Enabling ITSM to Prepare an IT Organisation for a Major ERP System Refresh
How a Focus on Developing New ITSM Processes Provided an Enhanced Level of IT Support & Controls Prior to a Major ERP System Refresh
A state-owned transport agency was preparing to refresh a large back office finance system. It needed to ensure that, once it delivered a level of IT operational controls (incident, change & problem), then support processes were in place. These would be capable of supporting the day-to-day operations of the system prior to it being released to the business. Federated model - Whatever new processes were required needed to underpin the broader transport cluster enterprise processes.
The expectation was to develop a series of agency specific processes & support capabilities. These would underpin the day-to-day operational support of the new system. The next step was to develop & deliver training workshops to uplift the internal teams with the revised capabilities and responsibilities.
While the IT operational teams had maintained a status quo over the years, the overall process maturity was low. Internal protocols had become out-dated and teams had adopted their own often separate ways of working. The organisation had been through significant change in recent times. And, the idea of a federated model was new. Teams had no practical understanding this method was to be adopted. Enhancing the existing ITSM platform was restricted, providing further complexities as to how much uplift was possible.
The service management specialists team-based on-site undertook discovery and analysis targeted at understanding the agencies specific support intricacies. They started to plan how to incorporate this information into the broader transport federated model. The team then developed an overall process development strategy and delivery plan. This would be implemented with the incident, change and problem management processes, creating a central intranet hub from where the processes and other supporting knowledge could be accessed. The team prepared and rolled out training as part of the organisational uplift, highlighting support responsibilities while educating the teams on the best practice process activities.
The new process-based body of knowledge was extremely well received, it assisted the internal operational support teams to adopt the improved support model. The team received accolades from the senior leaders and interest from the broader transport, in effort to showcase the processes as a working and practical model. In turn, this underpinned the target cross-agency federated operating model.