Flagship Group

Scaling TOPdesk from ITSM to ESM

We recently spoke to Nathan Fletcher, IT Support Manager at Flagship Group, about implementing and scaling TOPdesk across the organisation. Starting with our out-of-the-box ITSM solution, Flagship then extended their use of TOPdesk to become an ESM solution.

Why did you choose TOPdesk?

“It started at SITS (The Service Desk & IT Support Show) where we had a demo on the TOPdesk stand and it instantly caught my eye. The look of the self-service portal was clear, clean and simple, which is what we were looking for, so I was drawn to it straight away,” says Nathan.

“We went out to tender in 2019/2020 and invited TOPdesk to bid. TOPdesk ticked all the boxes in the technical specification in the tender, so we had another demo and still thought it was better than the other bids. Some independent end users sat in on the demo and agreed that TOPdesk was the best option.”

When it came to scaling TOPdesk within Flagship Group, why were other teams keen to be onboarded?

“We were aware that other teams used shared mailboxes to manage their demand, which instantly creates issues such as a lack of visibility of who was handling certain issues, no way for staff to track their requests and no mechanism to produce any metrics.  We were also mindful that for someone to establish which department provides a particular service and the method for contacting them, they would likely have to ask someone who knows the process.  For people who aren’t familiar with business processes, e.g. new starters, we felt that this was an area that could be improved.  So, we reached out to Group Services teams to explain what TOPdesk can do and how it could improve, not only their working practices, but the experience our staff receive when they engage with our teams, and many were keen to explore TOPdesk further.” he continues.

How did you scale from ITSM to ESM?

“Firstly, we devised a templated list of tasks that would form part of the onboarding process.  We then held workshops with the interested teams to understand all demand types that may come in.  We’d then categorise this into sections, which would then form the categories, sub-categories, and services that appear on the SSP,” says Nathan.  “We would then identify a site administrator – this is the person that manages the department’s self-service portal – and then train them on SSP design.  We would liaise with our Comms team to sort imagery for the look and feel of the SSP, and finally, we would hold a group training session to train staff in the Operators section.”

“We now have 11 departments onboarded with TOPdesk, and have received no calls from anyone about any issues at go-live. As more departments were onboarded, the transition was seamless, as our staff were already familiar with using TOPdesk for contacting other departments.”

The departments currently onboarded are IT, Academy (L&D), Facilities, Governance, H&S, InfoSec, Data Protection, Legal, Procurement, some HR functions, and some Finance teams.”

How has TOPdesk improved day-to-day ops?

“There is now a single point of contact for staff and customers to go to, with one self-service portal to access all these teams. All tickets that come in are now fully tracked with a full audit trail, allowing us to easily track the status of the tickets. We have an integrated knowledge base for operators which helps to provide more specific and consistent responses,” says Nathan.

“Group services can now pass tickets between themselves seamlessly, and there is no need to use external demand trackers, such as Excel, that were used previously.

We’re also now gathering customer feedback which we never had a mechanism to easily capture this before, but now when tickets are resolved, customers are asked to provide feedback as this is such an important KPI for support teams to have. Using the Five Star Review feedback integration has seen the uptake in responses from customers triple.”

If you could choose one TOPdesk feature or process that you can’t live without, what would it be – what has made the biggest impact?

“The self-service portal for staff to be able to contact everybody in Group Services. There are a lot of systems out there for staff to use so having the self-service portal helps everyone – whether they are confident with technology or not.”