Client in focus: Vicky Piper, Isis Telecom

Isis Telecom, based in London, advises companies on choosing the best telecom solution to suit their needs. Vicky Piper has been working at Isis Telecom for six years. We got in touch with Vicky to find out more about how TOPdesk operates in a telecommunications environment.

How would you describe your job?

I’m an engineer – a systems engineer. I do everything from, first and second line support - well it’s a small company, so basic help desk stuff - to servers and networks, that sort of thing. Everyone in the team helps out with everything, even the IT director sometimes works at the help desk if need be.

Which version of TOPdesk do you use? And which modules do you use?

We’re using Enterprise. We have the Change, Incident and Configuration management modules and the Knowledge base. A couple of other teams are using the Self Service Desk.

When did you begin using TOPdesk?

Officially in August last year. It was all set up in July, that’s when Douglas and Benton (TOPdesk consultants) came along, but we actually started using it in August. Before that we had an in-house built application, which ran on a little Access database. It was alright, but you couldn’t do much apart from Configuration management and Incident management, so it wasn’t good for reporting.

How many callers does your organisation have and how big is the service desk?

Around 75 or 80 work for the company. At the service desk we’ve got four, plus five developers who also use TOPdesk, so about nine in total.

For what purpose was TOPdesk installed in your organisation?

We wanted to go down the ITIL route. Most applications are based on ITIL - we chose TOPdesk because it ticked all the boxes really. The old system we used had no Knowledge base or Change management. We quite liked TOPdesk and it was easy to use. It was also easy to install and configure. Everything is in one place now – it used to be a mess! It’s also improved communication between IT staff and customers.

What is an example of a call which occurs frequently?

Probably things like password resets or people calling up for an auto signature for when they go on holidays.

What’s the funniest or strangest call that you’ve ever had?

Someone once removed a toilet roll from the cupboard at another office once and accidentally switched off the power for the whole building! The entire Access directory went down. We had to get a couple of engineers out there to fix it overnight.

What do you like most about TOPdesk?

I really like using the selections folder to group on an object type when I run a report. I run it quite often to check how many hardware items there are and can see who’s got what. We’ve got an insurance tag on every piece of hardware. I add security numbers to each item and record it online.