Waterways Ireland
Working in partnership with Waterways Ireland to deliver a managed service and ongoing continuous improvements
Waterways Ireland is the largest of the six North/South Implementation Bodies established under the British Irish Agreement in 1999. They have responsibility for the management, maintenance, development and restoration of inland navigable waterways principally for recreational purposes. Waterways Ireland's statutory function is to manage, maintain, develop and restore the inland navigable waterways system on the island, principally for recreational purposes. Headquartered in Enniskillen, Waterways Ireland employs over 200 staff based at 12 sites throughout Ireland.
Business Challenge
Waterways Ireland face the business challenge of ensuring that the cost of delivering the IT service represents excellent value for money, operates at a high service level, adheres to best practice and is aligned to the business needs. A second challenge was to remove the burden on the IT staff for day to day support activities and release them to work on more value added activities.
To address the business challenges Waterways Ireland set out clear objectives to identify and engage a supplier to provide an overarching Back Office Infrastructure Managed Support Service for all Waterways Ireland sites.
The core elements of the Service required were to be:
- Support of all information technology based back office systems, severs, desktops, laptops and other peripherals
- Provision of a Helpdesk service
- Technical refresh during the lifetime of the contract to replace older servers and to upgrade the platform on the remaining servers
- Refresh of the installed base of PCs
- Migration of infrastructure elements to new Waterways Ireland buildings during the lifetime of the contract
The Solution
To address Waterway Ireland's business objectives and IT service management requirements, Northgate developed a solution based on it's Client Engagement Model. From this they implemented a back office managed service, on site engineer, helpdesk including on line call logging/tracking and hardware break/fix.
Northgate has invested heavily in staff, training and the supporting infrastructure to ensure a world-class hardware maintenance service is provided. The service delivery is delivered from a base of over 150 engineers located throughout Ireland and is backed up by an in-house repair centre which is unique in its size, scale and capabilities. Hardware support is delivered to servers, desktops, laptops & printers along with software support. Northgate also strive to ensure continuous improvement in service delivery through efficient fault resolutions.
In terms of delivering service management, Northgate has established a Waterways Ireland service team structure for Account and Service Delivery Management; monthly performance review meetings take place to include reporting and service improvement plans and helpdesk/call logging facility. This ensures that, through their strategic approach, Northgate can continue to monitor service delivery and adapt to challenges when required in order to maximise efficiency.
The Help Desk System provides a single point of contact for all Waterways calls. As part of the overall Service Delivery process, Northgate provides a Helpdesk facility which works alongside the current Waterways helpdesk. It can allow priority to be assigned to specific calls and provides total visibility to both Service Desk and Support teams. A core feature of the system is the web based facility allowing customers the opportunity to log and track calls via the internet.
Support is required to conform to the standard working hours of Waterways Ireland which are currently 9.00 to 17.30 5 days per week. The services are delivered by Northgate from a number of locations and by a tiered service approach. Northgate will utilise several methods for delivering the service which include:
- Helpdesk
- Telephone Support
- Remote access (RDP over VPN)
- On-site Engineer
- Deployment of specific and dedicated sparing in our Service Centres
The method deployed for any particular call will be dependent on the call type and in many cases will involve more than one of these options. Wherever possible the problem will be resolved remotely without necessitating a technical visit. The services will be monitored by use of Northgate's proactive fault monitoring service.
To support Waterways Ireland, a dedicated full time on site engineer has been placed in Waterways Ireland to provide support to the IT department and to enable them to focus on more strategic, added value projects.
Key Results
Waterways Ireland now have in place a 3 year managed service and strategic partnership with Northgate to help achieve its objective of creating a new customer focused service provision. This partnership means Waterways Ireland have full support of their ICT infrastructure and the provision of ongoing expertise to achieve continuous improvement.
The managed service provides Waterways with confidence that they will have highly available systems and therefore highly available services to customers achieving their corporate goal - to develop an organisation of excellence and the information technology capability to support the activities of the organisation.
The on site engineer and improved access to information which the systems bring, have both led to greater business agility and manageability through the by better utilising the IT department's time and improving the access to information.
The helpdesk provides Waterways with improved business continuity and security.
Through the client engagement model, Northgate provides Waterways with a dedicated relationship and flexible service management function which ensures the service Northgate is providing continues to meet the needs of Waterways whilst providing maximum efficiency and accountability.
Key Benefits
- More efficient and flexible system
- Improved customer service
- Reduced costs
- Improved business continuity and security
Brian Cleland, Head of IT in Waterways Ireland said:
"The inland waterways of Ireland offer a wealth of recreational opportunities to a wide range of people and resources are focused on the management, maintenance, development and restoration of these important amenities. Technology is key to the delivery of a seamless service to our many stakeholders - so it is critical we work closely with a company that can provide us with the systems and support necessary to help us work to maximum efficiency.
"In addition to the creation of an IT infrastructure which is tailored to our very specific needs, the main benefit of Northgate's managed service is that we are gaining from a dedicated support source. This enables us to make more effective use of our staff's time while the technology itself will help us to achieve our organisational objectives."
