Zoo charity discovers benefits of going beyond Outlook

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL), a charity which runs the London Zoo and other wildlife conservation projects, has improved the efficiency and productivity of a small IT staff by rolling out new asset management software.

Nick Napier, head of ICT at the ZSL, told silicon.com when he came onboard three years ago the charity relied on Microsoft Outlook and paper to manage helpdesk requests and other IT tasks. "When I started, we were using tasks in Outlook or pieces of paper or people remembering things," he said.

Looking for an off-the-shelf product to bring order to the operations of the six-man IT staff, Napier chose to roll out Numara Software's Track-It software - and has been so pleased with its performance that he upgraded to the latest version, 7.0, in April - and plans to add a new module for managing software licences later this year.

The team uses Track-It to manage helpdesk requests, to audit the hardware and software assets for the 500-employee organisation and to track purchase orders for IT kit.

Napier said that for the helpdesk operation the software has provided both operational benefits - tracking who's responsible for which tasks - and management benefits - finding out which areas the employees need most help with.

The hardware and software audit revealed the organisation had 75 more PCs and 22 fewer Macs than previously thought and showed a number of systems were running the unsupported and potentially insecure Windows 95 operating system.

Track-It also sped up the purchase order process and smoothed the progress of an independent software audit the organisation went through last year.

Napier said: "Anyone who deals with software licences, especially with Microsoft, knows you need to deal with quite a lot of detailed information."

Because of the efficiencies resulting from Track-It, Napier's IT team has been able to take on additional work, such as managing and supporting the charity's PBX system, without hiring new staff or contractors.

He added that Track-It would also be useful if the charity's IT needs grow: "If we have to take on more [responsibilities], we have good information to justify the procurement of additional resources.

Napier said: "Track-It has become my eyes and ears. I have a good idea of what's going on at ground-level at anytime while remaining focused on high-level tasks."