EMC Infra Service Desk yields growing benefits for Central Garden & Pet
EMC Infra US Case study
May 2008
Central Garden & Pet Company produces quality branded products for the garden and pet supplies market. The organization provides speciality independent and mass retailers with staples such as grass seed, weed and insect control and decorative patio products, while pet categories include everything from animal health, aquatics, reptiles, birds and small animals to dog, cat and equine supplies. The Fortune 1000 company, which has its headquarters in Walnut Creek, California, reported net sales of $1.67 billion for 2007.
Central comprises of a decentralized and largely autonomous group of 20 business units with a total workforce of 5.000 employees – posing a challenge for the IT function. In order to support a disparate array of historical applications and systems - including over 40 Active Directory domains, 20 email systems and an equal number of ERP systems - IT resources, contractors and third party suppliers, had mushroomed in over 14 locations. While the quality of IT support provided was excellent in places, in others it was patchy or even poor; and from a company-wide perspective, an insecure and incomplete network and an inability to introduce standards or leverage existing IT investments were becoming increasingly pressing issues.
Against this background, and mindful of the need for better controls in order to achieve cost-effective regulatory compliance, the company decided the time had come to manage IT as a shared resource.
Implementing ITIL best practice with EMC Infra
Key milestones in effecting this organizational sea change were the adoption of ITIL best practice and the selection of EMC Infra’s scalable Service Desk software to underpin a new enterprise-wide approach to IT service delivery.
‘Clearly in setting out to turn Central’s traditional approach to IT on its head we were undertaking a huge cultural and operational challenge,” comments Pete Keenan, Service Desk and Governance Manager at Central. “At local level many business managers were happy with the status quo, and implementing ITIL processes, in the initial stages at least, seemed to them more ‘pain’ than ‘gain’.”
However, committing to the common language and definitions of ITIL proved an essential step in transitioning the existing IT landscape - with its 52 staff and11 stand-alone ‘helpdesks’ - into one virtual Service Desk backed by three strategic IT support teams: for Operations, Enterprise systems and Business Intelligence. According to Pete Keenan, the company relied heavily on EMC Infra to support the ‘culture shift’ to ITIL.
“We selected web-based EMC Infra for its process automation and powerful, flexible workflows,” he explains “Prior to this Central had no concept of enterprise level IT Service Management, but in the end, EMC Infra’s sheer usability helped to win the doubters over to a new way of working. The software has not only enabled us to implement streamlined processes for Incident and Problem management, but to ensure operator compliance as well.”
Reaping IT Service Management rewards
Since implementing the EMC Infra solution, the number of customers supported by the new-look Service Desk team has leapt from just 80 to over 2,200 employees located in 95 sites. As call volumes increased, and against a background of rapid organizational change, the Service Desk team of 7 analysts grew increasingly confident in its ability to manage and resolve Incidents, delivering measurable improvements in service levels. Initially just 2% of calls were being closed on first contact in an average time of 13 minutes, but over a period of just 12 months this rose substantially to 55% of all calls being resolved in less than 4 minutes.
Introducing EMC Infra’s Problem/Known Error software contributed markedly to the efficiency of the Service Desk team, allowing it to be more proactive in notifying users of issues and to spot trends. Central was also able to publish Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the first time, spurring the team on to deliver even better service and setting up new lines of communication with customers.
“Implementing SLAs using EMC Infra has had the single greatest impact on Service Desk efficiency and customer satisfaction,” maintains Pete Keenan. “In the first month alone we saw a 36% increase in the number of calls closed at first contact, while our ability to meet agreed SLAs leapt to over 50%.”
Automating SOX compliance with EMC Infra
Although Change Management was a core component of Central’s new Service Desk strategy, introducing this discipline proved challenging with the company quickly concluding that some of its early policies and procedures were simply too cumbersome. At this point, Central decided to take advantage of the powerful workflow design and automation functionality in EMC Infra Version 8. The resulting redesign of policies and processes reduced the number of Change types and enabled streamlined workflows.
At the same time, regulatory issues were prompting closer examination of ways in which Central’s IT management team could better support business requirements. As a result, the IT Service Management team expanded its remit to include developing processes, standards and disciplines for SOX compliance.
As Pete Keenan puts it, “ I was hired by Central in 2006 to build an IT Service Desk, but this quickly burgeoned into managing the SOX compliance activities as well, and for good reason!
“Today 50% of the approvals we need from a SOX perspective are automatically captured by the EMC Infra Service Desk tool, and we estimate that applying the ITIL framework to our SOX processes has halved internal auditing costs in the last two years.”
Having built firm foundations using EMC Infra software, Central is focusing on the further development of its current processes. There are also plans to roll out the Service Desk concept to additional business units in the coming year.
According to Pete Keenan, “Through the adoption of the ITIL best practice framework and our selection of EMC Infra Service Management software, Central Garden & Pet has made great strides in a relatively short time – and hit upon a solution to cost-effective regulatory compliance along the way.”
“EMC Infra has exceeded our expectations, and crucially the software has proved more than flexible enough to meet our rapidly evolving needs,” he concludes.
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