Numara FootPrints
Customer Case Study

University Medical Associates uses Numara™ FootPrints® to automate the process of resolving technical support problems for its billing office employees, so they can focus on their day-to-day business operations. And with Numara FootPrints' Asset Management, (fully integrated with Numara FootPrints), UMA can track assets, evaluate purchasing needs, and manage upgrades for each PC at every location - without leaving their desks.

Key Requirements

Numara FootPrints provided a simple, low-cost solution with all the functionality UMA needed. Numara FootPrints offers a user-friendly, web-based system to support online self-service. UMA’s billing departments could continue to submit requests on their own, but through an easy-to-use, universally accessible interface from any Internet browser, in any location. No client software was needed. A critical feature for UMA was Numara FootPrints’ automatic email notification. The IT staff is automatically alerted to new issues via email, so they can quickly respond.

UMA also looked at FrontRange Solutions’ HEAT, but it was too expensive. Additionally, only Numara FootPrints offered seamless integration with Microsoft ® Active Directory, enabling UMA to authenticate users and access the system with existing information. Without this feature, the IT staff would have had to spend additional time establishing new log-in names and passwords for each user –inconveniencing employees as well.

Finally, the availability of Numara FootPrints Asset Management integrated with Numara FootPrints was important in providing UMA with a complete solution to automate all the activities handled by its IT staff. Numara FootPrints Asset Management offered a web-based add-on module to dynamically identify, locate, and report on organization-wide PCs and other network assets, hardware, software, and changes from directly within Numara FootPrints –without draining staff resources.

“We saw how Numara FootPrints could automate our largely manual support operation. Numara FootPrints Asset Management offered the same benefits for our asset tracking process, ”noted Prell. “Because it was fully integrated with Numara FootPrints, it made sense to do it all in one shot.”

The Numara FootPrints Solution @ UMA

Numara FootPrints for Web-based Help Desk Management

UMA deployed Numara FootPrints on a Microsoft® Windows 2000 Advanced Server, with users accessing the system through Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The installation was straightforward and simple. Numara FootPrints was up and running within a day, and was easily customized with the UMA logo and other features for a consistent look and feel. According to Prell, once Numara FootPrints was in place, “it practically ran itself.”

Today, all support requests are routed through Numara FootPrints for tracking and management. Users at UMA’s billing departments log onto Numara FootPrints directly to submit tickets online, identifying problem type using custom drop-down fields created by the IT staff. Based on this classification, Numara FootPrints automatically routes requests to the appropriate technicians. Three dedicated technicians handle issues related specifically to UMA’s corporate billing software. For networking requests –which account for the majority –Numara FootPrints generates an email to notify the other four members of the team, who immediately review and assign issues to themselves based on availability and expertise.

UMA uses Numara FootPrints’ centralized knowledge base to store solutions to system-critical problems, helping technicians quickly understand and resolve related issues. As a ticket is worked on, the IT staff updates progress in Numara FootPrints, which automatically dispatches an email to alert employees when a request is changed or closed. Billing department employees can also log on to Numara FootPrints at anytime to check the status of their requests.

Numara FootPrints Asset Management for IT Asset Discovery & Tracking

With Numara FootPrints Asset Management, UMA has also streamlined the process of tracking hardware, software, and other assets on users’ PCs. Powered by Centennial Discovery ™Web technology, Numara FootPrints Asset Management works seamlessly with the Numara FootPrints software to quickly and easily identify network assets, where they’re located, and what changes have been made to them. Information is stored in a central repository, which can be accessed via simple web interface from any browser.

UMA pushed Numara FootPrints Asset Management out to the 220 client machines currently running in its main billing department, and will continue to add it to the computers in the UMA clinics as they are added to the network. In minutes, IT personnel can run a complete report of any user’s PC configuration. This allows them to quickly assign cost values to each PC, and easily make purchasing decisions, assess insurance and licensing requirements, and roll out new applications and upgrades as needed.

For the full PDF version of this case study, click here.

Read additional case studies