"Serio continues to surpass our expectations when it comes to a software application. The regular updates we receive continue to build on a stable product and we have had no major issues in the 7 years that we have used Serio Service Desk. We always receive 1st class support from your support team and they are always happy to go the extra mile to ensure issues are resolved to our satisfaction."
Acorn Group
Ultra Electronics Airport Systems is a major provider of IT services and integrated solutions to the aviation industry.
Our comprehensive suite of offerings in Information, Passenger and Baggage processing systems, which can be delivered as individual products, integrated solutions or managed services, meet the key business drivers of airports, airlines and ground handling agents.
Ultra’s offerings help our worldwide customer base to meet their common objectives of:
The backbone that gives strength to all of our offerings is built up from:
As a result of our long standing presence and specific focus in this marketplace, Ultra has developed a unique team of dedicated Project Managers, Solution Designers, Engineers and Service Delivery professionals with the experience and domain knowledge to provide a quality of service acknowledged throughout the industry. Ultra’s systems are in use at more than 100 airports worldwide and are consistently selected by the world’s best airports.
For the 2nd year running, 4 out of the 5 top airports in the Skytrax Airport Awards use and trust Ultra to supply their mission critical systems:
In addition, the airports voted Best in Region for the following regions all use Ultra’s systems:
Ultra employs over 200 staff at locations in the United Kingdom, France, United States of America, China, South Africa, Ireland, and Oman; all of which are dedicated to providing solutions and services to the air transport industry. The majority of our employees are educated to degree level in an engineering or scientific discipline all of which have been recruited for their capabilities in the implementation of solutions and services within the sector.
Ultra also provides a 24x7 fully compliant service and a global Incident Management Team with clearly defined hotline numbers. Ultra’s Service Delivery processes are based on the ITIL Service Management framework, and the team was awarded the global recognised standard in Service Management, “ISO 20000” by the British Standards Institute in August 2007, with successful further audits completed since.
One of the underlying philosophies of Ultra is ‘We listen to our customers’.
Our strategy is to not only deliver our stated commitments but also to fully adopt and immerse ourselves in our customer’s methodology, strategy and vision.
This form of collaborative working breaks down departmental silos and streamlines the process of communication between airport, airlines and passengers, thus delivering a consistent, reliable and stress-free experience for all.
In addition, as part of the engagement cycle, Ultra establishes a process where stakeholder feedback and enhancement suggestions are assessed for their global appeal and, if found suitable, are placed upon Ultra’s development roadmap. In this way our customers know they are benefiting from a global customer community of ideas to help drive their business forwards and achieve their stated goals and objectives.
Our customers have differing requirements when deciding on a supplier and service offering but at a basic level the key focus is on maintaining availability of their airport systems. From a practical point of view, the main elements are around having a 24 hour 7 days a week technical service team as well as accreditations to ISO20000 and ISO27000 in order to prove we’re a serious credible service provider.
We have been an active user of SerioPlus since its launch in the SaaS space 3 years ago. We use SerioPlus to manage the service we provide to our customers rather than for the internal IT within our business meaning the most important processes are Incident, Problem, Change and Request Fulfilment. Having said that, in order for these to work correct we also need to have strong release and configuration management strengths too.
Probably the most complex process we currently run is the Change function as we’ve made the business decision not to have a full time Change Manager and instead use SerioPlus to manage the change requests through a well structure change plan ensuring the tasks required for a successful change are all completed by the most relevant person. In specific terms, we need to make sure someone from the technical area of the business understands the roll out and back out plans, but someone from the account management area needs to provide business and cost approval. The way SerioPlus divides up these tasks and by allowing multiple events to happen in parallel has given us efficiency gains whilst ensuring the ISO200000 fundamentals are observed.
Due to the nature of our customer base and the fact we don’t provide 1st line support to all our customers we receive far more emails than telephone calls. The method used by SerioPlus to handle inbound emails is a significant improvement on the method we used previously as the system now recognises when an email belongs to a ticket and automatically adds it whilst making the owner aware. Typically the Service Delivery team handles around 2,200 tickets a month.
The most significant trait we looked for in a supplier was the adoption of continual service improvement principles as when ISO standards change, ITIL gets a refresh and as business needs grow, the tools and systems need to follow. If we had a static system with no new features or changes we’d find it quickly becoming obsolete and therefore in need of replacement. Serio as a supplier have adopted many of the suggestions we’ve made and as a result of our changing business needs have made updates to our product.
Everyone has a view on ITSM looking forward, and it’s easy to simply suggest it needs to be better, cheaper, more efficient etc etc… But instead we need to think about how we can make better use of the resources we have and the responsibilities around balancing cost with availability, responsiveness and critically the ‘human element’. Specifically here I’m referring to the point when you need a person to make a decision that’s not in an automated process, a portal or another restricted framework and instead give people the space and authority to go the extra mile and provide great customer service. At the end of the day, this is the element of service delivery that makes the difference when it really comes to the crunch.
