Services firm aims to achieve £12m savings and gain better
network control.
Services firm Centrica is implementing network management software
to give it better control of its infrastructure, help implement new
business processes and reduce total cost of ownership as part of a
company-wide transformation programme.
Centrica is using Hewlett-Packard Openview Service Desk management
software to help it standardise on ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)
business processes - a set of best-practice guidelines to help
organisations build an IT service management framework.
The firm has also implemented BMC Patrol enterprise management
software. The whole transformation project will cost £14m but the
company aims to save £12m a year in service delivery costs. It has
already saved £6.3m. It also expects a 20%-30% reduction in
downtime.
Last year Centrica, which encompasses British Gas, roadside support
firm the AA, telco One.Tel and financial services firm Goldfish,
began a four-part transformation project to implement business
processes, automation tools, enterprise management software and
reduce staff.
"Our aim is to improve internal customer satisfaction, reduce
downtime on mission-critical systems, enhance our ability to absorb
large projects and acquisitions, give clear guidance to staff and
reduce our service delivery costs by £12m a year," said Karen
Gillespie, Centrica's service delivery strategy and development
manager.
Gillespie said the reduction in downtime will be largely down to
the close integration between the HP Openview Service Desk software
and its BMC enterprise management system. The BMC system will
generate an incident "trouble ticket" and channel it via the HP
system, where it will be picked up by IT staff.
"That is where we are taking a lead - getting the HP Service Desk
software so fully integrated with our enterprise management
software. Benchmarks are few and far between," said
Gillespie.
Centrica has 35,500 staff in the UK. It logs 400,000 incidents a
year, relating to such things as broken PCs and call centre
downtime, and carries out 40,000 changes. The HP system will
capture, monitor and escalate alerts and incidents and support the
subsequent change and problem management.
Gillespie said the HP system is more intuitive than its predecessor
- an incident management system from Peregrine - and the number of
screens used to report an incident has been cut from four to one,
which should save between five and 10 minutes on each report.
The company aims to implement as much of the HP Service Desk
software as possible "out of the box" to avoid the problems it
encountered with its highly tailored Peregrine system. "It became
so complex it wasn't upgradeable," said Gillespie. To compound
matters, when Centrica was looking to replace the system, it found
that Peregrine had recently filed for Chapter 11 protection under
the US bankruptcy code.
Centrica was also keen to get away from the people-based approach
required by the old system - especially it was trying to reduce its
headcount. "Every time we did a project we had to keep adding
people," Gillespie explained.
The company aims to go live with three HP Openview modules -
Incident Management, Change Management and Problem Management - in
August. A fourth module, Service Level Management, is due to be
implemented in the second phase of the project.
The project is not without its problems, however.
"For us network management software is absolutely essential. It is
what we run the IS service delivery on - it underpins the whole
business," said Gillespie. "This project is complex and it is
high-risk. We will have to go big-bang when we swap over from
Peregrine to HP in August, otherwise we would have to duplicate all
the data."
What is Centrica doing?
Centrica aims to implement HP Openview software across its
business to help manage its IT environment and implement ITIL
business processes. Openview software has a range of different
functions, including application management, network management and
device availability.