Salvage Direct Optimizes Alloy Navigator to Streamline its Help Desk Management Processes

Established in 1998, Salvage Direct is a leader in online salvage auction firms which uses the Internet to market recovered vehicles of all types. The company’s 24/7 online auctions allow insurance companies to liquidate huge inventories of boats, motorcycles and other vehicles to certified dealers and dismantlers easier and faster than ever. The firm concentrates on specialty lines, such as boats, yachts, motorcycles, RVs, and ATVs, together with automobiles and trucks. Salvage Direct provides recovery, electronic filing, storage and auctioning services to its clients. Predominantly in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, the Salvage Direct network includes clients in Texas, California, and Washington.

 

 

Salvage Direct is an Internet-based company and nearly a third of its workforce works remotely. According to Jerry Millin, Director of Information Systems for Salvage Direct, his company required an IT service desk management solution that could help manage issues and requests about its hardware assets better.

 

“We are a very mobile company and ensuring laptops and cell phones were with the proper person and at the correct office was nearly impossible,” he said. Our company was growing rapidly and it was clear that we needed to search for a better, more organized approach to IT governance.”

 

In 2007, Salvage Direct evaluated four service desk management platforms including Alloy Navigator from Alloy Software - a leading provider of IT service and asset management software solutions. “In the end, it was an easy choice for us to select and deploy Alloy Navigator since it was cost-effective and flexible.

 

The other solutions that Salvage Direct evaluated were too expensive and did not allow the company to customize the product to meet their unique requirements. Plus, Alloy Navigator provided Millin and his team with the ability to use the product with minimal configuration so that they could get started right away.

 

According to Millin, the company enabled their customers to create service requests electronically. "We implemented the product's Mail Connector which allowed emails to be automatically converted into tickets. In addition we began directing our customers to the self service portal where they were able not only to submit their requests, but also monitor the progress of their tickets and communicate additional information to our support team, when needed," he said.

 

Through simple Incident Management, Salvage Direct has been able to increase its customer satisfaction by proving resolutions to issues much quicker and with greater accuracy. In addition, the product’s integrated Problem Management feature helped the company realize an 80 percent decrease in monthly support calls. According to Millin, support calls dropped as the product’s Problem Management assists Incident Management by identifying reoccurring issues and encouraging the technical team to devise permanent solutions rather than minute workarounds.

 

“Before Alloy, we only had email and a spreadsheet that our technical support team used to track all incoming calls,” said Millin.  “People would have to email and call in numerous times as the support team was overloaded and incidents would pile up.  With Alloy, our users' incidents are now properly tracked -- they can see the status of their incident(s) online and none of their issues slip through the cracks.  Our support calls dropped 80 percent as our users weren't calling multiple times for the same issue and constantly following up on their tickets. Now that tickets are centralized in a single location, the helpdesk can resolve them more efficiently and quickly, which increased customer satisfaction.”

 

“Before implementing Alloy Navigator, we were averaging nearly 2000 support calls each month. We now log fewer than 300 each month.  This has freed up our help desk staff to take on more responsibilities which is so vital to our business,” he said. 

 

After enjoying much success with Alloy Navigator, Salvage Direct’s next step is to fully implement the Change Management capabilities of the product.