Hannaford Brothers Selects Peregrine Systems® To Improve IT Service Support And Delivery
SAN DIEGO - Peregrine Systems, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise asset and service management solutions, today announced that Hannaford Bros. Co., a multi-regional supermarket retailer and wholly owned subsidiary of Delhaize Group, has selected the Peregrine Service Establishment solution to streamline its IT service desk for its corporate headquarters and approximately 300 retail locations.
Hannaford implemented Peregrine Service Establishment in conjunction with IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC) as the foundation for its ITIL-compliant (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) service management practice. This integrated solution allows Hannaford to incorporate automation, intelligence and two-way communication into its IT service operations, taking a more proactive approach to service management that aligns IT with the business goals. Since implementing Peregrine's ServiceCenter®, Peregrine's foundational service management platform upon which Peregrine Service Establishment is built, Hannaford has been able to prioritize incident calls, handle trouble tickets and requests for routine services, monitor all open items, identify root causes of service interruptions and correlate problems to pinpoint trends and recurring events.
"Peregrine and Tivoli provide a winning combination for us to ensure best practices throughout Hannaford, enabling our enterprise system management team to categorize and prioritize problems within seconds," said Ken Calden, Hannaford's enterprise systems management (ESM) analyst. "With Peregrine Service Establishment, we have more flexibility than ever, especially when it comes to distributing tickets to specific groups or individuals. Rather than having to deal with disparate systems and multiple support platforms, we have chosen an integrated best-of-class solution that meets all our needs while providing an extensible framework for the future."
Hannaford's ESM team expedites the resolution of various technology- and network-related problems that impact corporate and approximately 300 retail operations, supporting a complex environment that includes more than 3,500 desktops, 400 laptops, 450 Windows-based servers, 275 Unix-based servers, and a variety of desktop applications, point-of-sale systems and mainframe applications. The ESM team also oversees hundreds of routers and wireless access points that link Hannaford's geographically dispersed stores to its enterprise network.
Hannaford's automated monitoring system initiates nearly 30,000 events per day, generating an average of 82 trouble tickets to the 24-hour support center. Hannaford relies on the ServiceCenter/TEC solution to proactively manage its IT service desk through automated event collection and handling of trouble tickets, ensuring that problems detected on networks are diagnosed and resolved quickly. ServiceCenter automatically assigns trouble tickets to specific groups or individuals, resulting in faster resolution and more productive IT service support teams. As a result, Hannaford's service desk has seen a dramatic drop in the number of level-one calls from users.
The integrated solution provides two-way communication and a unified view of all events, which allows Hannaford to reduce management complexity and leverage its support resources. Because of the efficiencies gained, Hannaford decided to extend the use of the integrated solution beyond IT, deploying it to other departments including human resources, payroll and accounting to facilitate cross-functional support and information sharing.
In addition, the Peregrine/TEC solution provides Hannaford's ESM team with critical information to analyze the root causes of its IT service requests by combining correlated issues into one ticket. The solution also facilitates management of outsourced vendors, enabling Hannaford to automatically open and assign hardware issues directly to Fujitsu, Hannaford's hardware support provider. Two-way communication between Hannaford and Fujitsu has led to faster responses and expedited problem resolution. Furthermore, Hannaford has embarked on an effort to reduce the number of passwords required by its technology staffers when logging into different systems and applications. The 13 passwords currently required can be cumbersome and error prone. This effort would complement ServiceCenter's capability to reset passwords automatically.
Hannaford is currently rolling out Peregrine's change management application for enhanced identification, tracking and allocation of assets. It is also on track with its implementation of Peregrine's service level management, which will provide tighter integration with other service level agreement tools to help quantify IT service costs and establish performance benchmarks.
"Hannaford is an excellent example of a company that is constantly evolving its service management strategy to help it exceed its goals for customer excellence," said Craig Macdonald, Peregrine's vice president of product marketing. "Peregrine's service solutions help IT organization evolve their processes and work agnostically with other IT solutions. Hannaford has been able to reduce operational risks and increase responsiveness to all end-user requirements because of the combined Peregrine and Tivoli solution."
About Hannaford Bros. Co.
Hannaford Bros. Co. is a multi-regional supermarket retailer and wholly owned subsidiary of Delhaize Group, an $18 billion company with supermarkets in North America and Europe. Hannaford supermarkets are located in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York and Massachusetts. Hannaford also provides IT service support to Kash n'Karry/Sweetbay, a second Delhaize Group chain, based in Florida.
About Peregrine
Peregrine Systems, Inc. develops enterprise software solutions that enable organizations to evolve their IT service and asset management practices for reduced costs, improved IT productivity and service, and lower risk. The company's asset and service management offerings – ranging from Peregrine Asset Tracking and Peregrine Service Establishment to Peregrine Asset Optimization and Peregrine Service Optimization -- address specific business problems. These solutions make it possible for IT organizations to maintain a changing IT infrastructure, manage their relationships with end-users and service providers, and gain greater visibility into how their IT investments are performing. The Peregrine Evolution Model provides a roadmap for companies that want to systematically evolve the sophistication and effectiveness of their IT operating practices.
Founded in 1981, Peregrine Systems has sustained a rich tradition of delivering solutions with superior functionality to a broad segment of the global enterprise customer market. Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., the company conducts business from offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.
Source: Peregrine Systems, Inc.