6.3 One-Stop ShoppingSeamless Delivery

6.3 One-Stop Shopping”Seamless Delivery

The service model should provide one-stop shopping for customers looking for IT services. The service model used at Xerox Corporation to provide support to the manufacturing and distribution operations contained five major work packages: Program Management 1.1, Support Services 1.2, Operations 1.3, Asset Planning and Control 1.4, and Help Desk 1.5. The service model was created with input and buy-in from the customers. The quality tools brainstorming, benchmarking, interviewing, and surveying were all used in the development process of the service model. Each of the five major work packages will be reviewed here.

6.3.1 Project Management

Program Management 1.1 contains many of the services necessary for support of the ISD organization. This is where many of the indirect services are located. One of the most important services in management of organization is contained in the Program Management work package. This is the level of service (LOS) agreement between the service provider and the customer. Because of this, there are a number of services placed in the service model to ensure that the LOS created is agreed to and maintained . Customer review sessions and service level improvement planning are two of the services that continue the process of customer involvement and support the LOS agreement.

This branch of the service model also deals with cost management. The cost charge-back model is maintained within this area. This includes the renewal of transfer agreements between organizations, and cost reporting to the customer and management to keep people informed of the current cost status.

In developing the service model at Xerox Corporation, one of the services the customers requested was project management. The customer was interested in being able to turn to one service provider when needing a resource to lead a project through its life cycle. A specific work package was created to provide services to support project management such as requirements gathering and project coordination. Figure 6-3 shows the services of the Program Management work package.

Figure 6.3. Program Management work package.

6.3.2 Support Services

The Support Services 1.2 work package (Figure 6-3) was created to group services centered on system monitoring, and tuning and maintenance of servers and databases. Reporting metrics on utilization of the environment and users support requests such as password resets, are included. The thinking here was to group ongoing type service activities that ensure continual operations of the environment. The three services in this work package could be performed by junior- and intermediate-level skill-set people with the proper processes and procedures in place. This would free the senior level people to concentrate on new development projects and be called in only when problems have escalated.

6.3.3 Operations

The Operations 1.3 work package outlined in Figure 6-4 contains the largest number of services. This work package contains three main work packages. The first is the server work package, which concentrates on the tasks for the server environments. This includes services such as backup and recovery, new server installations, and server documentation. In this work package we identify three levels of skills sets: senior, immediate, and junior.

Figure 6.4. Support Services work package.

The second work package centers on software. Services such as software installations, distributions of software to other servers, change control functions, and job scheduling are grouped in this area. One of the requirements from our customers was internal distribution of software to other manufacturing sites around the world. Services such as software configuration, release scheduling, and media creation were added to support the customer's requirement.

Figure 6.5. Operations work package.

The third work package contains services associated with database administration. In this work package many of the normal database administration functions such as database sizing, creation, and tuning can be found. The skill set to support this work package is the senior to immediate range. Tasks such as database password resets, database monitoring, and database reports are found in the support service help desk work packages, which are supported by junior level skill sets.

6.3.4 Asset Planning and Control

Asset Planning and Control is another set of key services important to keep the organization running. The mind-set here was to centralize the asset planning, purchasing, and control into one organization that would have the responsibility to focus on asset management. Before centralization of these services, many customers performed their own procurement of materials and developed one-off systems to track the assets. There was little synergy between customers. Each customer had their own processes to support these activities.

For example, procurement was another service requested by the customers during our interviewing sessions. Customers often complained about how painful the procurement process was. By offering it as a service, one group could become proficient in the procurement process.

Even though many customers did have a one-off tracking system for assets, they did not pay enough attention to it. Maintenance on assets would often expire, only to be uncovered when a service call was needed and rejected by the vendor. Customers would also struggle to keep an updated list of all the assets, and their location and lease expiration dates. At times, because lease expiration dates on assets would go unnoticed, penalties would occur. Because of these issues, asset tracking was offered as a service. Figure 6-6 shows the elements of the Asset Planning and Control work package.

Figure 6.6. Asset Planning and Control work package.

6.3.5 Help Desk

The Help Desk 1.5 work package (Figure 6-7) contains services to support a help desk call center, problem management, and training support. Xerox Corporation wanted the help desk to be more than just call routing. Our objective in creating this work package was to move services into this area that would allow the help desk personnel to gain experience that would enable them to grow into other jobs.

Figure 6.7. Help Desk work package.

To support this objective, one of the services that was placed within the Help Desk work package was the user profile management. This involved the creation of user accounts, password resets, printer setup”the type of activities that might be placed in the Operations work package. This enables the help desk to provide tier 1 and tier 2 support, along with providing valuable work experience to the help desk personnel.

Training was another group of services placed into the Help Desk work package. The idea here was to get the help desk personnel to provide training to the customers. The help desk personnel would be able to meet the customers and put a face to the name of the person placing a help desk call. It also gives the Help Desk an understanding of the type of problems and concerns customers are facing with their applications.

Figure 6-8 is a tree diagram used to systematically map out the services described in the previous sections. Each work package can be mapped back to the services outlined by using the "code of account" number. For example, "Support Service 1.2" maps back to section 6.3.2 Support Services. The tree diagram is just one example of how to display offered services to the customer.

Figure 6.8. An example of the full-work breakdown structure for an ISD organization.