Project Background
The client was a major global bank that was undertaking a Six Sigma project focused on optimizing the corporate-wide Service Level Management process for both insourced and outsourced IT service delivery. TBI was retained to assist in this effort as an expert in Service Level Management techniques.
Problem Summary
The IT services groups’ internal business customers lacked a straightforward and effective way of establishing Service Level Agreements and identifying required service improvements. The client’s current methods often caused errors, confusion and frustration. Business customers needed to rely on the use of multiple processes that were slow, difficult to execute, and which failed to provide a comprehensive customer focused view of IT service delivery. Business customers had to make numerous contacts to negotiate individual component service level agreements with multiple service providers. Due to the fragmented process, valuable service improvements could not be effectively prioritized for the IT service Business Partners.
TBI’s Approach
TBI provided Service Level Management (SLM) best practices and process guidance, as the expert, on this Six Sigma initiative. We worked for several months in a coaching capacity with the bank’s national, cross-functional team that was charged with improvement of the SLM process, advising them throughout their process definition and reengineering workshops and on-going working sessions as they prepared input to their senior executive steering committee on:
- Current SLM process and performance
- Industry best practices in SLM
- SLM process optimization goals
- Process measurement
- The target process design
- Definition of needed process change
- Implementation plans
- Associated cost and benefits of the recommended optimization process.
Successful Business Solutions
SLM process innovations that TBI recommended and actively provided guidance on included:
- Development of user guides and standard Service Level Agreement templates for both in-sourced and outsourced services
- Establishment of a “self-service” repository of information on Service Level Agreement and metrics methodology
- Design of customer focused (end-to-end) metrics
- Integrated presentation of strategic and operational level metrics.
TBI also participated in the team effort to develop educational presentations for management on the subject of Service Level Management, developing best practices content for strategic overviews on Service Level Agreements and Service Level Management Process Improvement. Additionally, TBI worked with the team to construct change management and stakeholder communications plans to facilitate the implementation of recommended process improvements and their linkage to other on-going Bank change objectives.
The forecasted results of the recommended process improvements were:
- 75% increase in Business Partner satisfaction
- 50% reduction in errors
- 30% reduction in cost.
