Organization:
Producer of high-quality construction materials.
Challenge:
Replace manual process for handling and approving user requests for system and account access, set-up, and application changes with an automated system to eliminate lost approvals, inconsistent processes and lack of control, as well as to provide an audit trail for approvals.
Results:
- Reduction in routine request fulfillment effort from 5 days to 1.4 days.
- Electronic documentation provides audit trail for approvals.
- Service Desk and local IT offices save approximately 50 hours each month sifting through paper.
At this environmentally responsible producer of high-quality construction materials, five regional locations supply aggregate-based materials and contracting services to a wide range of projects including both large, publicly financed infrastructure jobs and commercial and residential developments. In addition to crushed stone, sand, and gravel, the company produces ready-mixed concrete, asphalt, and concrete products. Some regions offer recycling, liquid asphalt, soil remediation and retailing operations.
To keep a large, multi-location company successful, it’s critical to have rock-solid core business processes that run like clockwork. That’s why the company’s end-user-services manager was concerned about inefficiencies in a manual, paper-based system for handling user requests for system, application, and account access and set-up.
While the IT Service Desk is based in its corporate office, the manager is responsible for the company’s desktop support and Service Desk operations, and managing three full-time Level-One people who support approximately 1,600 end users and 13 Level-Two desktop personnel who support all five regions. The manager explains his concern, “User frustration among all of our lines of business was growing as approvals were lost or delayed by days and fulfillment lagged far behind expectations. Part of the problem was due to incomplete original user request submissions, which required requests to be handled by multiple employees and rerouted for approval signatures. In the end, it took longer than expected to fulfill user requests.”
The manager estimates that this extra time added up to an average fulfillment cost of at least $300 or more for each request. There were added costs: training and retraining IT staff responsible for execution of requests; lost time for end users who were not able to perform job functions because of execution delays; and the reworking of requests. “The problem basically boils down to an inconsistent and poorly managed process that offered average control and lacked solid and consistent accountability and audit capability to support our Internal Control Systems (ICS) compliance efforts,” he says.
A whole new landscape with automation and accountability
Using Kinetic Request, the company replaced its manual user-request process with an automated system that provides uncompromising reliability and accountability. “The most noticeable improvements we’ve seen are that user requests are completed the same day instead of over several days, and instead of taking us 10 hours of processing/fulfillment time, we can normally handle a request in one day or less,” explains the manager.
The system prompts the user with questions that lead them to correct responses needed to fulfill the request, and immediately routes requests to the appropriate system approvers under ICS control. System Approvers find it quick and easy to locate, review and approve the requests. “We don’t lose time having to resubmit a request because the information is incomplete. Today, we are correctly capturing everything we need the first time. What’s more, the system captures and stores all approvals for audit trails,” he says.
In charge of training Service Desk employees on Kinetic Request, the end-user services manager observes how easy it is to learn and use. “It’s all there—the information that needs to be entered before the system sends it off to the right person(s) for approval. And it’s all captured. If there’s a glitch, we know where it is and can easily respond with the quick and proper solution. Kinetic Request is an amazing enhancement to our BMC Remedy system. That’s why we’re planning to leverage its power to automate our other key ICS controls, general IT requests, and maybe even other business functions.”
Cassy Lueneburg