SIV also offers consultancy and corporate management services, sharing the company’s vast experience of venue management with the public and private sector across the UK. It plays a key role in supporting the economic, sporting and cultural profile of Sheffield by managing elite sporting and entertainment events and championing community participation and sports development.

In 2010, SIV took the decision to invest in a new IT service management platform that could improve IT service delivery and keep pace with the company’s fast-moving and expanding business environment. After reviewing a multitude of vendors in the marketplace, SIV selected Sunrise Software for the superior ITIL-verified functionality of its flagship product ITSM; by far the most competitively priced, scalable package.

Early in 2012, SIV installed Sunrise Software’s IT Service Management and Self-Service solutions to replace the company’s original basic call logging system that had been in operation for more than six years.

Read the full ITSM case study below:

Sheffield International Venues Ltd (SIV) is one of the largest sport, leisure and entertainment companies in Europe, specialising in outstanding spectator and participation events. Serving 4 million visitors each year, SIV successfully manages 20,000m² of versatile conferencing, meeting and exhibition space together with an impressive portfolio of 17 unique venues across Yorkshire, including four stunning golf courses and facilities for 60 sports. SIV also offers consultancy and corporate management services, sharing the company’s vast experience of venue management with the public and private sector across the UK. It plays a key role in supporting the economic, sporting and cultural  profile of Sheffield by managing elite sporting and entertainment events and championing community participation and sports development.

Helping IT to grow with the business

Over the past few years, SIV has enjoyed phenomenal growth as the company continues to replicate its successful formula from its headquarters in Sheffield to other parts of the UK and beyond. Like many organisations, SIV has had to look at reducing costs and improving efficiencies in order to remain competitive. Staff numbers in the IT department have not increased in size in the last four years even though the number of facilities and users to support has grown alongside a radical shift in the variety and complexity of ICT applications. Therefore it became even more critical that the IT team were given the tools needed to fulfil expectations.
In 2010, SIV took the decision to invest in a new IT service management platform that could improve IT service delivery and keep pace with the company’s fast-moving and expanding business environment. After reviewing a  multitude of vendors in the marketplace, SIV selected Sunrise Software for the superior ITIL®-verified functionality of its flagship product Sostenuto; by far the most competitively priced, scalable package. According to Michael Cook, ICT Manager at Sheffield International Venues, “Fast expansion together with dramatic changes in our IT requirements meant our old system just couldn’t cope. We had no effective means of distinguishing between service and change requests and 90% of our time was spent responding reactively to user demands. The time had come to create a best-practice IT framework that would enable us to support our users and the overall business in a more structured, proactive way. Sunrise stood head and shoulders above the competition offering the right functionality at the right price with the flexibility to grow with our business in the future.”
Early in 2012, SIV installed Sunrise Software’s Sostenuto IT Service Management and Iguana Self-Service solutions to replace the company’s original basic call logging system that had been in operation for more than six years.

Focusing on ITIL and Change Management to tackle reactivity head on

The deployment of Sostenuto complemented SIV’s plans to bring method and best-practice principles to IT perfectly and supported the department’s intensive ITIL training programme. At the heart lay a major focus on effective Change Management, which SIV considered critical to reversing the current status of reactivity.
SIV’s 10-strong IT team now use Sostenuto to categorise service and change requests properly, enabling them to dedicate the most appropriate resources to tackling completely different types of issues more swiftly and effectively.
The ability to distinguish between Incident Management and Change Management, and then set up robust and consistent processes to deal with each, has been fundamental to the success of SIV’s continuous improvement programme.

Self-help saves time and money

Michael and his team have developed a good knowledge library that users can access to resolve common issues themselves via the Iguana self-service portal. For example, previously, staff often complained that their email inbox was full and that they needed a bigger one which just wasn’t feasible. Iguana now provides staff with useful housekeeping hints and tips on how to manage their Outlook environment, an approach that saves time for the IT department and saves money for the business. Should users not be able to find a solution themselves or need to order a new piece of software, they simply log the issue or request via Iguana. The IT department then does the rest, acknowledging the incident and tracking the progress of the call from beginning to end. SIV’s IT department has worked closely with the corporate HR function and other HR managers at different venues to develop an efficient new joiner process. By tapping into the process driven, automated nature of Sostenuto, new members of staff have access to a series of online forms they can complete easily to procure all the IT equipment they need for their new roles. This boosts productivity very quickly and delivers fast results for the business.

All round benefits

Since introducing Sostenuto and Iguana, SIV has noticed a series of tangible benefits, in particular, a big step-change in reversing the reactivity/proactivity ratio. Today, around 40% of incidents are managed proactively, up 30% from just 10% less than 12 months ago. Michael Cook added, “Within a very short space of time, we have made huge  improvements in productivity and customer service. Sunrise has given us a real business tool that has completely
transformed the way we work and empowers our users. Sostenuto provides our staff with the knowledge they need to fix problems simply and quickly without being 100% reliant on the IT department. That gives us the flexibility and freedom to concentrate on strategic projects that support SIV’s quest for rapid expansion.”

Promising future

Next on the horizon is maximising Sostenuto’s Problem Management and Mobile capabilities. SIV has already started to expand the Sunrise solution to support major sporting and commercial events. Most recently, it hosted a major fitness industry awards dinner whereby Sostenuto played an important part in managing the various Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) terminals across the event’s multiple drinks and bar outlets. Soon, SIV will use IT Service Management to manage all IT requirements for special events, from initial organisation to ensuring services end up in the right place at the right time.
SIV is one of the first companies to sign up to the recently announced Sostenuto Mobile platform in a live working environment. It is currently trialling the system with the organisation’s BlackBerry devices. When the system goes live in September 2012, it will enable SIV’s support engineers to update incident records on the move, including resolution and closure so that performance statistics become more accurate. It will also alert engineers to new incidents and service requests with immediate access to the system, to ensure they have detailed information whilst they are out and about across the organisation. Ultimately, this will further enhance service delivery and boost customer confidence.