Company Description
Eandis operates in 234 Flemish municipalities and carries out the operational tasks for the distribution network operators. Eandis operates totally independently of the energy generators and suppliers. Eandis does not itself generate or sell any energy, rather it ensures that the electricity and natural gas reach our homes and businesses in the best possible conditions.
Role of the team
The objective of our team was to transform the ICT Service Management organization into a more efficient, better performing and more customer-focused IT organization. Our assignment was part of an overall change path towards more cost-efficiency, responsiveness and sound risk management. One of the tracks within this change program focused on processes. The IT Service Continuity Process ranked among the most critical processes.
Our approach
A process-oriented approach has the benefit that it gives the IT-staff the knowledge (transfer) to start with the processes and that it shows them how and why a process-oriented approach leads to a more service (and customer) oriented organization. In practice our approach consisted in:
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Process Enrichment: Identifying gaps in the existing process map based on best practices and effective processes to enrich it in a pragmatic way.
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Coaching: Guiding the senior IT management in their role as process owner. Supervising and monitoring the IT staff to execute actively and successfully their role in the process.
- Integration: Making sure that processes are end-to-end integrated. Only then an overarching process can be constructed that supports the entire life cycle of services. In particular the IT Service Continuity Process was assimilated with processes in the service design processes, risk management processes, architecture processes and also operational processes.
- Measuring & Know: Setting up a system of key performance indicators, key goal indicators and process compliance indicators to follow the process operation properly.
At the start we performed a gap analysis to identify potential enrichments of the processes according to the good practices: ITIL V2011 and Cobit 4.1.
Subsequently workshops were set up with key users to map the bottlenecks of the current process operation and to assess process enrichments in practice. Thus the processes were pragmatically improved, resulting in a great acceptance the IT staff.
In the next iteration the complete integration and unification of individual processes was discussed with different key-users, thus guaranteeing end-to-end processes and a proper and smooth functioning.
Results
Xedis managed to turn Eandis’ ICT Service Management organization into a more efficient, better performing and more customer-focused IT organization. More specific for the IT Service Continuity Management process we succeeded in its successful integration with the following interdependent processes:
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Demand and service level management – Since continuity always starts with capturing the needs.
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Architecture and design – Since continuity of a service should be established already in the design of a service in order to avoid unnecessary problems and costs in a later stage.
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Risk management – Since continuity measures should be proportionate to the size and acceptability of risks.
- Change management – Since the impact of changes in services on continuity (plans) should be assessed.
- Operational – Since continuity plans need to be maintained, tested and adjusted on a regular basis.