Service Desk Management Works for Insurance Firm s Enterprise and SMB Clients

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1 Service Desk Management Works for Insurance Firm s Enterprise and SMB Clients Fortune 500 providing Group Life, Long-Term care and Disability Insurance to business clients worldwide. Grow IT Maturity using ITIL-based Best Practices for in-house service delivery. IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager By moving the Service Desk in-house and with the help of IBM s Service Request Manager, we have control of our own data and can now get the information we need to identify the changes we need to make to improve service delivery and make operations more efficient. Director, Service Management Reduced Mean Time to Repair. Raised Productivity of IT Service Delivery. Improved and Expanded Range of Services delivered.

2 Service Desk Management Works for Insurance Firm s Enterprise and SMB Clients Page 2 of 5 The Challenge: Raise IT Service Delivery This international, enterprise and business focused insurance firm delivers a full range of benefit packages that include disability, long term care, life and voluntary insurance products. With in-excess of 10,000 employees, they kept their internal IT staff of approximately 800 employees busy. The demands on the IT operations staff had led the firm to outsource service desk and delivery tasks to a third party. The outsource firm collected and maintained all control of data relating to providing standardized services. They served a number of firms and sent pre-defined reports back to their clients. Unfortunately, the number and variety of clients the outsourcer was supporting meant that customized services and reports were not given a high priority. Internal IT staff had a number of free-standing tools to perform assorted tasks. IT was not happy with the low level of operational maturity that hindered their efforts to better meet user needs. About the Insurance Firm Providing the proper mix and range of benefits and insurance packages to employees is a challenge in any economic environment made even more challenging and critical in the middle of today s economic uncertainty. This firm designs and administers plans for a global set of clients. They also track and report to their clients on emerging trends in employee benefit packages. Their ability to deliver services is highly dependent upon their capability to operate with highly reliable and efficient IT operations. The changes described in this case study will help to assure they will be able to achieve that goal. The existing reports provided by the out-sourcing firm did not meet the needs of the IT staff. Without access to and ownership of the data, IT had to depend on and work through the third-party supplier to analyze data and prepare reports. Without the ability to quickly access, flexibly analyze and report on the data as their information needs changed, IT could not generate the kinds of actionable information necessary to successfully address client needs. The outsourcing induced time lag in reporting and operational rigidity meant IT lacked necessary information that provides the insight to effectively and efficiently perform such tasks as problem identification and resolution, managing infrastructure changes, implementing configurations and providing an up-to-date Service Catalog. IT felt their customers were not getting the best level of service it was possible for them to provide. Bringing Service Desk and Service Catalog In-House The IT department was convinced they could provide more services at greater efficiencies by bringing the responsibility for data and service delivery -house. They believed by implementing and leveraging ITIL and identified Best Practices; they could improve operations and increase customer satisfaction while reducing costs. Such changes in operations in combination with a comprehensive Service Desk delivery and management solution suite would allow IT to operate at a more effective, productive and efficient level. The internal IT staff determined that in order to do their job most effectively they needed control of and responsibility for a specific set of functions. Based on industry best practices along with ITIL recommendations, they identified a minimal set of initial functions they wanted to implement in-

