September 7 2016, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK.
University of Lincoln has chosen Sollertis Convergence and Cherwell Service Management to underpin its Business Relationship Management strategy by providing a 360-degree view of relationships between IT, operations, colleagues and students.
Cherwell Service Management is the leading platform for automating and managing ITSM and was already on the University of Lincoln’s short list of potential suppliers in 2015. Tim Ingham, head of ICT operations at University of Lincoln says a chance meeting at the SDI Award Dinner quickly convinced him Cherwell and Sollertis could offer something completely unique.
“When I spoke to Simon Kent (chief innovation officer, Sollertis) about BRM and Cherwell, we were in the process of looking for a new ITSM tool, and the solution from Cherwell Software was in our top five shortlist. Once I had seen the BRM capabilities that the Sollertis team were building on the platform, we realised that we had never considered the possibility of directly linking our business- as-usual service management functions with core business strategy and outcomes within a software tool. I recall literally running to my IT Director’s office after the first demo to rave about what the combination of Sollertis Convergence and Cherwell could do for us in IT and our relationships with the university.”
For Tim, the combination of class-leading ITSM technology with a 360-degree view of the relationships between departments and the outcomes of their actions was exactly what he had been looking for.
“I recall literally running to my IT Director’s office after the first demo to rave about what the combination of Sollertis Convergence and Cherwell could do for us in IT and our relationships with the university.”
“I had never seen anything like it before. I could immediately see how the inclusion of BRM capabilities could enable our IT Operations and service management function to become fully converged with our university strategy, outcomes and departmental business partners. The potential to report value and drive our service desk engagement around university purpose has never been stronger thanks to the solution from Sollertis.”
Like most organisations, University of Lincoln’s ICT department is ultimately judged by the value it delivers, and Sollertis Convergence allows Tim and his team to understand how every one of its actions impact the University. “Even at the service desk incident transaction level, we can now capture the business context with such clarity that we can then report that service management transaction in true university business value context – whether that’s for the university department, against their departmental capabilities, their outcomes or even the over-arching university strategy.”
“We have a full 360 degree view of our partnership between IT and our university colleagues. Our BRM’s look at everything we do through a value-based lens; it really is a game-changer for us.”
“With the management of key BRM processes such as initiatives management and engagements (that covers anything from workshops to water cooler side bar conversations), plus with the other processes like risk register, improvement register and complaints management, we have enabled a full 360 degree view of our partnership between IT and our university colleagues within a single platform. We can perform capability mapping, value management and demand shaping for everything we do in IT and this will enable our BRM’s to look at everything we do through a value based lens; it really is a game-changer for us,” concludes Ingham.
mApp: solve business challenges
For Cherwell, this announcement is another endorsement of how its platform is helping partners and customers deliver strategic value through IT. Vance Brown, co-founder and executive director to the board of Cherwell is pleased to see such a clear example of BRM principles converging with ITSM. “It’s superb to see innovative partners like Sollertis deliver outstanding value to customers through their mApp applications; this demonstrates the power and capability of the Cherwell platform to deliver modern digital solutions right across the enterprise and enable our customers to realise greater value from their investment in Cherwell technology.
Craig Harper, CEO of Cherwell agrees that Sollertis Convergence is proving its value in real-world situations. “The Sollertis Convergence solution adds Business Relationship Management and models from other frameworks and bodies of knowledge to complement and converge with ITIL and ITSM. Our customers can realise this capability through our mApp Exchange platform strategy.”
The power of relationships
David Wright, chief value officer for Service Desk Institute commented, “When you see individuals and organisations forming strategic relationships like this, SDI takes great pride in knowing that we are instrumental in encouraging this to happen by providing valuable community initiatives such as the annual service desk conference and awards. Helping to create business value through the building and nurturing of these types of relationships, while at the same time inspiring service desks to be brilliant, is key for us, our customers and the industry’s vendor community. Supporting and improving strategic relationship management is a winning scenario for everyone involved and goes to show the value of engaging with SDI and enabling us to create such brilliant networking opportunities.”
Simon Kent summarises the importance of this announcement. “As head of IT operations and also undertaking a number of BRM functions, Tim Ingham could see the power of a converged end-state and that pulling their whole IT and University organisation together with the support of our Convergence software would accelerate that journey; I am looking forward to witnessing their strategic business relationship management unfold, and celebrating their successes with them, as they show business value through the value reporting dashboards and the agility and capabilities in our Cherwell based solution.”
About Sollertis
Sollertis is a pioneering, award winning software developer with a singular purpose to enable traditional IT and Service Provider organisations to become high value strategic partners to their business colleagues. We call this end-state Convergence and believe that the convergence of Business and Provider, and the transformation from service provider to strategic partner, will rapidly accelerate organisational agility and strategic value-based business transformation.
Our flagship product, Convergence, delivers the converged end-state for organisations worldwide; accelerating the journey to realise continuous value from strategic business relationship management. We have a healthy obsession in continual service, product and value improvement, never resting on our success and pushing the boundaries of improvement through innovation, a fail fast and transparent culture and inclusive leadership style.
Everyone at Sollertis shares this common purpose and a value system based on fairness, equality, accountability, entrepreneurship and we all work hard to deliver value to each other, our customers, our partners and followers. Learn more about Sollertis Convergence and Business Relationship Management or call +44 (0)1793 441 431.
About University of Lincoln
Since being opened by Her Majesty the Queen, the University of Lincoln has put students at the heart of everything we do, while climbing more places in university league tables than almost any other institution.
The University of Lincoln has some of the most satisfied students in the UK. Lincoln is in the top third nationally for student satisfaction as ranked by our students, based on the average score for all questions in the National Student Survey 2015. Several of our courses rank in top 20% nationally in NSS 2015, including Journalism, Psychology, Drama, English and Sport & Exercise.
About Cherwell
A global leader in IT service management and IT asset management, Cherwell empowers IT to lead through the use of powerful and intuitive technology that enables better, faster, and more affordable innovation. The Cherwell Service Management™ platform is built from the ground up with a unique codeless architecture that enables rapid time to value, infinite flexibility, and frictionless upgrades every time—at a fraction of the cost and complexity of legacy solutions. Because of Cherwell’s focus on delivering a solution that is easy to configure, customize, and use, IT organizations extend Cherwell to solve a wide range of IT and business problems. With an unwavering commitment to putting customers first and being easy to do business with, Cherwell enjoys 98%+ customer satisfaction. Cherwell has a global network of expert partners serving customers in more than 40 countries. Corporate headquarters are in Colorado, USA, with global offices in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.
