A facility management service provider wanted to digitise its service processes. After six months, 150 person-days had been used up, costs were rising, and no method was working correctly. The company turned to an enterprise service management (ESM) specialist. Its experts quickly brought the project to a conclusion.
Unfortunately, such situations often happen: companies plan an enterprise service management project but often struggle with unrealistic cost estimates from the commissioned IT service providers. They usually want to sell the project and often overlook how much workforce such projects require. They think they can do it all in passing.
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Enterprise Service Management: More Than Just Knew IT
The service provider cannot provide the customer with a fixed point of contact with the development team during the project. Technical inquiries then come to nothing or must be channelled through the project management cumbersome way. And you usually look in vain for documentation of the respective project steps, based on which the employees could work independently.
The frustration is excellent when the IT project gets into trouble, and the software cannot be used, even though licence and maintenance costs are constantly incurred.
The already mentioned facility management service provider was also in this situation, who then commissioned an ESM specialist who, using a dual approach of consulting and development, realistic cost estimates and multi-stage offers, regularly started to rescue stuck IT projects again to get on the right track. So also in the present case. The customer bought an ESM solution to replace an existing tool. A comprehensive enterprise service management should be set up with the software, including non-IT processes, for example, from the human resources area. After six months of no success, the company pulled the emergency brake.
Hardly Anything Was Stringently Brought To An End
First of all, an inventory was made. Four phases of development were initially planned: the necessary processes up to the go-live of Release 0, change management processes, onboarding processes and interfaces. Each had been doctored, but none had been rigorously completed.
The house stood in parts, but the wind blew through everywhere. And the question was in the room: “What has been invoiced for 150 man-days up to now?”
A significant shortcoming was, among other things, the fulfilment processes for shop offers and the general change management process, which practically did not exist. The LDAP connection with the authentication was missing, as was the user synchronisation. Training and workshops had not yet taken place, so nobody knew what to expect with the new ESM tool. The mobile application was also not yet adapted. In principle, the complete deployment did not exist, from development through testing to production.
Enterprise Service Management: Reduce The Scope
In this situation, only one thing helps: Reduce the scope and say goodbye to being able to finish every thread you pick up immediately. So the Munich ESM specialist set about getting the basic system up and running technically, with fundamental processes such as registration and mobile access.
The essential ordering processes (from software and hardware to services and workwear) have also been reinstalled. To date, ten onboarding processes in HR have only been described in a rudimentary way and set up even more rudimentarily. A straightforward simplification of these processes was ensured here: Instead of process control of the activities, the team relied on more straightforward process control of the requests.
Double The Output In Half The Time
In the end, all four development phases were put back in proper order. About a third of what had been done so far could be used to continue the project. The rest was set up from scratch. However, this was only possible in half the time the previous service provider spent on it.
When planning an ESM or other IT project, customers should always make sure that the technical contact persons at the IT service provider are always available. You should also proceed iteratively – it is better to set small project goals and go live one after the other than to work towards the big bang. Ideally, a minimum basis is created first – a standard installation at a fixed price with customer-specific standard customising. From this basis, you can then expand agilely and little by little. The facility management service provider learned from the project: If you only run such an IT implementation on the side and are not focused on it, it will get out of hand. It’s good that the ship could still be brought back on course in the end.
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