HEAT Does Double Duty for Fort Worth, Texas (email this article)

FORT WORTH, TX (December 14, 2005) Recently named one of America’s Most Livable Communities, Fort Worth, Texas, considers its 22 governmental departments instrumental in enhancing quality of life for the city’s approximately 600,000 residents. When the city wanted to improve customer satisfaction in its Solid Waste Services Division and IT help desk, Fort Worth turned to HEAT® software from FrontRange Solutions and FrontRange Partner Alliance Technology for customization services.

Alliance Technology customized HEAT to serve as Fort Worth’s contact center and help desk solutions. With HEAT, two city departments – Solid Waste Services and the IT department -- are able to process more than 333,000 and 500,000 work orders each year, respectively. Furthermore, both departments have been able to resolve more calls on the first contact, reduce the number of calls and significantly improve customer satisfaction.

To improve customer satisfaction, the Solid Waste Services division, which is responsible for trash and recycling collection, chose to bring customer support for service delivery in-house. This decision resulted in the need to implement a call center solution and train staff in just 30 days. Alliance Technology expedited the HEAT implementation, configured the system to meet the division’s specific workflow and processes, and train administrators and end users in only 30 days.

Now, HEAT automatically routes work orders to the proper individual for action. This capability enables the Solid Waste Services internal team to handle an extraordinary volume of work orders each year.

“If we had to input all our work orders manually, we would need a huge amount of staff,” said Tara Simms, Customer Service Manager. “Without HEAT, there would have been no way for us to do everything we’re doing.”

Fort Worth’s IT department turned to HEAT to update its help desk systems to handle 44,000 calls per month from nearly 6000 city employees. Alliance Technology configured and customized HEAT to ensure that IT requests are approved then billed back to the appropriate internal work group. Using the HEAT Self Service add on, employees submit and view their requests online, reducing calls to IT and freeing the department to focus on the highest priority, know the exact status of each ticket and shift resources to keep response times low.

“HEAT could meet all our needs for an affordable price,” said Kent Yarborough, Senior IT Manager. “HEAT was so simple to work with that we could get it in place quickly.”
As HEAT proved its flexibility serving as both call center and help desk solution to Forth Worth, Alliance Technology brought local knowledge and a focus on the city’s specific processes and needs.
“Alliance understands how to match HEAT to our business processes and guided us throughout the implementation,” said Kate Yarhouse, Assistant Director of IT. “We couldn’t have done it without them.”

About City of Fort Worth
Located in north central Texas, Fort Worth is home to nearly 600,000 residents. Named one of America’s Most Livable Communities in 2004 by Partners for Livable Communities, Fort Worth consistently ranks among the top places in the nation to work, live and do business. The City of Fort Worth is comprised of 22 unique departments that handle everything from trash collection to emergency response to parks and recreation. Learn more about the city at www.fortworthgov.org.

About Alliance Technology
Alliance Technology provides support center and help desk planning, execution, performance maximization and technology implementations for business, government and education. The firm offers comprehensive on-site consulting including; workflow analysis, operational process assessment, project management, design and implementation of service desk solutions from start to finish. Additionally, Alliance augments product’s abilities through Web and database development, custom report writing, in-place system optimization, system integration and customized training. Alliance Technology is a State of Texas CISV Qualified Vendor. For more information, call (940) 321-6156 or visit www.alliancetechnet.com.

About FrontRange Solutions
FrontRange Solutions develops award-winning software and solutions used by more than 130,000 companies and over 1.2 million users worldwide to manage a wide variety of business relationships and provide exceptional service. FrontRange product families, designed specifically for small-to-medium-enterprise (SME) and distributed enterprise organizations include: GoldMine® for Customer Relationship Management (CRM); IT Service Management with HEAT® and ITIL standards-based modules for complete service management; Communication Management including IP Contact Center for reduced telephony costs and increased agent productivity, streamlined customer service and communications; and Infrastructure Management, which provides the ability to optimize the full lifecycle of a company’s assets. Customers representing 44 percent of the Fortune 100 and 76 percent of the FTSE 100, include Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, Prudential Securities, Électricité de France, Mack Trucks, Campbell Soup, Avaya, Bechtel Corp, Bank of America, and Turner News Network. For more information, call (800) 776-7889 or visit www.frontrange.com.