Sealord
When an ITSM project is well funded, meticulously planned and fully endorsed, it is possible to overcome obstacles. At Sealord Group in the IS team, we discovered that they were able to recover from an unexpected glitch in the plan, find an alternative pathway and achieve results.
The ITSM initiative was the brainchild of IS Manager Andrew Dean, inspired by the Proactive "ITIL in the Real World" event held in Wellington in May 2003. Andrew was able to lay a solid foundation for the eventual project in the months following. Key staff members were given Foundation Certificate training very early on, enabling them to speak in a common language.
At the same time Sealord invested in consultancy services. Maturity assessment was done, showing the team where they needed to concentrate their initial efforts.
After this initial period of consultancy and assessment a project was created and a dedicated project manager was appointed to lead the charge. One of the most important factors in the initial success of the project was the ability of this person to get the business support; the project was fully funded and had the highest level of company sponsorship possible at executive level. Resources were made available for the entire team to undertake Foundation Certificate training, the project manager completed the ITIL Manager’s training, and allowances were made for backfill resource to free up staff for training and project involvement.
A major part of the initiative was the decision to replace the outdated Help Desk tool with a full IT Service Management toolset. Invitations to submit expressions of interest were sent to 15 vendors. Four products made it through to the final selection after a very rigorous selection process. These four vendors traveled to Nelson to demonstrate their toolset abilities.
As expected, all the toolsets demonstrated were able to cover ITIL processes, so the final selection was very close. However, one product was consistently voted number one across all criteria, leading Sealord to select Serio, supplied by Verso Solutions Ltd.
It was at this time that we were hit with an unexpected change to the team. We were installing the new ITSM software on the server when our project manager announced his imminent departure. We were hit with a sense of disbelief and were left wondering "what now&".
We had a few options - make do with the existing in-house resource; employ a new fulltime project manager; or use the original consultant to drive the project. None of these options really struck us as being appropriate.
Another choice presented itself. Kirstie Magowan from Verso Solutions was able to work closely with us in a consultancy role to continue the progress we had already made.
This vendor-client relationship has been a key factor in our success to date.
So how far have we come in our ITSM journey?
We have strengthening business ownership of systems and data, emerging Service Level Agreements and business input to the change management process.
Serio has helped us put strong incident management in place. Our customer feedback tells us that we are now doing a much better job at meeting expectations.
We are separating problems from incidents, although Problem Management is still one of our weaker areas. We plan to send our newly appointed problem manager on practitioner training in the near future to drive progress in this area.
Change Management is one of our big winners. We have clear repeatable processes with change models established in Serio. The team has accepted the need to follow this process and we are starting to reap the benefits.
We are excited to now be moving ahead with Configuration Management. We have used our toolset to "discover" our servers and have added these to the CMDB. This gives us the bones with which to build and maintain our Service Catalog structure.
This is obviously an ongoing journey. The formal project will finish shortly with a review and repeat of the ITSM Maturity assessment, which will guide our future efforts.”
ABN AMRO Craigs
ABN AMRO Craigs is New Zealand’s largest Retail Sharebroker with branches and affiliates across the country. ABN AMRO Craigs deal primarily with retail investors across services such as portfolio management, cash management, investment advice and sharebroking.
ABN AMRO Craigs Service Desk manager says “Right now we support over 200 users, but the company is expanding into new products and services at the moment, so that number is rising.
“We have most of the normal backoffice functions you’d expect in a company such as ours - trading desks, research activities, corporate service, scrip, settlement, fixed interest, cash management and custodial services - so IT plays a crucial role in the success of our company.
“We’ve used Serio since 2000 to manage these systems - Serio played a key role in the integration of ABN AMRO New Zealand’s retail sharebroking arm into the company and the later acquisition of Merrill Lynch’s New Zealand retail services.
“Serio was a key component in the introduction of our new Transaction system and continues to be critical to the management of our relationship with the system provider.
“We rate Serio very highly in terms of ease of use and functionality, and have found the Knowledgebase facilities extremely useful for our repeat calls. Having resolution information easily to hand is a great help.
“One thing that we find remarkable is the quality of after sales support and service - it really is exemplary. We also get quarterly product updates so we benefit immediately as Serio continues to be developed, so we can in turn continue to extend the support offered by our own Helpdesk.”
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