Farrer & Co invests in its future with Sunrise IT Service Management

Paul Lovegrove, IT service delivery manager at Law firm Farrer & Co, says implementing a new SaaS IT service management system with Sunrise has supported the firm’s service improvement programme.

SaaS delivers for Farrer

Paul Lovegrove, IT service delivery manager at Farrer & Co, says: “We knew we wanted to be more transparent with the business, get the customer more involved and ultimately deliver a better service – when we saw Sunrise ITSM we instantly knew that it would help us reach our goals.”
On SaaS: “Selecting the cloud-based offering means we are always on the latest version of the software and security – one less thing to worry about.”
But, he adds, the biggest thing for the firm is that it’s fully customisable and that no customisations are lost during an upgrade. “Everything you see, you can edit in some way – change labels, add or remove options, even change the underlying ITIL-based workflows and introduce new services. It was made so that it worked for you rather than you having to fit in to work with it.”

Download the full Farrer case study (pdf) to discover more.

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For Farrer & Co, the end of 2016 meant the sunset for outdated IT service management software – and its start with Sunrise. Good IT service management (ITSM) software is
vital to the stability of daily work in any business – and for big law firms, with a large volume of people, projects and information, that’s even more the case. Paul Lovegrove, IT service delivery manager at Farrer & Co, says: “We knew we wanted to be more transparent with the business, get the customer more involved and ultimately deliver a better service – when we saw Sunrise ITSM we instantly knew  that it would help us reach our goals.
“Selecting the cloud-based offering means we are always on the latest version of the software and security – one less thing to worry about.” But, he adds, the biggest thing for the firm is that it’s fully customisable and that no customisations are lost during an upgrade.
“Everything you see, you can edit in some way – change labels, add or remove options, even change the underlying ITIL-based workflows and introduce new services. It was made so that it worked for you rather than you having to fit in to work with it.”

Dawn of a new age
Before the firm went to market with the new system it was essential to set a standard for its service desk team to meet – and the software in turn needed to be able to aid the team in upholding its mission statement. As a part of its ongoing service improvement drive, it was important the firm selected a solution that had out-of-the-box best practice reports that
could be benchmarked against from its inception. One of the key differentiators of Sunrise ITSM
was the inclusion of the Service Desk Institute (SDI) accredited report suite. The firm also looked at the SDI’s guidelines for SLAs and worked them into the software.
For the time-sensitive work of a fee earner, answering queries and dealing with incidents
quickly is a huge priority, Lovegrove says. “Logging incidents is straightforward and almost every single field can be customised. The ease of logging calls is not to be overlooked – it is so simple to create a new incident and it means that our analysts can log more calls rather than getting bogged down with other issues.” The product gives the service desk team the flexibility it needs in order to hit targets and continue to exceed the expectations of its customers – and it’s easy to use. “It’s two-fold, the reporting is excellent and the ease in the software makes a big difference. 
Ultimately it works for our customer as we can provide them with a more timely service.”
And that’s not all. Lovegrove says: “Sunrise’s level of service is second to none. We get a really
friendly and helpful service and they’re on top of any issues, instantly – it really adds to our
satisfaction with the product.”
Friendly competition
Sunrise enables Farrer to monitor its KPIs constantly through live data and weekly and
monthly reports. “Our monitoring is much better than before. Next to my desk I’ve got a big screen on the wall that shows the ‘Wallboard’ – which basically cycles through different screens of KPIs and work in real-time,” Lovegrove says. “It’s more proactive than reactive and it really
makes a difference to our service delivery. I can see what the analysts are doing and if there are any pinch points – it highlights something as it’s happening rather than me having to wait until
someone tells me something is being done or I see the report at the end of the week.” The KPIs are constantly being refined as part of a continuous improvement programme.
There are lots of different reporting options in Sunrise – any existing or new field within the
software can be filtered and reported on. But Lovegrove says what really makes the software
stand out is the gamification aspect. “There are different badges you can win. For
example, when you log an incident you get a badge and it counts as points to your total score. Your score goes up each day as you hit different badge markers. Then, at the end of the month we show the leader boards across a few categories – who logged the most incidents, best customer satisfaction ratings, largest number of calls resolved and so on,” he explains.
“We can chart all of that. Of course this is purely internal, but it creates some good-natured
competition. You can also ‘level up’ – it’s all a bit of fun and gives the analysts something to aim for, especially for those analysts that are gamers in their spare time. “It was something quite unique to the software, it wasn’t something we looked at doing but it adds another dimension to the application,” he says.
Flexible future
The next step for Farrer & Co is to implement the Sunrise self-service portal. Users can log in to a dedicated webpage and view and update their current calls, see any announcements that the
service team communicates on the system and access knowledge-based articles so that they can answer their own questions or solve their own issues.
“It will also give them the ability to log a new incident, which they can then monitor through the
process of assignment and prioritisation – all part of the process of getting the customer more
involved,” Lovegrove says. Other products on the market simply didn’t do this as well,  Lovegrove points out – which was a big driver for Farrer & Co adopting a new IT service management system in the first place. Lovegrove says: “Our primary aim is to deliver
outstanding customer service – so having flexible software which supports that goal and allows us to customise and grow the product within the business is invaluable.
“It’s not just about being happy with the product now but looking at how we can shape it
for the future of the firm, and with Sunrise ITSM we saw that we could do that.”