 business logic rules in addition to drafting supporting documentation and SOP guidelines for staff and IT. For example, Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand customized the Alloy Navigator system so that all users are required to enter certain information (depending on the type of support that is being requested) each time a new ticket is opened. Other customizations and workflows include, automatic routing of tickets; e-mail alerts and notifications; requirement to enter times and activity details in order to have the full history of a support request; and much more.

“Based on our customizations of Alloy Navigator, the system is now designed to build a rule to cover just about any imaginable circumstance,” said Mr. Leybourne.

Alloy Navigator is also used to track all IT equipment located within each office around the world. In addition, a Purchase Order system manages all IT purchasing, and a Library function tracks all loaned equipment such as laptops and digital cameras.

The Results

According to Mr. Leybourne, Alloy Navigator has enabled Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand to streamline its IT help desk operations across three locations — a feat that was not achievable with its previous solution. The major benefit has been giving users the self-service capability of logging tickets themselves, allowing the entire organization to save time and money, and focus on its core business of publishing.

Simply put, Alloy Navigator is a comprehensive, feature-rich product that enables us to support a number of users across multiple locations.

Brian Leybourne
Operations Engineer
Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand

“Users are extremely happy with Alloy Navigator since they can log tickets, go back and view the complete history of a certain ticket, and guide an issue to resolution,” explained Mr. Leybourne. “Alloy Navigator also provides a powerful reporting system that allows Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand to monitor which users are logging tickets, specific reasons for them, and trend analysis of common issues.”

More than 350 tickets are entered in the Alloy Navigator system and resolved each month. With the latest version of Alloy Navigator, Wolters Kluwer Health New Zealand can now set specific business rules to ensure that the internal help desk operations run smoother.  These rules trigger e-mail notifications, user prompts, and auto-populated fields for more efficient and rapid resolutions of support requests.

Mr. Leybourne and his team have also found the support team at Alloy Software to be very helpful. “I have found the level of support and knowledge of their own product to be excellent,” he added. “They have been both patient and professional in answering a range of questions — from the most complex head-scratchers to the rather simple ones that I could have solved myself. Regardless, the support team has been a value-added benefit to a great product.”

“Simply put, Alloy Navigator is a comprehensive, feature-rich product that enables us to support a number of users across multiple locations,” explained Mr. Leybourne. “The product delivers on its promises, comes at a highly affordable price point, and has the backing of an excellent support team.”

Published Originally in Interactive Intelligence by TMCnet News.

University of Pittsburgh Selects Alloy Software to Automate IT Support

University Cites Alloy Navigator’s Performance, Ease-of-Use and Affordable Cost of Ownership as Top Reasons for Selecting the Award-Winning Product

Nutley, NJ – February 25, 2008 – Alloy Software, Inc., a leading provider of service and asset management software solutions, today announced that the University of Pittsburgh has selected Alloy Navigator to manage IT support across multiple departments. Through its Financial Information Systems (FIS) department, the University of Pittsburgh provides technical support and delivery to the business and financial areas of the University. FIS handles approximately 500 support requests per month, including any issues related to help desk, desktop and mobile computing, network services and application development.

As Alloy Software’s flagship product, Alloy Navigator provides a centralized service desk platform to proactively administer all aspects of IT service management. It offers a powerful suite of tools to standardize, simplify, and streamline IT operations, and improve service delivery, including self-service. Leveraging industry best practices, Alloy Navigator also enables organizations to automate incident, problem, change, configuration, and service management.

The University of Pittsburgh began their search for a new service desk solution when its support process began to mature, and the FIS team was limited by the information that could be stored on their previous, homegrown system. They sought a product that was easy-to-use, one that adhered to ITIL standards, and one that was easily customizable within its IT environment. The University of Pittsburgh selected Alloy Navigator in 2006.

“Other solutions that we evaluated were either too expensive or inflexible to suit our needs,” explained John Duska, Director of Technical Services and Information Security Officer for the FIS department at the University of Pittsburgh. “Alloy Navigator gave us the ability to combine all of our service and support processes in one system with a common database. The capability to easily link incidents, problems, changes, and configuration items is a key advantage of Alloy Navigator.”

For the FIS department at the University of Pittsburgh, Alloy Navigator has evolved into its central management system for all service and support needs. The department utilizes Alloy Navigator as its help desk system, computer and network inventory system, change management database, software licensing system, internal and external knowledge-base and self-service portal, as well as its main SLA (Service Level Agreement) compliance and reporting tool.

