OREANDA-NEWS. On September 26, 2007 IBS has automated help desk services at M.Video. In this project, internal help desk service processes were set up, and Russia's first implementation of the most recent version of the HP Service Desk Software specialized solution was carried out, reported the press-centre of IBS Group.

M.Video is well known by residents of major cities as one of the hot retailers selling household appliances. There are currently 98 M.Video electronics hypermarkets operating in 34 Russian cities. Pro-active business development (every month the company opens one or two new stores) and the growing number and complexity of information systems boosted the number of staff requests handled by the help desk service, stretching its capacity beyond its limits and making it ever more difficult for the help desk service to resolve issues by using its current resources.

In order to deal with those problems a project was initiated to implement a HelpDesk class automated system at M.Video. IBS consultants were called in to carry out the project. The automation project was designed to use state-of-the-art models of IT service organization and management (ITSM). The most recent version of HP Service Desk 5.0 Software, HelpDesk module was selected as the software platform.

Having analyzed the help desk service operation, IBS and M.Video professionals produced a process model of the operation making extensive use of ITIL library recommendations, which bring together advanced experience in this field. In joint workshops the logical and physical designs of the incident management process were completed, and incident management policies, functions and roles were produced.

In the next phase the automated system was built and tested, including integration with the staff database, and then industrial operation of the system was commenced. The project revealed some localization problems with HP Service Desk Software, Version 5.0. Release of a special Russia-specific patch helped to resolve those problems, and the system at M.Video has now been successfully upgraded to version 5.2.

The HP Service Desk Software solution implemented provides efficient support of the incident management process. The system automates handling and storage of all user requests and request execution control, including prioritizing, closing deadline calculation and control of phases of request execution and individuals responsible for request execution. The multi-layer help desk service organization implemented allowed for a major part of requests to be resolved at the first line of help desk services and thus reduced workload on highly skilled IT professionals.

Most importantly, the project improved manageability of the help desk service and simplified collaboration between the company staff and IT professionals. Implementation of state-of-the-art IT service automation tools enabled the help desk service to handle the growing amount of work successfully and respond to user requests in a more quick and efficient manner.