customer stories
Anderson Power Products resolves global help desk issues faster with Issuetrak business challenge Started in 1877 in Boston, Anderson Power Products (APP) has a long history of innovation, from inventing the first trolley pole for electric railways to providing connectors for San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Today, APP continues to develop high-quality power interconnect solutions for applications such as back-up power systems, electrical vehicles, UPS systems, telecommunications, hightechnology devices and alternative energy solutions. APP serves a global customer base with 130 people across offices in Massachusetts, England, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since Craig Cormier joined as IT manager in 1998, the company has expanded significantly through acquisitions. As the employee base grew, so did the challenge of keeping up with help desk requests across countries and time zones – using only email.
based IT team a simple way for employees at five locations to submit help desk requests at any time. Employees simply send an email to the help desk and it automatically opens a ticket that’s trackable through resolution. Through a connection with Active Directory, Issuetrak links the request with the specific employee so Cormier and others have each employee’s contact information, technology profile and history of help desk issues in one place. Automation in Issuetrak alerts the team when tickets have been open for a certain length of time, ensuring that the team resolves them within specific, defined timeframes. Tickets also close out automatically when they have met certain criteria.
solution
Issuetrak’s Asset Management module provides a central repository for asset data such as computer specs and software, warranty and licensing information and serial numbers. When the IT team needs to configure and load software on a new computer, they refer to Issuetrak for the employee’s previous setup.
Seeking a help desk system, APP found that Issuetrak provided the best combination of help desk and asset management capabilities in one very customizable solution.
Help desk and asset tracking together enable APP to link users and issues to support faster resolution and decisions regarding technology upgrades.
“Issuetrak’s user-defined fields make it very customizable for what we need to track,” Cormier said.
APP taps Issuetrak for yet another important capability – change management. The company keeps an audit trail of IT changes, which will ease any future audits.
Issuetrak gives the small, Massachusetts-
benefits Issuetrak supports APP’s IT team in delivering a higher level of service to its distributed employee base. “We improved our customer satisfaction with our Asian offices because employees can input things anytime,” Cormier said. “We have much greater visibility into everything so we act on tickets more quickly. It saves time, especially when dealing with people on the other side of the world.”
“We have a much greater visibility into everything so we can act on tickets more quickly. It saves time, especially when dealing with people on the other side of the world.” - Craig Cormier IT Manager Issuetrak’s flexibility to handle help desk needs, asset management and change management in one place keeps IT costs down. When the recession impacted APP, the company also took advantage of Issuetrak's license reduction program to reduce its maintenance costs. Since the IT team largely troubleshoots enterprise software questions and needs, faster response with Issuetrak keeps employees more productive. “Issuetrak is definitely a great organizational tool,” Cormier said. “If we relied solely on email, we would lose track of a lot of things.”
about issuetrak Issuetrak, founded in 1992 and based in Norfolk, VA, is a global leader in providing software for tracking strategic business processes. First released in 2000, its signature software package has become a robust platform for internal and external customer service and support, IT help desk, workflow and process management, and issue tracking. More than 2,000 organizations in 35 countries, across a wide range of industries including financial services, high technology, education, and government currently use the web-based software. The company is a Microsoft Silver Partner and has been recognized with a number of awards, including the Inc 500, Inc 5000, and Deloitte Technology Fast 500.