“Since deploying Alloy Navigator, the most valuable benefit of the product is having the ability to centralize all service and support processes into one database,” said Mr. Duska. “By combining incident, problem, change and configuration data, we can now manage our support operations much more efficiently. In implementing Alloy Navigator, we were also able to eliminate our proprietary systems that handled these processes individually and were becoming too costly to maintain.”

“The FIS department at The University of Pittsburgh represents a typical Alloy Software customer in the sense that they can use the Alloy Navigator product to handle many different business processes,” said Johnny Martinez, Senior Implementation Specialist at Alloy Software. “The product provides the depth to handle a variety of business needs, at a very affordable price and with an easy- to-use system. The customization capabilities also allow customers to tailor the product to their exact desire.”

About the University of Pittsburgh and Financial Information Systems

Founded in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh is a leader in education, a pioneer in research, and a partner in regional development. Through its Financial Information Systems (FIS) department, the University of Pittsburgh provides technical support and delivery to the business and financial areas of the University. With 27 employees, FIS’s technical staff provides innovative solutions through the strategic use of people, processes and technology for business advancement and cost savings. To support the University’s mission of teaching, research and service, FIS is responsible for providing resources to manage projects, design processes, develop IT standards, implement and maintain systems, protect assets, secure information, analyze data, establish audit controls, and implement policies.

About Alloy Software

Established in 2002, Alloy Software is a leading provider of service management, asset management, and network management software solutions that help organizations of all sizes automate IT operations. The company’s flagship solution, Alloy Navigator, is a comprehensive IT service management solution based on industry principles. It includes a centralized service desk environment with integrated asset management, configuration management, and change management tools. Used worldwide, Alloy Navigator helps service and support organizations optimize IT resources, improve productivity and financial processes, ensure software license compliance and reduce costs. For more information contact Alloy Software at (973) 661-9700 or visit www.alloysoftware.com.

Alloy Software Strengthens Position as a Leading Provider of IT Service and Asset Management Solutions

Growth Stimulated by Increased Demand for Alloy Navigator Product, New Client Engagements, and Global Channel Expansion

Nutley, NJ – January 15, 2008 – Alloy Software, Inc., a leading provider of service and asset management software solutions, today announced that it achieved strong overall corporate growth in 2007. The company saw a double-digit percentage growth in revenue during the 12-month period ending in December 2007. Key drivers for this growth included an increase in demand for the company’s flagship Alloy Navigator product, a range of new client engagements, and an increase in worldwide presence via Alloy’s reseller program.

Alloy Software’s growth reflects Alloy Navigator’s ability to provide customers with a centralized service desk platform to proactively administer all aspects of IT service management. In 2007, Alloy extended its offering with new product features, new capabilities, expanded integrations and an improved support portal. With the release of Alloy Navigator 5.3 in June, Alloy introduced new features such as improved Web performance using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), canned reports, enterprise licensing, improved security, improved support for drag-and-drop operations, more detailed e-mail notifications, and various usability improvements.

Other key drivers for Alloy Software’s 2007 growth included continued business with existing customers and increased customer adoption of Alloy Navigator across a variety of industries and vertical markets such as education, healthcare and manufacturing. New customers in 2007 included University of Central Florida, Makita USA, Inc., United Capital Markets, Inc., University of Pittsburgh – Drug Discovery Institute, Transcontinental Inc., Tower Bank, Atrium Staffing, OfficeCare LLC, EMCON Technologies, Waterloo Public Library, Innovation Place, Ossur, and Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts.

“In 2007, Alloy Software witnessed extraordinary growth both internally – with a new office move and an expanded support staff – and externally through our increased client engagements,” said Vladimir Vinogradsky, President and CEO at Alloy Software. “It was a record-breaking year and we are pleased to see such strong demand in the market for our products and services. We will continue to provide top notch support that our customers have come to expect, as they are the primary reason for our company’s success.”

In addition to new client engagements and the release of Alloy Navigator 5.2 and 5.3, 2007 was a year marked with industry accolades, awards and recognition for Alloy Software. In October, Alloy was ranked on the 25th Annual Software 500 list, which recognizes the world’s foremost software and service providers. Two months later, in December, Alloy Software was presented with a 2007 Product of the Year Award from Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine. The award recognizes organizations for outstanding innovation, and honors them for their commitment to quality and excellence.

In 2007, Alloy Software witnessed more extensive multi-site implementations for its products within small and medium-sized businesses, including some of the most recognizable brand names in North America. Increased adoption of Alloy Navigator within key vertical markets also contributed to the company’s growth. In addition, Alloy’s presence across the globe is even greater as the company continued to strengthen its reseller program in 2007. Alloy products are distributed throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

“Based on our 2007 growth, we are extremely excited to see how this year develops for our company,” said Paul Ille, Director of Technical Services at Alloy Software. “We have a number of unique plans in the pipeline for 2008, and we believe that it will be a record year once again.”

