The Challenges of Selecting ITIL Aligned Support Desks
Case Study – Micro Focus:
What faced Martin Baker, IT Director at Micro Focus, and his Board was not the merits of applying ITIL® (IT Infrastructure Library), but the strategic choice of either aligning its internal IT Support application to ITIL or replacing it completely with a Commercial Off the Shelf Solution (COTS) – in order to mitigate risk at a critical growth stage.
Micro Focus, a FTSE 250 company provides application, testing and management software and arrived at a juncture where it had doubled in size as a result of the company acquiring Borland and a division of Compuware.
As a result of the acquisition strategy the company increased significantly the number of employees it supported overnight as well as adding an additional 46 new geographical office locations to its remit, a challenge for any IT organisation.
Baker reflects on the decision this presented the company at the time; “We had a comprehensive internal IT support environment entitled RITA or ‘Request IT Assistance’ but this wasn’t ITIL aligned and with one eye on the horizon we knew we had to start to implement plans to apply best practice standards in what we did.
“Our acquisition programme was quickly being realised and we had to make the decision to either expand RITA to become ITIL aligned or look for a COTS Solution to fulfil this requirement. There were pro and con arguments for both routes, but ultimately we had to make a realistic decision about how much internal resource we would be able to commit to such a change to RITA, especially in times of great flux. We chose off the shelf and became ITIL aligned.
“With the decision made to review the market and implement ITIL, a globally recognised standard, we benefited in being able to recruit the best applicants against this standard, which in turn will help us in our organisational wide Service Management implementation.”
Soon after, Micro Focus quickly appointed Sarah Hutt to Head its IT Support Services division and take responsibility for the ITIL project. The challenges faced by Hutt were not unique, but her approach was.
As a highly regarded IT Service Management Specialist her appointment to Micro Focus was a shrewd move which has seen the organisation implement not just a new IT Service Management Solution, but one that has the capabilities of improving organisational efficiencies across multiple departments such as Facilities, Finance and Marketing… and benefits within the IT Service Management area are being realised only four months after go-live.
Hutt takes up the story from Baker; “As an international organisation we have a ‘Follow the Sun’ 24×7 internal support service approach, supported by a team of 14 based in the UK, Europe, US & Asia. One thing I noticed early on into my appointment was that although there were many processes and procedures in place they didn’t comply with our newly instigated vision of becoming ITIL aligned.
“As Martin has already explained, we were faced with up-grading our existing system or purchasing a solution already aligned to best practice. In some ways I was lucky in the fact we were in effect a greenfield site in this regard. On the flip side this meant there were no universal standards for ITIL and few people were working toward a best practice standard.
“So the first objective in my new role was to source a Service Management application which would assist me in the implementation of ITIL best practise processes. This had ramifications as RITA, the in-house system, also supported other departments, so we were faced with how we continue to provide the other departments with a ticketing application. Did we continue to support the in-house system for this purpose? Or do we bring them with us on our ITIL journey? We chose the latter, and brought them with us.”
An extensive four month review period for a COTS solution commenced looking at product scope, flexibility, functionality and reputation of the provider in the ITSM marketplace. In total fifteen options were identified from emerging SaaS models through to Business Process Management (BPM) ITSM Solutions.
Therefore the selection criteria focused on the eventual solutions flexibility, ITIL alignment, Total Cost of Ownership, Cross Departmental Integration, from work flow visibility from incoming call/notices, incident and call resolution rates through to trend analysis. Micro Focus selected ICCM Solutions, a flexible turnkey technology underpinned by BPM architecture from Metastorm®.
Hutt gives her analysis on the selection of a BPM Service Management Solution; “The Service Management strategy that Micro Focus is implementing needed to be built on a system that would provide us the greatest flexibility, it needed to be innovative and allow us to create clear efficiency gains within the business.
“From our initial review of the BPM Service Management platform from ICCM it was clearly a functionally rich out of the box ITIL aligned product. We could clearly see applications for the solution that could be applied beyond just the IT Service Desk and would quickly get us on an ITIL path from what was a standing start. And we didn’t have to re-invent the wheel.
“One of the biggest advantages for me is it’s easily configurable and can be applied across multiple departments due to the nature of its BPM architecture. It is a flexible and process rich solution with a variety of ‘standard’ out of the box ITIL processes. Coupled with a very polished look and feel, I knew instantly it would get us quickly on our ITIL journey. Our only constraint would be the customisation of the system to work within the parameters of our business.
“Within the first 12 months we have already implemented Incident, Problem and Change Management. And over the next 12 to 18 months we are implementing a Service Catalogue function, Configuration Management, Event Management and Release Management into our IT Support environment.”
Future:
Hutt concludes by discussing the future vision of ICCM’s BPM Service Management Solution within Micro Focus; “As I’ve mentioned we’ve only been live with this system for a relatively short period of time. And already I’ve had discussions with department heads, such as facilities, which are looking to expand the system into other parts of the business as they can and are seeing value on what it can do.
“New departments which were not involved in RITA are looking to become part of the new project as well, such as the legal team. Obviously here their requirements scope is very unique from most other departments of the business as they are handling confidential data relating to the business and our client base.”
Future Departmental Examples of Best Practice Include:
- Finance: From an internal sales perspective tickets are raised between sales and finance order entry, relating to customer queries regarding renewal notices, serial number requests etc. These elements need to be raised and passed onto finance to ensure invoicing can be adjusted accordingly
- Facilities: With multiple sites and locations, assets need to be maintained to a high standard. Therefore the reporting of issues and requirements such as requests for office moves, damage to facility infrastructure such as faulty lighting or the request for additional furniture can be handled through ICCM. This increases the visibility of the asset infrastructure managed by the facilities team, in turn giving an accurate view of the quality of the estate improving the asset longevity
- Marketing: From a marketing perspective this department will be using the reporting capabilities in handling website queries i.e. an individual employee may report a broken hyperlink or request a copy change to the website. This ensures the issue is reported to the team and corrective action taken allowing for a proactive rather than reactive marketing strategy
Hutt adds, “But the really interesting and innovative applications come from other parts of the business. For example whilst starting to look at integrating into Facilities and Finance for individual departments we will be investigating the ability to automate processes that go across departments rather than just vertically into them. The first initiative we’re potentially looking at is mapping how HR requests impact across multiple departments.
“When a recruitment request comes into the HR department, is approved and a job offer granted and accepted we will be able to create an automated trigger into Finance, IT and Facilities. Once these are completed, and in place, triggers will go back to HR for sign off.”
Innovative organisations and evangelists, such as Hutt and Baker, within these companies see the benefits of a BPM Service Management solution linked to an ITIL aligned strategy. They see how Service Management strategies can and will help the whole organisation achieve improvements in efficiencies. These programmes will help the bottom line of the organisation and are convincing the Board, Business Managers and Stakeholders the importance of an IT Service Management Strategy based on Business Process Management in a bid to attain a Service Management programme.
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About Micro Focus:
Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization, Testing and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk.
For additional information visit www.microfocus.com