CASE STUDY

ENTERPRISE APP STORE

UNUM DEPLOYS
SHOPPING TO
PREVENT 14,000
HELP DESK CALLS
A YEAR - SAVING
$560,000 A YEAR
1Es Shopping is the just the ticket for Unum to
reduce the number of help desk calls on the one
hand and to drive up user satisfaction rates on
the other.

Challenge

Solutions

Benefits

Unum wanted to significantly reduce the

number of calls their help desk was
taking by empowering users to find and
download applications themselves in an
effort to increase customer satisfaction
and drive up business efficiency.

Unum initially introduced Shopping to

their users as part of a group-wide
desktop encryption package. 1E
Shopping was used to deploy the
encryption application, allowing users to
download and install the application
when it was convenient for them.

Shopping is now the primary method by

which requests for new application
software are handled at Unum.
Shopping handles more than 14,000 user
initiated calls every year (an average of
1,200 each month), letting users find and
download the software they need, when
they need it.
Based on the industry estimate of $40
per average help desk request , Unum is
saving $560,000 a year with Shopping.
Almost all user requests are now handled
within 10 minutes.

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ENTERPRISE APP STORE

Removing Delays and Irritation for Users, as well

as Driving Up Satisfaction and Productivity
About Unum
A Fortune 500 company, Unum is a
market leader in disability, group, life,
long term care and voluntary
benefits, supporting more than 25
million policy holders worldwide.
With revenues of more than $10
billion, Unum employs 10,000 people
across three major business
operations, based in Chattanooga,
Tennessee and Columbia, South
Carolina in the United States and in
Dorking, Surrey in the United
Kingdom. Unum operates more than
40 other office locations worldwide.

As one of the worlds largest employee benefits companies, Unum routinely deals with
very high volumes of information. With more than 500 pieces of software available
throughout the organization, many of them custom-written desktop applications, the
responsibility of keeping Unums workforce up to date and productive falls to Blake
Pease, Assistant Vice President of End User Computing.
My team is responsible for the standardized deployment of all our desktop hardware
and software, says Pease, and with that role comes the need to ensure every one of
our 10,000 users has the software they need to do their job.

We knew we needed to empower our users to get the software

themselves, and Shopping provided us with the perfect
solution.
Blake Pease, Assistant Vice President of End User Computing
Unum was using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) to
support large scale software distribution and Operating System deployments, but ad
hoc single requests from users for new software installs were still being managed
manually.
In the past, when users needed new software they would have contacted our help
desk, typically by phone, says Pease. That request would then have been assigned to
an administrator who would have checked for the proper approvals before visiting the
user at their desk to initiate the software install.
Unum had two objectives when they embarked on their installation of their Shopping
portal. First, the company wanted to reduce the number of help desk calls they were
receiving on a daily basis. And, second, Unum wanted to drive up customer
satisfaction rates by helping users to service their clients more effectively by giving
them the software they needed, when they needed it.
Typically users would wait between four to six hours for a request to be fulfilled, adds
Pease, which in some instances was having an impact on their ability to service their
clients.

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ENTERPRISE APP STORE

1200 Download Requests for Software Every

Month are Fulfilled Through Automation
About Shopping
Shopping empowers users to install
software, Operating Systems and
services at a time when it suits them
without disrupting their daily
workload.
The self-service automation of the
request, approval and delivery
process means users can download
the software and services from the
enterprise app store within minutes
and dramatically reduces the number
of software requests that go through
the helpdesk.

Unum was about to embark on a global roll-out of a new desktop encryption software
solution and took the decision that the installation would afford them as the perfect
opportunity to test the capabilities of their new Shopping solution.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity, comments Pease. We wanted to keep the
impact of the roll-out to a minimum. So rather than force our users to install the
encryption application at a time that suited us, we gave them the ability to download it
from Shopping and told them to install it when they had some time to spare during
their working day.
The user reaction was hugely positive, says Pease. Once people realized they could
use Shopping to download and install the encryption app when they wanted to,
without waiting for an administrator to turn up at their desk, word quickly spread.
Taking advantage of the customizable nature of the Shopping portal, Unum also took
the opportunity to rename their Shopping portal GetIT, which they felt reflected the
nature of the solution. Now a fundamental part of the Unums IT strategy, GetIT is
handling over 1,200 user initiated download requests for software every month.

About 1E
1Es suite of disruptive IT operations management tools save billions, solve problems
and simplify the management of large, complex IT environments in record time.
Designed with a singular focus to help drive down costs, 1Es solutions include tools for
IT asset management, Windows systems management and BYOPC.
Contact us
UK (HQ): +44 20 8326 3880

US: +1 866 592 4214

India: +91 120 402 4000

info@1e.com

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