Special Olympics Fast Tracks its IT Support with Numara Software.

Numara FootPrints Empowers Organization's Help Desk to Keep Pace with Worldwide Operations

TAMPA, Fla. -- Numara Software, Inc., a leader in service desk management solutions for IT professionals, today announced that Special Olympics, Inc. has deployed Numara FootPrints to automate its help desk activities and streamline the operations of its IT staff. An award-winning, web-based service desk solution that includes centralized issue tracking, online self-service tools, knowledge management, email management and comprehensive reporting, Numara FootPrints has enabled Special Olympics to increase overall employee productivity, capturing signficant time savings across departments.

Special Olympics, an international non-profit organization that employs sports training and competition to empower individuals with intellectual disabilities to become physically fit, productive and respected members of society, offers children and adults the opportunity to participate in 30 Olympic-type summer and winter sports. Special Olympics currently has more than 200 programs serving 2.25 million-plus persons with intellectual disabilities in over 160 countries, including China, India, the United States, Afghanistan and Rwanda.

In order to meet its mission to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition to millions of athletes, Special Olympics found it needed to embrace leading-edge technologies to manage its 150 employees worldwide. To keep pace with its growing technical support needs, the organization knew it needed to replace its cumbersome process tracking solution with an easy-to-use centralized tracking system that would automate its service desk activities and allow its IT staff to be more productive.

"Among the many solutions we evaluated, only Numara FootPrints was a perfect fit for our company because of its email-based functionality and reporting features," said Josh Crosby, IT operations director for Special Olympics. "Having previously run our operations via an email-based system, this product offered natural extension while giving us a centralized platform to capture all IT-related activities."

Supporting Special Olympics employees, Numara FootPrints is primarily used by the organization to track and manage all IT-related support requests and issues, such as software and network problems. In addition to calling and stopping by the service desk, employees and volunteers can now submit requests via email and the Internet, making it easier and faster to process and resolve technical issues. Leveraging the system's multi-project capabilities, other departments within the organization are now using Numara FootPrints as a comprehensive task management system to allow users to login and check the status on projects, activities, etc., all via the web-based system, regardless of their location. By allowing users from all over the world to access the system and update activities on which they are working, Numara FootPrints has greatly improved the Special Olympics team's inter-agent collaboration and task management processes, which are key to running the global operation's many different events.

"Numara Software's FootPrints products have enabled Special Olympics employees from around the world to efficiently track and manage activities that are vital to keeping the organization's operations running smoothly," said David Weiss, president and CEO, Numara Software. "We have great respect for the organization's vision to improve the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, and are pleased we've helped its employees and volunteers to spend less time on internal processes so they can place more focus on the athletes themselves."

To learn more about Numara FootPrints please visit Numara Software's Web site: http://www.numarasoftware.com/FootPrints.asp.

About Numara Software, Inc.

Founded in 1991, Numara Software, Inc. (formerly Blue Ocean Software) is a global provider of service desk management solutions for help desk and customer support professionals who need to simplify and gain control over their increasingly complex environments. Numara Software's trusted solutions address critical IT and support functions, such as service desk automation for internal and external support along with asset management, software patch and deployment, and network monitoring.

With its two flagship products, Numara Track-It! and Numara FootPrints, and more than 50,000 customer sites worldwide, Numara Software is the service desk management leader for small to mid-sized enterprises. To register for a one-on-one guided walkthrough, attend a webinar or download a trial, please call [phone] or visit: www.numarasoftware.com.