Alloy Software 2007 Highlights:

  • Alloy Navigator 5.2 release (February)
  • Alloy Navigator 5.3 release (June)
  • Enterprise Licensing Structure released (June)
  • Named to Software 500 list from Software Magazine (October)
  • Won Product of the Year Award from Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine (December)

About Alloy Software

Established in 2002, Alloy Software is a leading provider of service management, asset management, and network management software solutions that help organizations of all sizes automate IT operations. The company’s flagship solution, Alloy Navigator, is a comprehensive IT service management solution based on industry principles. It includes a centralized service desk environment with integrated asset management, configuration management, and change management tools. Used worldwide, Alloy Navigator helps service and support organizations optimize IT resources, improve productivity and financial processes, ensure software license compliance and reduce costs. For more information contact Alloy Software at (973) 661-9700 or www.alloysoftware.com.

Alloy Software Receives 2007 Product of the Year Award from Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine

Alloy Navigator Honored for Outstanding Innovation in 10th Annual Product of the Year Awards

Nutley, NJ – December 4, 2007- – Alloy Software, Inc., a leading provider of service and asset management software solutions, today announced that its flagship Alloy Navigator solution has received a 2007 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC) Customer Interaction Solutions magazine (www.cismag.com), the leading publication covering CRM, call centers and teleservices since 1982.

Alloy Navigator provides a centralized service desk platform to proactively administer all aspects of IT service management. It offers a powerful suite of tools to standardize, simplify, and streamline IT operations, and improve service delivery, including self-service. Leveraging industry best practices, Alloy Navigator enables organizations to automate incident, problem, change, configuration, and service management.

“We are extremely honored to have our Alloy Navigator solution receive a product of the year award from such a prestigious magazine,” said Robert Josefs, Manager of Marketing and Sales at Alloy Software. “We believe our service desk solution is one of the best available for small and medium-size businesses around the world. Receiving this recognition offers validation to the success and growth of our flagship product.”

“Alloy Software has proven they are committed to quality and excellence in solutions that benefit the contact center experience as well as ROI for the companies that use them,” said Nadji Tehrani, Executive Group Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Customer Interaction Solutions. “I am pleased to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from Alloy Software in the future. For 10 years, Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has been recognizing companies that have demonstrated excellence in technological advancement and application refinements.”

The 10th Annual Product of the Year Award winners will be featured in the January 2008 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.

For more information about the Customer Interaction Solutions’ 2007 Product of the Year Awards, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

About Customer Interaction Solutions

Since 1982, Customer Interaction Solutions (CIS) magazine has been the voice of the call/contact center, CRM and teleservices industries. CIS magazine has helped the industry germinate, grow, mature and prosper, and has served as the leading publication in helping these industries that have had such a positive impact on the world economy to continue to thrive. Through a combination of outstanding and cutting-edge original editorial, industry voices, in-depth lab reviews and the recognition of the innovative leaders in management and technology through our highly valued awards, Customer Interaction Solutions strives to continue to be the publication that holds the quality bar high for the industry. Please visit www.cismag.com.

About TMC

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications, and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC’s Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 6,000 most visited Web sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves as many as three million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, and Call Center 2.0 Conference and Green Technology World Conference. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet). For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

About Alloy Software

Established in 2002, Alloy Software is a leading provider of service management, asset management, and network management software solutions that help organizations of all sizes automate IT operations. The company’s flagship solution, Alloy Navigator, is a comprehensive IT service management solution based on industry principles. It includes a centralized service desk environment with integrated asset management, configuration management, and change management tools. Used worldwide, Alloy Navigator helps service and support organizations optimize IT resources, improve productivity and financial processes, ensure software license compliance and reduce costs. For more information contact Alloy Software at (973) 661-9700 or www.alloysoftware.com.

Alloy Navigator Is Makita’s Answer

Help Desk Software is Extensible and Helps Regional Offices

In the enterprise, help is always a phone call away. IT staff have the most robust tools and phone system and can usually track support calls effortlessly. In smaller companies, those luxuries often do not exist. For Makita USA (www.makitatools.com), a pro power tools company, the problem was not necessarily size; the global company employs more than 9,000 people worldwide. The problem was that the organizational structure with many regional offices across the United States did not lend itself to a central help center.

