Since 1887, Marathon Oil Corporation has been a part of providing energy all over America. The company is a public petroleum and natural gas exploration and production enterprise headquartered in Houston, Texas.

Pat Nichols, Senior IT Systems Analyst, has been along for the ride for more than 40 of Marathon Oil’s 133 years of operation. She has witnessed many of the ebbs and flows the company has gone through and led teams through them all. Her current team manages Ivanti Asset Manager and Ivanti Service Manager for the entire company of roughly 3,000 employees.

Marathon Needed One Intuitive Platform to Rule Them All

With the ever-changing energy industry, Marathon Oil’s IT department needed a service management and asset management platform that could change with them through the years and provide a positive user experience.

Before Ivanti, Marathon Oil employed two different tools to try and manage requests and assets. The most recent tool became too large and complex for what was needed. The tool’s interface wasn’t easy to navigate and confused end users and IT folks alike. End users would avoid the portal by calling the help desk, sending one-off emails, or using the “sneakernet”—a term Pat’s team uses for those that just come visit the IT team in their cubicles. The goal was to allow users to get what they needed in less than three clicks to help mitigate all unlogged tickets.

After consulting together internally, the IT team decided it was time to change to a service management solution that was more intuitive for end users, could integrate with third-party applications, and was able to automate many manual processes.

Ivanti Partners with NCSI to Commit to an Impressive Deployment

When Marathon Oil started the search for a better service and asset management solution for its needs, Ivanti and partner NCSI answered the call. Marathon Oil had conducted research internally to understand what a new enterprise service management tool should entail. “We started down that journey and we laid out a whole list of items—the things we needed, the things that are nice to have, and the things we’d love to see in the future,” Pat said.

After many focus groups, a list of ideas that end users needed for a tool they would actually use was created. This included:

  • Ability to record an incident
  • The list of 200 service-request items in the current system needed to be migrated over
  • Automation
  • Ability to integrate with third-party systems
  • A CMDB that could simplify the information on the servers
  • Useful dashboards

Ivanti Service Manager, in tandem with Ivanti Asset Manager, fit the bill. With the help of Ivanti partner NCSI, Ivanti committed to a four-month deployment schedule and helped Marathon Oil save 70% of what it was paying previously, which amounted to nearly a half million dollars a year. Not only was the system deployed quickly, Ivanti Service Manager and Ivanti Asset Manager were able to provide the out-of-the-box experience users wanted through automation and consolidated views.

“The perception from the IT team is that the users say, ‘Hey with this new tool it’s so much more efficient. We don’t have to wait as long for items to be resolved and tickets get quickly routed to the correct teams now,’” Pat said.

Since implementing Ivanti, end users have actually adopted the practice of logging requests in Service Manager, resulting in time savings for IT administrators, reducing phone calls, and enabling IT to be more autonomous. End-users can still request the same things they need while the IT team more easily sees what tickets need actions.

Optimizing Asset Lifecycles and Managing Software Audits with Better Visibility

In addition to running the service desk, Pat’s team manages roughly 3,000 to 5,000 hardware assets and about 500 various software contracts. To be on the safe side, the team would overspend on software licenses and send hardware out before end of life because there was no consolidated location that hosted this information. “Some of the biggest value we have received from Ivanti is the ability to give answers quicker. I can quickly drill down into any of the assets very quickly. I can look at asset details and find out where things have gone awry VERY quickly. It’s not that I couldn’t do that with the previous tool, but you really did need an SQL skillset. Now, I as an admin can drill down and get answers quicker for my management,” Pat explains.

“With the Ivanti tool, we’ve got one place that we can go to look for both our hardware and our software.”

With Ivanti, this consolidated information now lives under one platform instead of lost in spreadsheets and numerous tools. When contract renewals come up, Pat’s team is able to see where the software is loaded, how many times it’s loaded, and be fully prepared if an audit comes around.

Requests Can Now Be Automated with Ease

The ability to automate becomes very important when you are a lean team. Pat expands on this idea saying, “Whenever we look at developing new forms or integrating with new systems, we are thinking of how can we have no one touch this ticket and still have the work get done.” With a variety of connectors, Marathon Oil can now streamline many of its tools and processes in one location. For example, users can access Ivanti Service Manager to request a mobile device. The request then integrates directly with a third party. The third party receives that request and issues the device directly to the user, eliminating IT as the go-between.

When a user completes an application request form, the request connects directly to their Active Directory and adds them to the appropriate Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) automatically. When users request a shared mailbox, it takes 10 to 15 minutes to create it automatically when previously this would have touched multiple groups, multiple times. Automation speeds delivery, eliminates manual tasks for the IT team, and makes for much happier end users.

When COVID-19 broke out, Marathon Oil responded overnight to keep users operating efficiently and was ready to take care of all end users—they have also taken care of employees through a few hurricanes! The IT department streamlined assisting users by providing a form to fill out to get additional monitors for their home offices. Users filled out the form and selected a day to come pick up additional equipment without having to make a phone call or coordinate further.

Automating Requests and Assets Further into the Future

So, what’s next for Marathon Oil? Automation. Automation. Automation. This will be key in keeping end users happy with a small and mighty IT team. With remote work becoming the next normal, the team will continue to find ways to automate and meet the needs of employees no matter the location. Marathon Oil will also look to add more connectors to better track and further manage assets and eliminate outdated tracking methods.

Note: A customer’s results are specific to its total environment/experience, of which Ivanti is a part. Individual results may vary based on each customer’s unique environment.