Retail, IT Operations and IT Service Management Assessment and Strategy Plan, Case Study

Situation

One of the world’s largest retail companies with 200 retail stores in the US was committed to

systematically improving service delivery and support. The CIO decided to formerly assess IT

processes and develop a Service Management Strategic Plan and implement improvements for

enterprise IT Operations based on ITIL.

Before embarking on a planned improvement project, the CIO approached me to lead the Service

Management and ITIL based initiative based upon my extensive experience in IT Service

Management and ITIL with numerous other companies such as Capital Group, Avery Dennison,

Nissan, Fujitsu and Alliance Data Systems. My objective was to evaluate the current state of its

existing enterprise IT service management processes and use the findings to develop the scope of

an internal service improvement and transformation plan and recommended overall direction.

What is ITIL?

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a series of documents used to aid the implementation of a

framework for IT Service Management (ITSM). This framework defines how Service

Management is applied within specific organizations. Being a framework, it is completely

customizable for application within any type of business or organization that has a reliance on IT

infrastructure.

Service Management and ITIL Improvement Benefits

It has been shown that by improving the processes around IT, organizations can:

Be responsive, consistent, measurable, and define quality in the eyes of customers

Reduce the cost of IT services

Ensure reliability, scalability, and availability

Align IT services with the current and future needs of the business

Improve project deliverables and timelines

Improve customer satisfaction

Action

Every organization delivers a service or product. For every service or product, the ITIL

framework helps manage delivery, industrialization, and support from inception to retirement.

The five stages of the ITIL framework include:

Service Strategy

Service Design

Service Transition

Service Operation

Continual Service Improvement

Each stage in this service lifecycle supports all the other stages.

It was decided that our initial improvements should be focused on core ITIL Service Operations

processes that included Incident Management, Change Management, and Problem Management.

The selected IT processes were assessed against a 5-scale capability maturity model (1 =

initiation, 2 = awareness, 3 = control, 4 = integration, and 5 = optimisation). Structured

interviews with operational and strategic personnel were also conducted to deliver understanding

of the culture of the organisation, its service ‘outlook’ and its responsiveness to change.

After all the evaluations and interviews were completed, a comprehensive assessment report was

generated for the CIO and shared with the entire IT and business leadership team. Alongside the

baseline maturity levels of each process, and observations of current operations, the report

contained recommendations on how to take each process forward.

Our findings included the following:

Overall Service Management Maturity

Enterprise Level Recommendations

Complete development of a Formal IT Service Management Adoption Plan

Execution of a Communication Plan

Integration of IT Service Management Practices into an Effective IT Management

Strategy

Build a strong culture of accountability

Define comprehensive SOWs and SLAs with vendors

Build better contracts for services from vendors

Develop ITSM Training Plan

Automate reporting

Automated process integration and CMDB implementation

Develop stronger key performance indicators (KPIs), critical success factors (CSFs) and

stronger metrics

Institute an Enterprise-Wide Continual Service Improvement Model

Implement Customer Satisfaction Survey

Maturity Level for Key Process Areas

Change Management

Quick Wins Recommendations

Ensure that procedures for initiating change are always adhered to

Ensure communication at beginning, during and upon change completion or failure

Ensure that standards for the documentation of change are adhered to

Develop stronger Policies and Standards

Develop metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and critical success factors (CSFs)

Ensure that adequate change management reports are produced

Ensure personnel responsible for Change Management are suitably trained

Validate – Ensure that the Help Desk is aware of changes

Review completed CRs before closing

Document Change Managements objectives and value to the business

Make better use of forward schedule of change notifications

Incident Management

Areas for Remediation

Inconsistent understanding of the entire Incident Management process, including

escalation procedures, service level objectives, customer communication and Incident

closure requirements and benefits

Lack of a formal escalation model driven by Service Level Agreements that spans both

hierarchical and functional escalations and includes customer notification triggers

Lack of an enterprise-wide monitoring process to ensure service level compliance

No integration between Incident Management and Problem Management to support

Incident Matching against the Problem and Known Error databases

Lack of enterprise wide Incident Management Service Objectives tied to manageable Key

Performance Indicators and a consistent reporting mechanism

Lack of automation between processInadequate staff levels and skill types for workload

mix

Lack of training

Incident Management

Quick Wins Recommendations

Formalize and Mandate Priority Usage and Eliminate Urgency-Driven Escalation

Define an Incident Management Accountability Structure Empowered to Enforce

Incident Management Service Levels with Tier 2 Teams and 3rd Party Suppliers

Formalize Incident Management Service Levels and Develop a Structured Escalation

Model

Match incidents against the problem and known error database before opening a new

ticket

Open CRs if needed during incident mgt

Perform study of the workload mix to determine the required staff levels and skill type to

support dynamic workloads

Ensure Incident Management personnel are suitably trained

Document Incident Managements purpose, goal, objective and value to the business

Develop stronger key performance indicators (KPIs), critical success factors (CSFs) and

stronger metrics

Implement Customer Satisfaction Survey

Problem Management

Areas for Remediation

No instance of a known error database

Lack of a automated, formal and consistent method for creating Problem records, relating

these records to Incidents and RFCs, and creating a

Known Error Database within the ticketing system

Lack of sufficient reporting

No metrics, KPIs, CSFs

Lack of automation

Lack of training

Problem Management

Quick Wins Recommendations

Ensure all Problem Records are complete

Regularly produce standard automated reports

Develop a Known Error Database

Document Problem Managements purpose, goal, objective and value to the business

Develop metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and critical success factors (CSFs)

Improve current Problem Management reporting

Ensure personnel responsible for Problem Management are suitably trained

Focus on all levels of reoccurring problems, not just P1

Results

Armed with the findings of the ITIL assessment, the IT team embarked on a high impact service

operations improvement project. Using the findings provided by ITIL assessment, the team set

itself new targets and focused on changing the service management culture and improvement on

the core operations process areas.

First, the initiative started with the entire IT team taking ITIL training and certification with

QuickStart. The goal was to build a service oriented culture and provide the tools needed to

implement change in the organization.

Second, we focused a select number of ‘quick wins’ that would deliver maximum payback while

visibly boosting service delivery to the business.

Just 8 months later, the IT and business leadership teams were able to see dramatic

improvement for IT Service Operations Delivery.

Retail, manufacturing and distribution applications and systems availability was consistently

higher, incident response and resolution was improved, reoccurring problems backlog was

significantly reduced, the overall number of tickets was reduced and the number of missed SLAs

was near zero.

These reports help high-light the improvements gained by implementing ITIL

ITIL assessment and improvement can bring about dramatic change for service operations that

positively support business operations.

VALUES AWARD

As a result of this project and improving and providing consistent quality of IT service in key

areas of business operations I was awarded a Values Award. These are the companies way of

recognizing and rewarding people for living company Values.

If you have any questions regarding IT service management or ITIL then please let me know.

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