3 Service Desk Management Works for Insurance Firm s Enterprise and SMB Clients Page 3 of 5 house. They laid out a plan that allowed them to incrementally add to their responsibilities. The first wave of functions they wanted to take over included: 1. Service Desk operation; 2. IT Asset management; 3. Responsibility for incident, change and configuration management; 4. The creation and management of a comprehensive Service catalog. They further concluded that an integrated solution suite which could grow and expand along with the maturity of IT operations was better suited to their needs than a collection of tools. The IT staff began their evaluation process in the spring of Once they had identified and prioritized the desired functionality, the team was ready to begin a preliminary review of vendors and their offerings. The IT team began with a review of some twenty different vendors each promoting a fully integrated, multi-function solution suite. After a careful review of the vendors and their offerings, they narrowed the group to twelve. They requested each vendor to complete and submit a detailed Request for Proposal (RFP). They received responses from eight of the twelve vendors. From these, they selected the final three vendors who were requested to perform a Proof-of-Concept (POC) evaluation. Selecting the Winner The process of vendor and product selection from requirements definition thru vendor evaluation and completion of the POC testing lasted until nearly the end of During the evaluation process, there were point products that had more attractive user interface features but a lack of integration or functionality eliminated them from the final position. In other instances, it was the aging technology underpinning a solution that caused it to be dropped. In others, it was the lack of commitment to the Service Management market which was obvious in the offered solution suite that made the difference. It was outstanding and exceptional performance of IBM s response team and products that convinced the IT staff that IBM s Tivoli Service Request Manager and associated products would be the best solution for them. The chief POC performance points that made IBM stand out were: 1. Its comprehensive suite of fully integrated products; 2. User interface integration, consistency and interoperability; 3. Performance and functionality for incident management; 4. The collection and availability of out-of-the-box workflows; 5. Quality and level of support from the IBM POC team; 6. Price The IT team felt the IBM was committed and seriously investing in their Service Management product suite. The final decision of the winner was made in December and implementation began shortly after that.

4 Service Desk Management Works for Insurance Firm s Enterprise and SMB Clients Page 4 of 5 The Payoff The first stage of functionality has been successfully implemented and running for several months. The Service Desk was chosen to be the last piece implemented and has recently gone fully operational. The IT staff is very pleased and happy with their access to data and their ability to analyze and report results as they see fit. IT has seen benefits in such areas as: 1. Decreased Mean-Time-To-Repair using their access to data to pinpoint more precisely the cause of problems; 2. Better understanding of workflows and their impact on operations now able to identify problem workflows; 3. Increased efficiency in problem identification and resolution. One of the issues high-lighted during the initial implementation process was the poor state of the existing workflow processes. The IT staff was aware that there was something wrong before but had to way of identifying which workflows were causing the problems. With the data available, and the information obtained from their analysis, IT now knows where to focus their efforts on process review and improvement. They also have been able to document and quantify the extent of the workflow problem and its cost to the business. They have proven and will be able to quantify the benefit to the business in terms of lower cost and higher customer satisfaction that result from the more efficient and effective workflows. Co-operative Financial Services has benefitted in the following ways from using ILMT: 1. Reduction in the manual effort required to calculate PVU licenses. 2. Makes light work of calculating PVU usage where 'Micro-Partitioning' is being used (Rounds up at the Frame level as opposed to each LPAR). 3. Helps to highlight areas of under-utilization of assets (doesn't do it automatically, as I have to take the usage figures and manually enter them against license figures) In addition, the whole experience helped to build upon and advance an already close working relationship with the IBM support team. These have been especially helpful in assisting IT staff to deal promptly and effectively with problems and questions raised during the verification process Future Plans For CFS, ILMT is just one small portion of the solutions available from IBM IT software and infrastructure asset management. ILMT only discover IBM Passport Advantage software as it runs on the available, supported physical and virtual servers.

5 Service Desk Management Works for Insurance Firm s Enterprise and SMB Clients Page 5 of 5 IBM Advantage Software management Company Benefits Optimize software licensing Reduce over-/under-buying software licenses Reduce unplanned compliance payments Mitigate risk of regulatory and license noncompliance More accurately forecast IT software needs Time Savings Reduced time to prepare audit reports to document and verify sub-capacity utilization of servers. Improved remote IT staff productivity Cost savings Free dollars to fund new projects and programs Asset Discovery Improve hardware asset utilization and efficiency by discovery of hidden/under-used servers This paper was sponsored by IBM, Inc. No part of this document can be used in any medium without the written permission of Ptak, Noel & Associates LLC. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. While every care has been taken during the preparation of this document to ensure accurate information, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions. Ptak, Noel & Associates LLC makes no assumptions as to the potential return on investment that other organizations will receive. Ptak, Noel & Associates LLC opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. About Ptak, Noel & Associates LLC With a belief that business and IT success are inseparable, Ptak, Noel & Associates works with clients to identify, understand and respond to the implications of today s trends and innovations on the future of IT operations.