"Anyone hiring you will gain huge benefits from your procedural efficiencies and your mentoring expertise."
Fergus Garrett, Operations Manager, eircom IT
Client Stories
Once-off operational improvement initiatives may provide a company with immediate results in the short term or results within a specific area of the business but their immediate benefits will not be sustained unless the initiatives are part of an overall framework of operational management.
We work with companies on operational improvement programmes that are built on the backdrop of the ITIL framework. This ensures that any operational improvements are implemented under best practice service management and are a building block to achieving an ITIL ethos and continued efficiencies in an organisation.
Business Consultancy
:: Sustainable IT Cost Reduction
The Client
A large corporate telecommunications company located in Dublin, Ireland.
The Problem
The operational service availability to the business was being severely impacted by the outages in the supporting infrastructure.
Business Impact
- Cost to the business while the service was unavailable.
- Cost to the support desk processing the increase in incidents reported.
- Cost to management in dealing with escalated incidents.
- Loss of business revenue while services unavailable.
- No processes in place to ensure no future occurrences of the outage.
Glencarse Consulting's Contribution
We worked with the client assessing the common reasons for the outages and using our best practice knowledge implemented a key set of operational improvements, which resulted in removal of additional operational costs caused by the outages.
- The service improvement programme achieved a decrease in service disruption attributable to IT changes from 31% to 5.6%
- Implementation of Change Management to control changes to the production environment and reduce outages caused by uncontrolled change.
- Separation between Incident Management and Problem Management. This facilitated restoration of normal operations as quickly as possible and the implementation of a final resolution to avoid a re-occurrence.
- Changes to service level agreements and availability plans to reflect business requirements and agreeing planned down times for changes.
- Staff motivated by benefits of changes and self efficient on new practices.
- Staff motivated to continue with service improvement inititaives.
:: Stragtegic IT Alignment
The Client
A large corporate telecommunications company located in Dublin, Ireland.
The Problem
Majority of the business cases being proactively managed were to achieve business functional benefits however the infrastructure supporting the business was being reactively managed and becoming out of date.
Business Impact
- Components of infrastructure were out of warranty
- Maintenance contracts were not providing best use of operational budget
- Proactive migrations to new technology not being progressed
- Ability to utilise new technologies limited by aged infrastructure
- Aged infrastructure not retired from production, leaving unnecessary operational costs
Glencarse Consulting's Contribution
We worked with the client management team to put in place a structure and processes that proactively managed the existing Infrastructure Programme of Work. This programme of work had to continually look forward three years from a requirement and planning perspective and ensure that infrastructure project briefs were triggered and projects planned and managed to meet the objectives and manage the operational costs for the company infrastructure.
- Three Year planning process implemented for all components of hardware and software supporting the business production environment
- Centralised management of maintenance contracts
- Design and rollout of a Project Management process for the infrastructure projects
- Integration of the PM process with the infrastructure life-cycle
- Mentoring and training of project managers and infrastructure managers
- Operational dashboards created to manage warranty on components
- Staff motivated by benefits of changes and self efficient on new practices.
- Staff motivated to continue with service improvement initiatives.
:: IT Quality Management
The Client
A software company providing automated trading solutions to financial institutions.
The Requirement
The company wanted the mark of highest quality standards for their organisation.
Glencarse Consulting's Contribution
The objectives of the engagement were to implement an effective Quality Management System for the company, which would as a result improve the quality and effectiveness of their products and services, and to establish a quality ethos across all departments.
We worked with the client management team planning and managing a Quality Programme, major process definition and refinement and bringing the company through to achieving ISO9001 Tick IT accreditation in 12 months.
The Quality Programme encompassed many divisions, not just those ISO applicable. Glencarse ensured procedural best practice was applied in all of the following areas:
- Programme/Project Management
- Design, Development, Testing and Delivery
- Release Management
- Documentation and Training
- Operational Processes
- Product and Customer Support
Training and Mentoring
:: Prince2 Training and Mentoring
Company goals were to ensure that the team of project managers were trained on the framwork of the Prince2 methdology and its benefits. The project managers were to be skilled to a level of detail to allow then to make decisions on tailoring Prince2 to adapt suitable practices and consolidate with their existing project management practices.
:: Project Management
Project Manager was operating on a high profile project for the first time and required mentoring on producing an effective project charter. The Skills Academy worked with the individual one hour per day for one week to get the format and content defined in a structure that uses best practice.
:: Business Planning
Entrepreneur had found her stumbling block was the physical creation of the business plan. The Skills Academy worked with the individual creating a structure for their business plan. Then operated two hours each week on the specific sections of the business plan supporting the progress.
:: Home Computer Use
Home User wanted to learn basic workings for email, internet and social media. The Skills Academy worked with the family in their own home covering the functions that they required. Contact with friends, sharing photos with family members abroad, booking flights or hotels, research for school projects. This operated on two hours each week until the family were self sufficient.