HP congratulates Boral on its ambitious “Pathways Initiative” project
SYDNEY, Australia, 25 October, 2007 – HP today congratulates Boral on winning this year’s Best ITIL Implementation (Project of the Year) Award at last night’s IT Service Management Awards hosted by IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) of Australia at WatersEdge in Walsh Bay, Sydney.
Boral has embarked on a comprehensive and complex improvement project to consolidate two very different corporate functions into one unified process framework. The project was developed around IT information library (ITIL) and IT service management (ITSM) methodologies.
Before October 2005, IT Services and Financial Services at Boral operated as two distinct corporate functions, supporting the highly diverse customer base of six Boral business divisions. The team at Boral recognised that one central point of contact for these services would be simpler and more cost effective across the business units and so formed Boral Shared Business Services (SBS).
With different teams having developed their own processes for handling customer requests, migrating to one unified process framework presented a considerable challenge. Given the high level of demand and complexity of delivering consistent levels of customer service to the Boral businesses, it was vital that the processes be lean and simple to ensure they were easy to use and follow. Having efficient processes in place would free up Boral SBS staff to concentrate on proactive problem solving and further continuous improvement initiatives.
“I knew we could find a better way to bring all the pieces together. Rather than throwing more resources at the problem, we looked for industry best-practice, and ITIL was the answer,” said Kelvin McGrath, General Manager, Boral SBS.
ITIL is a globally recognised collection of best practices for information technology service management. It provides businesses with a customisable framework of best practices to achieve quality service and overcome difficulties associated with the growth of IT systems.
The timing of the ITIL implementation was considered essential to the success of the programme. Before the introduction of the new ITIL processes, the various teams became accustomed to the new structure and at the same time recognised that a unified approach was required to service the needs of Boral SBS customers.
A programme of work known as the “Pathways Initiative” began in October 2005 across Boral SBS to implement the ITIL processes of Incident, Problem and Change Management. In conjunction with process improvements, the Pathways initiative established an integrated Service Desk, in-house monitoring of IT infrastructure and key business services. This was to ensure that changes to infrastructures caused the least amount of disruption to essential services and that Boral SBS actively prevented recurrence of similar issues by fixing the underlying problems.
HP provided Boral’s IT process management system (HP OpenView) and was an integral part of the team in implementing new processes and tools into the newly formed Shared Business Services environment.
“This is a great win for Boral. The team deserved to be recognised for their ambitious efforts to be a more customer-focused organisation. HP is proud to have been an integral part of this project,” says Peter McInnes, Marketing Manager, HP Software.
Boral Limited, being Australia’s largest building and construction materials supplier, means that Boral SBS needs to manage a broad range of business demands and services. The integrated Boral SBS Service Desk handles in excess of 14,000 calls per month for both IT and Business service functions. On a monthly basis, Boral SBS facilitates over 265,000 financial transactions and delivers approximately 25,000 pays across 70 payrolls on behalf of the Boral business divisions. To support these services SBS monitors and manages infrastructure availability of over 1,100 network devices, 800 servers and 5,200 PCs across the enterprise.
About Boral
Boral Limited is Australia’s largest building and construction materials supplier and has significant operations in the USA and in Asia. With some A$4.8 billion worth of annual sales, Boral has more than 16,000 employees working across 682 operating sites.
About itSMF Australia
The IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) is the only internationally recognised and independent organisation dedicated to IT Service Management. It is a not-for-profit organisation, wholly owned, and principally operated, by its membership. itSMF Australia is one of the fastest growing National Chapters worldwide with over 500 individual and corporate members that represent a diversity of industries from both the public and private sectors.
About The IT Service Management Awards
itSMF Australia has developed an industry awards program, launched in mid 2006 via a national call for nominations. The IT Service Management Awards will be awarded annually, and are recognised as genuine industry-wide awards for outstanding achievement in the field of service management. The inaugural industry awards is itSMF Australia’s opportunity to showcase IT Service Management best practices and standards to the IT industry and businesses that are heavily reliant on IT in the management and/or delivery of services to their customers.
