Member Article

North East NHS service desk joins international elite after securing SDI’s two star certification

NHS North of England Commissioning Support’s (NECS) IT Service Desk has been awarded an internationally renowned accreditation by the Service Desk Institute (SDI) for outstanding best practice. NECS is the only Commissioning Support Unit to hold this prestigious quality mark and joins a host of well know companies including O2, Kingfisher and University of St Andrews.

The Durham-based service desk supports over 20 customers across the country with 12,000 individual users. They currently employ thirteen Service Desk Analysts and five Senior Service Desk Analysts and deal with over 1700 calls a month. The NECS Service Desk was formed from four former Primary Care Trust areas (Tees, Durham, South of Tyne and North of Tyne), each with very different systems, processes and procedures.

Ian Harrison, Service Desk Manager at North of England Commissioning Support said “We are delighted to be awarded this certification by the Service Desk Institute, a lot of hard work has gone in to continuously improving our service for our customers and it is very rewarding to receive this recognition. Shortly after our formation we decided to pursue the SDI certification in order to build on solid industry recognised standards and give us the opportunity to embed improvements into our everyday practices.

“Being the first NHS Commissioning Support Unit in the country to be awarded the SDI certification is fantastic and confirms our commitment to delivering outstanding service to our customers. It is a credit to not only our team here on the service desk but the wider IT team across the organisation that we have achieved this in just nine months and I would personally like to thank everyone who has helped us for their hard work and commitment. We have now built a firm foundation and we would like to continue to progress with our SDC programme and ultimately aim for 3 stars.”

Howard Kendall, Master Auditor called the result an “excellent achievement… a good start to SDI certification, with significant improvements made since the initial assessment. The service desk is well positioned to be able to respond to the longer term support needs of the diverse customers it serves. At NECS it is clear to see sound leadership and commitment to service improvement and that has resulted in good customer feedback.”

The SDI Service Desk Certification standard is based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model and provides a clear and measurable set of benchmarks for a service desk operation. All areas of each service desk are assessed including customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction, policy and procedures and performance and results. By achieving SDI’s Service Desk Certification an organisation is demonstrating to both its customers and competitors that its support operation is truly dedicated to best practice.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Christina Pounder .