Fowlers Revs Up With Numara Track-It!

Total cost of ownership was a key driver for implementing Numara Track-It!
Numara Track-It! outperforms the competition on price

Reading, UK, August 2009: Numara® Software, Inc., a leader in help desk management solutions, announced today that Fowlers, one of the longest established businesses in motorcycling, boasting a multi-franchise dealership selling, servicing and repairing new and used motorcycles and scooters, has chosen to implement Numara® Track-It!® 9.

Numara Track-It! 9 is the world’s most widely installed help desk and asset management solution and Fowlers chose to replace its existing subscription-based help desk tool with this market leading product. Numara Track-It! has recently been installed and Fowlers is now actively using it, having just gone live with the solution at the beginning of June. Implementation was quick, easy and painless. In fact, even at this early stage, the IT team members are confident about the capabilities of Numara Track-It!

Headquartered in Bristol, Fowlers’ IT department supports around 100 end users based in three different locations. The help desk receives around 350 queries per month from users who may be either in the retail division or part of the wholesale division, who rely heavily on a number of different IT systems to distribute spare parts and accessories. Additionally, Fowlers has a call centre, which is manned by over 30 operators. Colin Lack, IT Manager for Fowlers comments:

“We were previously using a competing service desk solution and decided to change. The main driver for this decision was focused around total cost of ownership. Up until a few years ago, I was delivering the support to the business with one part-time assistant and the cost for a two-user package was reasonable and the product worked okay. But as the IT department expanded to 3 full-time people and our requirements started to get more complex, we suddenly had to jump to a 5-person license (there was no incremental user option) and the price doubled. When we wanted to implement change management, the price would have doubled again because we needed to move to an enterprise licence and so this went on. Although it started out as a reasonably priced solution, as our demands grew, so the costs escalated, but the performance did not improve at the same rate. The more features we wanted, the more expensive it was getting and we therefore decided that it was time to look for a new solution.”

Fowlers researched the market for a new help desk solution and had a long list of companies. Colin Lack then attended the Service Desk & IT Support Show in April 2009 and visited various vendor stands. This quickly whittled the choice down to a short-list of two – Numara Track-It! and one other. Colin Lack continues:

“We choose Numara Track-It! over and above another competing product, because one of our original drivers was change management. Numara Software provided a full demonstration of the change management capabilities in Numara Track-It! during the show and we immediately felt that the product ticked all our boxes. The other product didn’t have change management, but they were hoping to release this feature later in the year. The other thing that really swung the decision for us was that Numara Track-It! is a very solid, out-of-the-box solution and we felt that there was less chance of things going wrong. With a small IT team of 3, the last thing we needed was to end up spending all our time supporting the help desk when it is supposed to be supporting us.”

Following the Service Desk & IT Support Show, Fowlers had a full demonstration of both products and preferred the robustness of the back-end support with Numara Track-It!, as well as all the customisable grids and templates. In addition to the help desk module, other add-ons that Fowlers has purchased include: Remote Control, MAC Audit, Deploy, Network Monitor and Recurring Word Orders. Colin Lack concludes:

“Price wise, Numara Track-It! was cheaper. For example, the other vendor insisted on one day of onsite consultancy and 4 days’ training and this really pushed the price up and we felt it simply wasn’t necessary.

We’re extremely happy with Numara Track-It! and even though we have only had the product working for a month, we can already see that this product has extensive capabilities and will suit our requirements for many years to come.”

Numara Track-It! has helped thousands of IT professionals around the world optimise Help Desk efficiency, systematically measure their service performance and maximise use of their technicians’ time. With over 48,000 customer sites, it is the world’s most widely installed Help Desk and Asset Management solution. For more information on Numara Track-It! please visit www.numarasoftware.co.uk.

Serving over 50,000 customer sites worldwide, Numara Software is a global leader in providing practical software solutions for service management to IT professionals. IT organizations of all sizes trust our award-winning solutions, featuring Numara Track-It! and Numara FootPrints, to track requests, automate workflows and support internal and external customers.

Unlike other complex, difficult-to-implement, and costly products, we offer robust, affordable and easy-to-use solutions that can be quickly deployed without disruption to your business. Our flexible solutions can be implemented right out of the box or configured to match your unique IT environment and business processes. They can also be leveraged to support non-IT operations, such as human resources and facilities, allowing you to optimize your investments in licensing, maintenance, training, and support.

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