“I have been with Makita just over six months, and when I came onboard, there was no help desk software,” says Alex Oliva, IT Director for Makita USA. “Users would just call a central phone number, and there were two help desk personnel who could track calls on a notepad and Excel spreadsheets. Now we have an optimal help desk system; most problems are solved in the same day or within 24 hours.”

Makita chose Alloy Navigator, an integrated ITSM and ITAM solution,  partly because of the easy user interface, partly because the support agent who helped the company with presales calls was a good example of expert-level phone support, and partly because it is extensible with other modules like Network Inventory and Knowledge Base and custom development, explains Oliva.

“I was doing research on help desk systems and came across Alloy Software,” says Oliva. “I was just about to choose another package and decided to set up a demo. The customer service I received during the demo stages and the ease of install were major factors in solidifying my decision. We were looking for a package that did not force you to use one interface and is customizable. No one package can meet all your needs, so we wanted to make sure we could add modules and custom development.” Alloy Software uses an open interface that can be customized and can be extended with the use of additional databases.

Pricing Flexibility, Excellent Presales Support

Another important criterion for Oliva has to do with pricing structures. Most help desk systems charge for each user who accesses a tracking portal, but Alloy provided a corporate pricing plan. For Oliva, it was important that the help desk support regional offices that are scattered throughout the country without charging each office for access to the help desk system. “Alloy is priced for customers like me who have more people outside the building than inside,” he says.

Oliva explains more about how the presales process helped him make the decision to choose Alloy: The agent he spoke to was knowledgeable and friendly. Oliva asked questions about whether the help desk could tie into an existing Access database, and the agent knew the answer. For other support issues, the agent operated a demo remotely, set up a Webinar to show how the software worked, and generally showed good customer service, an example that Oliva wanted to follow.

I just can’t give it enough praise. Customer service is an art form of sorts, and Alloy knows the meaning of that.

Alex Olivia
IT Director
Makita USA

In terms of the actual installation, Oliva says he had no problems. There was a minor glitch involving a database that was not compatible, but he says it was an internal issue. Even then, he says Alloy was able to work with him on the phone to troubleshoot the problem and find a solution. One important point Oliva makes has to do with the customer service: He was never put on hold for long periods, and the agent did not have to call back repeatedly with suggestions. Oliva and the agent troubleshot over the phone, which revealed to Oliva that Alloy Software knows customer service and troubleshooting.

After the initial installation, Oliva wanted to make sure there was a single sign-on for regional offices. He was able to configure the software to work with Active Directory. In fact, once a user is authenticated in Windows, he says, there is no need to log in to the help desk tracking software because of the link between the two authentications. “Our users didn’t have to remember a different username and password for the new help desk system, which just made the process easier,” he notes.

The installation and training time took about two weeks, says Oliva. There were no major issues with integration into existing systems in the data center, end-user support with the Web portal, or any issues with training support personnel on how to use it. “They [Makita’s users] took to it like fish to water,” he says. “The Web portal is so simple. Our users understood how it worked right away. I don’t recall getting any calls from users learning the portal.”

Process Integration

Oliva notes that Makita did not have any other technical challenges, but it did need to work through some issues in business continuity. It had to integrate business rules into the system where an IT service desk  request involving new expenditures had to be approved by two managers. For example, if an end user requested a laptop replacement, a senior manager and a finance officer might need to approve it, and there are scenarios where an executive must make the final approval.

We now take the help desk for granted as part of our daily lives.

Alex Oliva
IT Director
Makita USA

Oliva did not want to burden executives who needed to approve these requests by having them log in to and learn the help desk software, so Makita and Alloy built a separate Web portal that interfaces with Alloy and allows the executives to approve or deny a request. The approval portal even works with the executives’ email as a link that they can click to access the portal. “That process took an extra week and was the biggest hurdle we had,” Oliva says.

When asked about whether he would change the process of installing Alloy Navigator, Olivia says he couldn’t imagine changing anything. He says it was impeccable timing because Makita chose the help desk software and was able to install it just a few weeks before a major ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) rollout, one of the biggest rollouts in the company’s history.

“It was good timing when we implemented it, and it was just a coincidence, but with any major software rollout there will be lots of questions,” Oliva says. “Alloy provides a beautiful interface for people to use and communicate over help desk issues.”

Future Plans

Oliva says the Navigator help desk software has been an easy rollout, and he now plans to start thinking about a “phase two” where he installs Alloy’s separate auditing package that he purchased along with the help desk system. He wanted to make sure users were comfortable with the new help desk system first.

“We now take the help desk for granted as part of our daily lives,” he says. “I just can’t give it enough praise. Customer service is an art form of sorts, and Alloy knows the meaning of that.”