"A single integrated product was required to consolidate multiple processes and systems arising from a maturing company and a merger between Virgin Direct and virginmoney.com in 2002," Virgin Money Project Manager Denise Cunniam explained. The companies used various ITSM tools including Heat for Incident Management.

"Our internal customers also needed a single point of contact which we are providing with a central IT Service Desk," she added. Virgin Money considered 10 different products before narrowing these down to a shortlist of three.

Cunniam said assyst's adherence to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), internationally accepted guidelines for Best Practice in ITSM, was "a very big driver and differentiator in choosing assyst."

"But what really clinched the business for Axios was the professionalism of its consultants," she went on. "They're all ITIL-qualified and understood what we needed to achieve. They were not just interested in selling us a tool. It was also encouraging to know we could be actively involved in developing the product roadmap in future."

Ailsa Symeonides, Sales and Marketing Director of Axios Systems which has several hundred blue chip customers around the world, added: "It is marvellous to be able to add a member of the Virgin Group to our rapidly growing client base and particularly gratifying to have our staff's professionalism praised so highly. We attach great importance to understanding our customers' needs and providing post-sales support and experience of ITIL which are second to none."

Virgin Money is installing assyst across its operation at its central Service Desk in Norwich, initially implementing Incident Management to be followed by Asset and Configuration Management. This first phase of the implementation will also include an integration with its internal project management process.