Cloud-Optimized ITSM Solution Maximizes IT Value Globally through Increased Service Levels and Enhanced User Experience

Overview

Three years ago, Croda’s IT department sought to replace its existing and increasingly limited help desk tool with an all-encompassing Service Management solution with cloud-based central access, offering ITIL best-practices methodologies.

The formerly on-premises help desk tool was slow, approaching end of life, and decentralized—with responsibilities spanning local IT departments. Croda was unable to track tickets accurately and produce reports on help-desk performance, and it still invoked paper processes for requests in places. Croda’s management agreed that a unified approach was required and appointed a new team to drive change led by Stacey Evans, Group IT Services Manager, Croda Europe Ltd.

Evans recalls: “In short, Croda wanted to take massive advances in automation and enhancement of the help desk function to include users’ logging requests and incidents, and critically, delivering catalog management within our highly audited and regulated environment. We knew that we would only achieve success by implementing an all-encompassing solution to facilitate IT service management.”

Solution: Ivanti Service Manager, powered by Heat

In 2014, Group IT Services consulted Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for guidance on major service management suppliers and created a list of four vendors — with the team weighting functionality against requirements in a full Supplier System Review.

Using these results, Croda conducted a three-month proof of concept (POC) with the remaining two shortlisted vendors. As a result of the POC testing, Ivanti’s IT Service Manager solution, powered by Heat, was selected in early 2015 for rollout. Self Service, Service Catalog, Incident, and Change Management modules were deployed in a phased rollout program.

Incident Management was the first module Croda selected strategically to build user confidence and credibility using one unified, accessible solution to offer timely and global servicing of requests. Previously, users would submit helpdesk calls to their local IT department, who would route the ticket to the appropriate support team. This onward manual routing meant that Croda was unable to record volume of incidents and tickets were lost frequently, decreasing user confidence and resolution.

With the Incident Management module enabled, open tickets were migrated to the new system. All 4,239 users went live on Day 1, logging new incidents online and tracking their status through to resolution. Users tell IT as simply as possible what the issue is, leaving IT to define whether it is an individual problem or an incident. Where problems are identified, Croda can now correct them centrally, consulting known issues and minimizing impact proactively by identifying the root cause more quickly. Resolution for groups of common incidents is automated with root cause analysis, enabling effective, speedy closure. Multiple incidents are flagged centrally, defined, and resolved far faster — mitigating business impact.

Today, more effective Incident Management is engrained in the Croda user experience, with Service Level Agreements established that monitor the time to respond and resolve. Group IT Services tracks progress continually and has noted a 5% reduction in unresolved incidents greater than 21 days since go-live, currently 16.3%.

In terms of self-service and empowerment, Croda’s Service Catalog module lets users request all service offerings directly online. All service requests go through a configured approval process, turning authorized requests into approved and documented orders. This detailing within the service catalog module has saved substantial time for auditing and compliance across the business, by controlling, automating, and documenting which users have access to applications. Given that Croda is highly regulated with numerous audits per year, the noted time savings on previous reconciliations have been significant.

Increased digital productivity, automation, and best practice across departments

Usage results continue across departments outside of IT and are especially evident in automating processes such as new staff onboarding, which was entirely paper based previously. Usage has allowed HR to digitally request and enable new employee hardware, software, and local site facilities — and to request approvals and implement policy and control—all to coincide with new starters’ joining dates.

Deploying effective Change Management has also been pivotal for Croda’s analysts. Previously, technical changes were logged in SharePoint and managed by Central IT through complex workflows that weren’t immediately audited as changes occurred. Throughout the year, changes would be risk-profiled, planned, implemented, and overseen, and then added to the following audit. Today, the processes within the Ivanti Change Management module have been modified to fit Croda’s vision of moving change rollout from being handled individually at its 68 local sites to central alignment and servicing standardized change requests.

Evans summarizes, “Using Ivanti’s ITSM has delivered so much more than the helpdesk solution that we had previously. You simply can’t compare today’s ITIL-based processes and outputs. We continue to gain user productivity and decrease time to resolution and we have also benefited from substantiated audits as the solution becomes further engrained into the Croda infrastructure. It’s a great total management solution that develops as fast as you determine, with little vendor intervention, and it allows for your own business’s digital customization along the way.”

_{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.}