Acora launches market leading service management platform to deliver world class services to its customers

Leading IT Outsourcing provider Acora has today completed a 13 month project to implement Gartner’s Magic Quadrant leading ITSM platform ServiceNow – the company’s most significant system investment in its history.

This comes on the back of a two year cycle of investment and activity that has seen Acora carry out a number of upgrades to its people, processes and infrastructure.

Acora reacted to demand in the mid-market for a wider set of services based on mature processes delivered in an agile way and at a very specific price point. The company set about developing these in to their service portfolio at a true 24/7 basis out of their UK offices. Integrating a new ITSM platform was an integral part in being able to deliver these new services to their clients.

“Just over a year ago we reviewed the market, taking influences from companies like Gartner and our own customers. ServiceNow stood out as an innovative company with a very strong road map. We saw that ServiceNow could not only provide the solution that we need today but the innovation and the features of the product they have at their disposal will become critical components in the way in which our customers consume our services in the future.”

Paul Faulkner, COO at Acora

The new ITSM platform will transform the way Acora manages the services delivered to customers driving up quality, speed of delivery and overall customer satisfaction.

• In addition to phone and email, end users can now simply log on to a self-service portal – which they can do from any device and on a 24/7 basis – to request IT services, log issues, and track progress.
• ServiceNow is fully integrated with the Acora telephone systems, making the process of tracking, logging and fulfilling their calls smoother and more efficient.
• Integrating ServiceNow with Acora’s monitoring platform will speed up the way the service desk can proactively react to an issue with their clients’ infrastructure and help minimise the risk of alarms being missed.
• Self-serve reports will open up a feast of data and BI so that IT Directors and Finance Directors alike can create the right dash board they need to measure the service that Acora provides.

As phase 1 of a 4 phased implementation plan, Faulkner is keen to point out that this is only the start. ServiceNow will continue to cater for the journey that the company has mapped out for the years ahead, and over the coming months Acora will take advantage of a number of features around innovation and automation.

For example, the company wants to become more transparent on project delivery through ServiceNow and through self-service so that in future their clients will have a 360 degree 24/7 view of the status of any projects that Acora is providing to them.

“By implementing Gartner’s Magic Quadrant leading ITSM platform we have picked the best ITSM platform in the market and we believe this separates us from many of our competitors’ who have not made the same investment as Acora. When we add that investment to the investment in the people, in our 24/7 shift management structure and our senior management team, combined with our ITIL based processes and continual service improvement plan – these things are moving Acora in to a position of delivering world class services to its customers.”

Paul Faulkner, COO at Acora