Project Background
The Client is one of the world’s leading insurance and financial services providers, operating in both domestic and international markets. They have a presence in over 60 countries and the six continents, with 130,000 employees.
They had recently acquired three companies in the United Kingdom, each with separate desktop support and LAN activities. The client wanted a solution for consolidating and standardizing desktop support and LAN activities across all three companies. TBI was contracted by the client to conduct a desktop support benchmarking study for the IT units within each company.
Problem Summary
The client needed to establish a more standard desktop platform that could be deployed efficiently across all three companies. They also needed to determine what the cost would be to support a shared services environment and how to approach consolidation. The challenges faced were:
- determining the desktop hardware and software inventory for each company;
- understanding the performance levels and workload demand;
- determining how and where the technology support was most productively delivered; and
- determining the steps required during the consolidation process to achieve increased overall efficiency.
The Approach
TBI utilized its desktop support benchmarking database and analytical processes to examine the desktop and LAN support activities in each company. Data were collected on the workload demand, staffing, and hardware and software inventory. The analysis yielded a Background Technology Index for each company; the BTI is a measure that is used in TBI’s benchmarking analysis process to define the complexity level for desktop and LAN environments. Oversimplified, the results of TBI research show that organizations with high BTI’s tend to be less productive than organizations with lower BTI’s. Reducing the complexity of the desktop environment reduces support requirements and yields higher levels of productivity. TBI consultants reviewed the BTI for each company and compared and contrasted the commonalities and variations between the organizations computing environments; they also compared the BTI results
with other organizations represented in the desktop support database. After analyzing results, TBI created a model of the “ideal” consolidated desktop support organization for the client.
Successful Business Solutions/
As a result of TBI’s desktop support benchmarking and analytical processes, the client received an inventory of the IT components; and information on the relative complexity and productivity at each of the existing companies. They also received a proposal for a consolidated desktop organization, with recommendations for simplifying the environment so that greater overall efficiency may be achieved in support operations.
