Absolutely Positively ITIL
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Business Objectives Solution Business Benefits |
The Knowledge Solutions team at Wellington City Council provides IT support to the 1,500 employees and more than 40 business units which administer New Zealand's capital city.
These business units, including Finance, Housing and Parks and Gardens, all depend on IT to operate effectively. Two years ago the Knowledge Solutions team realised that a range of incompatible legacy systems (handling tasks such as asset management, change and incident management, and help desk administration) were preventing the team from offering the best possible service.
"We wanted to provide a seamless and integrated service to our customers but these dis-integrated systems were a stumbling block," says Wellington City Council Customer Services Manager Peter Borich.
The team investigated implementing a solution that was based on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology, an emerging standard which is designed to assist in the provision of high quality IT services.
After preparing a thorough analysis of its requirements, the Council issued a Request For Information (RFI), to verify whether a packaged solution was available. The RFI generated about 15 responses, from which a shortlist of five vendors were approached for detailed proposals.
Borich says Delta Software was selected as the successful candidate partly because of the functionality of the product it was supporting, Infra, and partly because of the company's track record.
"In a technical sense Infra was web-based and up to date. Delta Software really understood what we wanted to do, they also understood ITIL, and the feedback we got from other customers and users was good, very good."
At the heart of the implementation was Infra's Configuration Management database (CMDB), the 'glue' which would bring all of the legacy applications together.
Unlike a lot of other software used for integration Borich says the CMDB in Infra was "mature," and this, together with preparatory design and definition work carried out by the Knowledge Solutions team, contributed to a successful implementation.
The new system based around Infra went live, on time, in April 2005 and was integrated with existing security and access control systems, while replacing the formerly non-connected applications for asset, incident and change management.
There are a number of benefits that the Council has already realised from the implementation, including better visibility of good and bad activities around the IT service support process.
"It's been the springboard for a whole new way of dealing with our customers," says Borich. "We've got more information about them and things like our service level agreements are embedded into the system. Generally the whole game has been lifted."
Borich says the system has also led to a "major improvement" in the quality of management reports which are now also much faster to prepare. "Previously it used to take ages to get this information out, but now we can see where we are going and which areas we need to improve."
Borich says the initial April implementation was just the start.
In the next stage a portal will allow staff to log their own requests on a website, and subsequently track their progress online. "IT people are good at managing systems and problems but not always so good at managing the process. This system will help us" concludes Borich.
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