Nicholas Frain, Support Manager
"We wanted more than a helpdesk system though - we were more interested in the wider topic of service management, including issue management, IT configuration management, self-care through the web and knowledge management. We evaluated a number of products, but were unanimous in choosing Serio. We had a high comfort factor - the product was right for what we wanted to achieve, and most importantly for us we felt that Serio Ltd would be interested in really partnering with us for what was going to be an ongoing project. This has certainly been the case."
Cosworth
PTL International specialises in IT and security for business and is heavily engaged in the banking, retail and hospitality sectors, offering services for accounting purposes and infrastructure needs. With offices in Malta, Dubai, Latvia and Libya it also operates a number of Apple Premium Reseller stores in Hungary and Romania.
PTL International's team of more than 100 dynamic professionals are experts in business integration, enterprise-wide solutions and contracted outsourcing. Across PTL International's functions, they service a prestigious client base in Malta, Central Europe, the Baltics, the Middle East and North Africa.
PTL International partners with major names like Apple, Citixsys, IBM, NCR, Cisco, Retail Pro, Red Hat, Chubb Safes, and Lenovo and provides round-the-clock support infrastructure, integration skills and local knowledge to support businesses in putting complex solutions in place.
Some of the services we offer are “Self Service”, Document Management, Networking, Sales Mobility, Retail Management, Information Management, Business Intelligence, Accounting/ERP Systems, Workflow Management, Hotel Management.
As the company has so many varied divisions, many divisions have their own in-buit ITSM process, however the Dubai office primarily uses Serio to track customers AMC’s as well as call logging in order to gauge not only the number of calls per client but to track the SLA timings. In a team of over 100 IT staff, it is vital to track the work being developed.
As a solutions provider for the IT industry, PTL International realise that the customer has many choices when it comes to IT Solutions. Many of these systems and the service provided with it will do the job. But in today’s competitive world, just doing the job is not good enough. PTL International prides itself on going the extra mile, challenging our creativity and imagination to improve our products and services to create a better system to put the customer ahead of their competition. I believe our customers value the quality and expertise of the staff as well as the customer services both pre and post sales that we offer.
When we opened the Dubai Office, we spent some time evaluating many ITSM products of which one was Serio. We found many products to be either too expensive or over-complicated.
Hosted solutions seem to be more and more prominent enabling the client to focus on the day to day business rather than worrying and working on the internal IT infrastructure.
We decided upon Serio not only for the extremely competitive price but also due to the fact that it was a hosted solution and offered exactly what we were looking for in a customer call-logging system.
Giving our end users the ability to log into the software to raise a support ticket as well as track the status of their calls helps us work closely with the clients as well as monitor our own performance which in-turn helps us understand which areas we can improve upon.
Our enquiries were dealt with on a timely manner during the evaluation stage and the demonstrations were given in a clear and concise manner.
The initial setup and implementation took less than 1 week. We've been using Serio products since 2010 and the after sales support continues to be both responsive and professional.
Fraser Kelly, Technical Account Manager
"Serio Service Desk provided a great-value platform for us to build our ITIL implementation program on. We managed to achieve savings within the first year that more than justified the purchase price. Overall, we made the right decision."
Graycol
Capito is an ICT provider of Desktop, Managed, Professional and Product Services and Solutions, working in partnership with companies like BT and HP to provide businesses with supported and optimised Client, Infrastructure and Data Environments. Our customers choose us to help them reduce costs by the provision of centralised resources, whilst at the same time improving customer satisfaction by reducing Incidents at source, lowering time to fix and continually measuring quality of service.
Capito have been using Serio products since 2007, and have been using the SerioPlus platform since 2010.
I believe customers value the communication side of operations the most, which SerioPlus allows us to handle very easily. We run the full suite of ITIL processes, but use Change Control Processes and Incident Management most heavily. SerioPlus allows us to customise these processes to suit the needs of our customers and ourselves, specifically for reporting and managing SLAs.
I think ITSM is probably moving towards more cloud-based systems, but the requirement to be both solid and yet flexible is still there. We get this from Serio's cloud-based system. It gives me what I need with a high level of flexibility.
I've worked with SerioPlus for 6 years and I've always had the technical support that I need, in a timely fashion. I normally request help through Serio Remote Tools, the ones that are embedded in Serioplus's own system, and then if there are any Account level issues, there is always someone to speak to.
Gareth Porter, Operations Centre Manager
"When we purchased our Serio Helpdesk system, the project set-up phase was impressive. We got a project plan, and specifying the data we wanted to begin with was simply a case of filling in a spreadsheet. It felt structured and meant I could focus more on my team than entering lots of data. Overall our experience has been very positive."
McCall-McGregor