Engaging Students in Problem Solving Case Study

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Case Study: IT Service Management Practices
Presented by: Group Delta
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A: Introduction to the problem
Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) is a term that is used in the IT
environment to refer to the activities that involve in designing, creating, delivering, supporting
and managing the lifecycle of IT services. Any piece of technology that is used in our
environment (laptop, apps, printer, and/or services) is integrated into within our ITSM. Our IT
organization is responsible for end-to-end management of these services by using the software
called ServiceNow. This service management process is important for it helps to regularize the
structure through the delivery of the service and documentation. It implemented for the
benefits that include cost saving, addressing and resolving customers IT requests and incidents
and help IT business decision making.
The 3 problems that the organization faces at the moment include; customers not
knowing the difference between incident and request tickets, poor communication between
the IT end users and our customers with IT documentation in support (lack of proper
understanding) and lastly untimely incident resolutions. Our problem is due to negative
feedback from our customers/clients from service management. The solution for our company
is to collect survey, data, and feedback from our customers and leadership on how we can
better our service management practices.
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B. Company Background
Name of the company: Delta Technology Inc.
Type: Public
Founded: 2001: 18 years ago
Headquarters: Atlanta Georgia, United States
Industry: Information Technology
Services: IT Services and Consulting, Digital Workflow and Managed Services
Area served: Worldwide
Key people: Mutumhe, Chou, and McElveen (Directors)
Revenue: $2.83 billion
Total assets: the US $2.35 billion
Number of employees: 1300 to 1500 Employees
Website: www.deltatechnology.com
The name of our company is Delta Technology Inc. and our organization is in Atlanta
Georgia. We chose Atlanta Georgia because of its thriving and growing economy, and for its
technologically empowering community. Because our IT organization is in such a technologydriven city, our company has been able to grow in both size and client success. Across the
street from our company, you will find the Georgia Institute of Technology. You will also find in
our IT obsessed community of Atlanta big clients such as Deloitte, EY, CNN, as well as Turner
Broadcast. Our company is a mid-size IT organization with between 1300-1500 employees.
Because of our growing number of employees, we have been able to build an increasing
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amount of support within our workforce, therefore, increasing efficiency and workflow.
Because of our size, our organizational structure is specific as well.
Our organizational structure begins with senior leadership called directors. They are at
the top of the chain of command, we have three directors. What makes us unique is that they
all have an equal amount of autonomy over our organization. This sharing of powers allows us
to strengthen our communication skills. Our organizational structure can be best described as
bureaucratic. Our roles are clearly defined beginning with the three directors at the top.
Our organization has strict policies, procedures, and boundaries. We have a fully
developed employee handbook that outlines organization policies as well as employee and
employer rights as mandated by both the state of Georgia and the organization itself.
Furthermore, we have organizational deployments with set responsibilities for each member in
each department which varies based on departments such as customer service or web
development. Additionally, the flow of information begins at the top and trickles down through
the organization. You can also describe our organizational structure in further detail as
functional bureaucratic. This simply means that after the three directors at the top comes the
department managers who oversee the success of each department such as finance or
customer service. Because we have such a defined organizational structure, our political climate
is straightforward as well.
Our political climate can best be described as supportive and empowering at best. Of
course, sometimes conflict may arise, but it is due to personal issues that must be dealt with by
department managers, we don’t micro-manage our employees. Everyone in our IT organization
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understands what’s best for our organization. In other words, we are all on the same page. Very
few issues arise against our leaders, this is good. Everyone is on the same page. Furthermore,
our bureaucracy is on the same page as far as labor, earnings, customer success, etc…
C: Core Analysis
As a worldwide company with over 1300+ employees and depends on our companies
profits as success, it means depending on our employees (internal customers) to help us reach
that success. As an IT organization, this means staying on top of our technologies, processes,
training and tools that will allows us to meet our goals and objectives. Our employees are
consumers too. When they are working, we need to ensure that they also get the same great
experience from our internal IT support in order to stabilize or increase their productivity and
overall work satisfaction. Though our revenue reports show that we are doing well as a
company, there is always room for improvements and overcome challenges. To overcome
these challenges and more importantly, provide a better employee experience, businesses are
starting to look to smarter technology and enhancing service processes to attract and retain
talent. Addressing these challenges and improvements starts by listening to our employees and
providing them the tools for success. After conducting a survey within our organization,
majority of our employees felt that we did not have the best structure of our internal IT service
management. Employees would like better understanding on how we can address customers
tickets (incidents and requests), meeting the Service Level Agreement for them to have their
tickets addressed in a quick and successful manner. This would help support our external
customers and as well as overall work satisfaction.
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D: Status Report
With over 90% of our employees who participated in the survey pointed out the need of
improvement in our internal IT service management. As the organization leaders, we have to
take actions on the matter identified in order for us to support our employees and retain them.
After conducting the survey and reviewing the results, we took a further approach to
understand the problem in order to find the right solution. We conducted meetings with all
managers within the organization for them to collect more information from their employees
and for us to compile data and get a better understanding on what improvements or changes
they would like to see take place in this category.
The most common statement’s managers gathered from their employees regarding our
current service management practices included:
•
“Our requests take too long to be addressed,” – Operations Team
•
“I do not know when I should submit a request and when I should submit an incident.” –
Computer Services
•
“Tickets keep getting misrouted to the wrong groups” – Systems Team
•
“There are a lot of information to fill out for just one ticket” – Service Desk Team
•
“No knowledge bases on how to troubleshoot issues on our own” – Service Desk Team
•
“No proper training on how to navigate or run query’s in the ticketing system” –
Network Team
Having this type feedback from our employees allows us as leaders to find the best actions that
will best serve our employees and as well as for the business. After compiling all information
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and voice of customer, we came to an agreement that as leaders, we need to created training
that for our employees. The main purpose of the training/education is to focus on the IT service
management practices for our internal customers. These practices will cover and address all the
current challenges and issues our employees are facing within submitting their tickets and
getting them addressed in a timely manner. Our Information Technology Service Management
team will be the team that will lead this project in creating the training and process change.
E. Case Conclusion
After collecting and analyzing the information and data we received from our employees
(customers), it is now time for the leadership team, project team and stakeholders to address
some of the following questions.
1. Are there any known methods to prevent or reduce IT incidents or disasters based on the ITIL
framework the organization should adopt? Why or why not?
2. In the help desk department some of the new hires don’t know the difference between an
incident and a request ticket. Because of this the new hires are causing untimely resolutions
which is costing the company money. What would be the easiest way to break it down for the
new hires to understand the difference?
3. How would the company go about choosing the best ticketing system to save time and money?
Most ticketing systems require a lot of information in most cases the answer(s) are identical, but
the questions are related.
4. In our organization, new updates in our ticketing system can require specific changes to be
made according to how responsive and effective it is to our clients. From a service management
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perspective, is it better to test various system strategies before we officially select and deploy one
strategy, or should we weigh the costs of time more heavily and simply pick one strategy and
upgrade and just go with it?
5. In our organization specifically, IT protocols are standardized for employees set and designed
by directors in order to keep everyone on the same page, and to deliver a seamless experience to
our customers. If a new policy is implemented, what are some effective strategies we can use
under service management to communicate these policy updates to our customers that maintain a
positive experience despite changes?
6. How can we maximize our business value under our specific SMS, Service Management
System, defined by our optimal technology location, customers, customer location, and
organizational technology?