ITSM Guidance & Advisory Reduces Unplanned Business Disruption
How an Iconic National Accountancy Reduced Incidents & Improved IT Change Controls
An iconic Australian national accountancy firm needed to respond quickly to a recent period of IT-related disruptions which was seriously impacting the credibility of IT within the business. The focus was on stabilising the day-to-day IT controls while undertaking an ITSM based improvement program.
The recently appointed CIO had formed an internal process improvement team, tasking them to undertake a complete refresh of their existing ITSM Control Processes (incident, problem and change management) prior to implementing an ITSM toolset. Service management specialists were engaged to provide ITIL-based expertise while providing mentoring, overall guidance and direction to the improvement team.
Business demands had increased over the years. While IT had attempted to provide an acceptable level of service, IT was still being seen as a cost centre which provided low value. The key driver was to fix the basics first by identifying and targeting short-term tactical improvements. This would reduce the noise and start to substantiate the repositioning of IT as an enabler to the business.
The majority of the improvement activities needed to be allocated across the internal teams provided an opportunity for upskilling and understanding of IT operational basics, all while delivering tangible improvements.
Kirk Penn from Service management specialists undertook a maturity assessment workshop with the key IT management. The improvement team identified and validated gaps and areas for improvement across their existing incident, problem and change management processes. Following the workshop, a clear roadmap and improvement plan was developed. Thus, combined with weekly progress sessions where further mentoring and guidance was provided by service management specialists to address specific areas, it indicated where further help was needed.
The improvements became real within weeks; the total number of incidents reduced by 10 percent within one month. Improvements to basic change management controls were implemented and adhered, which immediately reduced major disruptions to the business. The internal improvement team was empowered to drive change and were subsequently tasked to lead the implementation of a new ITSM toolset.