About MH Bland
MH Bland, founded in 1810, is a Gibraltar-based, family-owned company specialising in marine services, tourism, and travel. As a leading port agency operating across Gibraltar, Spain, the Canary Islands, Morocco, and Malta, the company provides vessel husbandry, marine operations, and repair services. In the tourism sector, MH Bland owns and operates the Gibraltar Cable Car and Calypso Tours, offering unique travel experiences across multiple destinations. Known for their reliability and innovative approach, MH Bland continues to lead in both the maritime and tourism industries.
The Challenge
As MH Bland expanded, its IT department faced increasing demand, but their existing systems lacked the tools necessary to manage this growth effectively. Without a dedicated help desk system, IT requests were sent through emails, phone calls, and in-person conversations, making it challenging to track, prioritise, and resolve issues systematically.
Managing assets also became a significant pain point. With hardware and software tracked in spreadsheets, the task of maintaining accurate records grew more difficult, and with their main IT hub in Gibraltar, managing these assets across several regions made it increasingly hard to maintain visibility into their overall IT performance, track recurring issues, and effectively plan for future needs.
Without a clear overview of workload distribution, resource allocation and training were left to guesswork rather than data-driven decisions. The IT team needed a solution to streamline operations while also being flexible enough to cater to the unique demands of the business.
MH Bland was looking for a system that could bring structure, efficiency, and scalability to their IT operations as they continued to grow internationally.
The Solution
To address these challenges, MH Bland implemented Halo in the autumn of 2022. The deployment was carried out remotely, with comprehensive training provided to the IT team, empowering them to tailor the system to their specific needs.
By integrating Halo into their daily workflows, MH Bland was able to leverage key functionalities that transformed their IT operations:
Help Desk Ticketing: Automated ticket creation streamlined issue tracking, ensuring that all user requests were logged, prioritised, and resolved efficiently. This improved response times and significantly enhanced user engagement and satisfaction.
Asset Management: A centralised database provided real-time visibility into the company’s IT assets as well as seeing a change history, eliminating guesswork. This was particularly beneficial given the global reach of the company, as it allowed them to track assets across regions, including Gibraltar and Spain, with greater clarity and accuracy.
Knowledge Base: A self-service portal equipped users with troubleshooting guides and resources, reducing dependency on the IT team for common issues. The ability to segment articles for different audiences (end users and IT staff) greatly improved the system’s effectiveness.
Project Management: IT projects were structured into clear, trackable tasks, ensuring accountability and progress monitoring across initiatives.
Reporting & Analytics: Advanced reporting tools gave MH Bland valuable insights into support demand, recurring issues, and workload distribution, enabling more data-driven decision-making.
Flexibility: MH Bland used the Change Management feature to track external changes, such as website updates, providing them with a single, organised record of all external projects.
With Halo in place, MH Bland’s IT department shifted from a reactive to a proactive approach, becoming more organised and better equipped to handle the company’s growing needs.
Results & Impact
The introduction of Halo brought immediate and measurable improvements to MH Bland’s IT operations. The company gained greater visibility and control over its IT activities, and the results were quickly apparent:
Data-Driven Decision Making: With detailed analytics on support requests, the IT team identified trends such as out-of-hours calls and recurring issues with certain assets. This enabled them to allocate resources more effectively and improve training for end users.
Optimised Resource Allocation: With the ability to track workloads, the IT team was able to distribute tasks more efficiently, ensuring team members were neither overwhelmed nor underutilised.
Strategic Workforce Expansion: MH Bland now has insights, such as the origins of support calls, to optimise staffing across locations, enabling them to plan future resource allocation more effectively.
Improved Asset Oversight: With a comprehensive asset inventory, MH Bland is able to make smarter procurement decisions, aligning their IT investments with company needs.
Outstanding Feedback: Since the implementation of Halo, MH Bland has received an average of 93% “Excellent” feedback on their support requests, reflecting the significant improvement in service quality and user satisfaction.
"If you'd seen our previous system, you'd think it's all a win-win. But I think the visibility of who's working on what, the workload we have in terms of projects or incidents, is probably the most important thing. Knowing exactly what our workload is and whether our projects are progressing as quickly as they should be is invaluable.”
Patricia Lane, IT Director at MH Bland
With Halo, MH Bland was able to transform its IT operations, bringing structure, efficiency, and strategic insights that enabled the company to continue its growth with confidence.
