Trowers & Hamlins LLP is a top-50 UK law firm with offices nation-wide and throughout the Middle East and South East Asia. It provides a range of commercial legal services to international institutions, public and private companies, banks, building societies, private clients, central government departments, local authorities and various public sector bodies and affordable housing providers.

Continually striving to do better

Striving to provide a better service to clients lies at the heart of everything Trowers & Hamlins does and this extends to the company’s 24-strong Information Systems department. The firm has recently invested in Sunrise Software’s flagship product Sunrise ITSM to create a brand new Service Desk environment that supports 700 professionals around the world from the company’s head office in London. Phoenix Business Solutions designed a unique integration enabler between Sunrise ITSM and the firm’s document management system, HP WorkSite.

According to Steve Garbett, Support Manager at Trowers & Hamlins, “Up until January this year, we’d always relied on a simple call logging system to run our Service Desk but it was no longer fit for purpose. The time had come to replace it with the latest technology that could support a truly first-class business and maintain our well-deserved international reputation.”

Advanced reporting and performance measurement are top priorities

Steve involved the analysts on his team to fully evaluate the marketplace and compare a variety of well-known solutions. Advanced reporting capabilities and the ability to measure Service Desk performance against meaningful Service Level Agreements (SLAs) were key selection criteria and Sunrise became the supplier of choice for Trowers & Hamlins.

Steve Garbett continued, “Sunrise ITSM scored well against its competitors and came out top. Our analysts liked the look and feel of the product and reporting was easy. Sunrise offered us a completely out-of-the-box solution with no hidden extras; even the Self-Service element came part of the package. What is more, it is highly configurable, giving us the flexibility to adapt it ourselves without resorting to external consultants.”

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Trowers & Hamlins LLP is a top-50 UK law firm with offices nation-wide and throughout the Middle East and South East Asia. It provides a range of commercial legal services to international institutions, public and private companies, banks, building societies, private
clients, central government departments, local authorities and various public sector bodies and
affordable housing providers. 

Continually striving to do better

Striving to provide a better service to clients lies at the heart of everything Trowers & Hamlins does and this extends to the company’s 24-strong Information Systems department. The firm has recently invested in Sunrise Software’s flagship product Sunrise ITSM to create a brand new Service Desk environment that supports 700 professionals around the world from the company’s head office in London. Phoenix Business Solutions designed a unique integration enabler between Sunrise and the firms’ document management system, HP WorkSite. According to Steve Garbett, Support Manager at Trowers & Hamlins, “Up until January this year, we’d always relied on a simple call logging system to run our Service Desk but it was no longer fit for purpose. The time had come to replace it with the latest technology that could support a truly firstclass business and maintain our well-deserved international reputation.”

Advanced reporting and performance measurement are top priorities

Steve involved the analysts on his team to fully evaluate the marketplace and compare a variety of well-known solutions. Advanced reporting capabilities and the ability to measure Service Desk performance against meaningful Service Level Agreements (SLAs) were key selection criteria and Sunrise became the supplier of choice for Trowers & Hamlins.
Steve Garbett continued, “Sunrise scored well against its competitors and came out top. Our analysts liked the look and feel of the product and reporting was easy. Sunrise offered us a completely out-of-the-box solution with no hidden extras; even the Self-Service element came part of the package. What is more, it is highly configurable, giving us the flexibility to adapt it ourselves without resorting to external consultants.”

All-round support worldwide

Two years ago, Trowers & Hamlins installed Sunrise Software’s Sunrise ITSM solution for Incident, Problem, Change and Asset Management, quickly rolling it out from the company’s central Service Desk in London to 700 staff based in the UK as well as offices in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai and Oman. The IS department at Trowers & Hamlins comprises four main teams – Support, Infrastructure, Desktop Development and Training – with all 24 members of the department using the Sunrise system. Calls come initially into the Support team who, should they not be able to fix the problem, pass it along to colleagues in one of the other three  specialist teams for resolution.

Integration is recipe for Self-Service success

One of the most revolutionary steps forward has been the creation of a new Self-Service facility, based on Sunrise, which links seamlessly with the firms’ HP WorkSite document management system, through integration written by Phoenix Business Solutions. Legal documents are often long and complex. Mistakes made by issuing incorrect or out-ofdate versions waste valuable, non-billable time for partners and can be extremely damaging for the clients they serve.
Traditionally, should a secretary or other professional have a problem with a document or could not download it from the corporate server, they were often forced to email documents around the company to resolve the situation, a time-consuming process that was prone to inaccuracies.

Using Sunrise, Trowers & Hamlins has set up a Self-Service portal that is fully integrated with the HP WorkSite system. Staff simply log a call with the Service Desk who issues them with an incident number. Then, with a quick click of a button, users are automatically connected directly into HP WorkSite via the Phoenix integration, which also allows them to browse the full catalogue of documents, open the specific one they want and even highlight it, attaching a link that can be shared with a colleague. Steve Garbett explains the significance of the new SelfService functionality, “The new Sunrise Self-Service portal is a milestone achievement. In my entire career, I don’t know of anyone who has successfully used Self-Service for effective document management. At the click of a mouse, staff can now easily access all the documents they need, safe in the knowledge that they are the ones they actually want to share.
They trust Sunrise 100% to save them time and money and boost client confidence. So popular is Self-Service that we’ve had to extend the initial trial to nearly 60 staff and we’ve dramatically reduced the number of calls coming into the Service Desk by 25% in just two weeks!”

Faster service

The advantages of using Self-Service are clear following a successful campaign by the IS department to promote the benefits of the new portal. Incidents logged in Self-Service are given priority attention and a useful knowledge base, where users can share hints and tips from the experts and other users, are already improving response times and increasing user satisfaction.
Steve Garbett added, “Sunrise enables us to prioritise incidents far more easily and swiftly and our staff appreciate being able to track the progress of their calls themselves. At a glance, they know the status of their calls at any given time down to which individual or team is handling
them. They value the whole immediacy and efficiency of the system.”

Reporting aids service improvements

The advanced reporting capabilities of Sunrise are a significant benefit, enabling the IS department to track the overall number of calls and then segment them by application, by office location and even by individual. This means the team can rapidly identify trends and make
changes accordingly. Recent trend analysis has highlighted a significant proportion of staff are unable to use a BlackBerry properly; something Steve and his team took for granted. As a result, the new starter training programme now includes a section on using this critical business
application. Likewise, comments were received about the confusing colours of the BigHand Digital Dictation software leading to the introduction of more user-friendly colouring on the system.

Looking to the future

Based on the success of the implementation to date, Trowers & Hamlins hopes to expand and adapt Sunrise themselves; applying it to other support departments such as Facilities.
Steve Garbett concluded, “We are extremely impressed with the excellent level of support provided by Sunrise and Phoenix. They are quick to react and totally professional. Their technology is second to none, giving us complete visibility of our Service Desk environment and the power to influence future service improvements in a strategic way. Sunrise’s powerful reporting functionality positively impacts our responsiveness to the executive board, tangibly
underlining the value of IT to the overall organisation.”