Six sigma

the challenge
following 9/11 and the resulting downturn in the hotel and hospitality business, IHG needed to cut costs significantly to stay competitive- so their president vowed to cut $100m fromAmericas region operating budget.
That’s when IHG turned to us for managed service expertise, to help reduce their spend on helpdesk, deskside and server support services by 33%(or $1.2m) andunderstand why end-user satisfaction was low.
Helpdesk: a centralized service center that processes over 3000 calls a month for approximately 1500 corporate users, to provide end-user IT support viatelephone, email and web portal. Telephone calls are the primary method of contact and receive priority.
Deskside: a dispatched on-site support service that handles hardware and software problems, PCinstallations and changes, software and peripheral adds and workstation relocations for approximately 1500 corporate users.
Server support: a technical, back-end and maintenance support service for IHG’sMicrosoft NT service estate. This includes approximately 150 servers for network authentication, email, applications, file storage and print services.
The solution
When our team looked at the ITchallenge facing IHG. It seemed intuitive to migrate as many of the deskside service calls as possible to the helpdesk, the bigger question was how to institute process improvements without disrupting alive IT service and further degrading already low levels of services – and find out why so many calls were being directed to the deskside in the first place. To answer these questions, develop a phasedproject plan and deliver strong implementation, we turned to the approach of lean six sigma to chart a course.
Through the use of lean six sigma methodologies, our team:
* Identified desksidesupport as the service with the highest costs, followed by server support and finally helpdesk support.
* Gained a clear understanding of key variables, such as the cost associated with each type...