Assessment
The provider concluded from its initial assessment that they would need to bring on more skilled talent to assist in developing workable designs for its China development team based on the new client’s requirements. With a penalty assessment on late Service Level Agreements, the HP Service Manager Service Level Management module was an important focus on the needs of the design team. The provider concluded that it needed to find a resource that had knowledge of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and that could build critical enterprise solutions around HP Service Manager.

Implementation
SmallCart Systems provided one of its senior level technical consultants to assist in the design effort of the Service Level Management modifications for the new telecommunications equipment manufacturer. SmallCart developed the design of a solution that calculated Service Level Agreement Elapsed Time based on schedules that were maintained by field offices across the Americas, EMEA, and APJ. The solution had to take into account holidays and different time zones across many different countries as well as 3 major languages: English, French, and Mandarin. This solution was then distributed and explained to the development resources based in China. Regular intervals of the development lifecycle took place in implementing this solution, and it became a part of the first release for the major telecommunications provider. Also, the solution was built in such a manner that it would not impact the other shared organizations utilizing the IT Service Management tool for their helpdesk tickets and incident management processes.

Results
The technical resource at SmallCart was able to augment the provider’s existing staff in delivering the solution for its new customer. Through the collaborative efforts between the SmallCart resource and the provider’s China development resources, the module was implemented in approximately 2 months as opposed to other development efforts that typically took between 6 to 10 months to implement. Through the aid of SmallCart’s existing staff, the provider was able to develop a solution that met the needs of its new telecommunications manufacturing client and that provided a foundational base for the future service desk infrastructure of the managed services program.

A large metropolitan County in California comprises 43 departments, and each department relies heavily upon the Information Systems Department to support its needs. In a concerted effort to reduce the costs of IT and to reorganize its internal IT department as a service-oriented business rather than a traditional cost center, management built a five year plan to implement better IT Service Management guidelines across the organization.

This County already had an IT Service Management tool and process in place; however, over many years and modifications of these processes, they were no longer aligned with some of the guidelines that ITIL provided. Therefore, the management driving this initiative was looking to better align their processes with ITIL v3 and effectuate a more holistic approach to continuous improvements with the creation of a new IT Service Management Department and new Process Owners.

Assessment

The County appointed several resource teams to manage the tasks of assessing and building a solution. They, in turn, assembled a cross-organization team that included SmallCart Systems to further assess the County’s current needs and problems.

The County had recently upgraded its IT Service Management Tool to HP ServiceCenter 6.2 from Peregrine ServiceCenter 5.x. During the upgrade process, system administrator simply copied the helpdesk forms (screens) of the previous version, despite the changes HP had made regarding the out of the box forms. The management’s original assessment was to quickly deploy the tool with as little training of the helpdesk as possible.

Unfortunately, in doing so, the County’s helpdesk reinforced many bad habits such as recording all “quick fix” incidents as service calls and only moving a ticket to an incident if it needed the outside help of a higher tier of support (i.e. Field Services, Network Teams, or Desktop Engineering). The helpdesk was also not recording a number of key attributes when the helpdesk analysts were assisting end-users with their initial calls.

The solution derived from the comprehensive assessment was to establish a new process roadmap for the Incident Management and Problem Management aspects of the County’s ITSM Process plan. The County would continue with the existing version of HP ServiceCenter 6.2; however, the project team would revisit the implementation and rebuild the solution according to the new ITIL v3 based solution.

Implementation

SmallCart Systems provided one of its senior level technical consultants to assist in the design effort of the Service Level Management modifications for the new telecommunications equipment manufacturer. SmallCart worked with the County in gathering requirements for the initial design and modifications needed to customize the HP ServiceCenter forms in the Service Interaction, Incident Management, and Problem Management Modules.

To do this assessment, the SmallCart Consultant used a series of spreadsheets that defined all of the out-of the-box database fields and another spreadsheet of the current database fields. In this process, the County’s helpdesk manager would identify what the current database field was used for and subsequently had to justify its value and necessity in the new implementation. This process involved reviewing not just the custom fields but also the out-of-box fields such as Telephone Number and Email Address.

Next, the process then proceeded to an interactive set of workshops where the team would display screen printouts of the before and the out-of-box fields. As the County Stakeholders suggested placement of the fields, the SmallCart Consultant would drag and drop the placement in a live development environment of HP ServiceCenter. Once the workshop was completed, several screen shots were taken of the prototype and were given to management and stakeholder users for review. Additionally, the helpdesk users themselves provided feedback as to placement—where they would logically anticipate the field. SmallCart then went into the development phase of the project and built out a solution for the County, specifically for the County’s ServiceCenter Administration Team.

Results

The project’s success was built mainly on the interactive workshops that the team developed and used in the requirements gathering process. In several instances, SmallCart identified better ways to manage data such as encouraging the County to make use of out-of-box fields where appropriate and to create custom fields rather than misusing fields to store data. The SmallCart Consultant also encouraged the use of existing out-of-the-box tables to be utilized relationally rather than attempting to store all of the data in one single table that could not be rationalized.

The project concluded with a knowledge transfer of the development team and the existing County ServiceCenter Administrators. One of the key assets delivered in this training consisted of a step-by-step guide that showed the administrators how to recreate the implementation on an out-of-box ServiceCenter instance. This proved to be useful when the team planned on deploying the solution into the production environment.

Assessment
The distributor’s development team was able to manage the day-to-day operations of HP ServiceCenter and the HP Service Catalog product. Additionally, the team had received a few new enhancements around approvals and the ability to deny Service Catalog requests from the HP ServiceCenter Web Tier. However, the HP Service Catalog product was in its first initial release from HP, and only a few documentation resources were available to the distributor’s technical team for use in implementation. The distributor concluded from its initial assessment that it needed a resource to assist in the development efforts around the new HP Service Catalog requests. The distributor also concluded that it did not need a full-time resource to manage the project, but instead the distributor needed a technical advisor that had already implemented the HP Service Catalog software for a similarly situated enterprise level client.

Implementation
SmallCart Systems provided one of its senior level technical consultants to assist in the development efforts of the distributor’s HP Service Catalog modifications. Together, the team created and established a denial process that would be used in the event that a business manager was to deny an IT Service Catalog request from an end user. The project also needed modifications in the ability to process and calculate the cost of services requested across three different currencies: the Euro, US Dollar, and Japanese Yen.

Results
Within a one month window, the SmallCart technical advisor was able to develop solutions that met the distributor’s business requirements. The business was able to better handle and determine the cost of IT by implementing a global Service Catalog and by placing the approval process in the hands of the business management rather than technology management across the enterprise. SmallCart’s assistance with the distributor’s HP Service Catalog project was pivotal in reducing costs across the distributor’s organization globally.

“[SmallCart's] assistance in overcoming some issues we faced was great.” -Director of Automation

Assessment
SmallCart Systems’ expert solutions team, combined with the client’s existing project resources, were given the tasks of assessing the situation and providing a solution. The software solution of choice across the enterprise was to be HP ServiceCenter, a leading Service Management Tool.

Implementation
SmallCart’s implementation team worked with the client’s system engineer team to replicate the existing functionality of the client’s legacy configuration management tool, while adding some desired enhancements that aligned with how the client has been tracking inventory up until this implementation.

Key challenges faced during this implementation: Terminology Differences, Minimal Budget, and a Short Project Timeline

Results
Success! The project was able to model the company’s existing business process to the HP ServiceCenter tool. The organization retired its unsupported legacy system and reduced administration cost by 35%. Moving its process to a modern toolset allowed the client to position for future growth and future improvements in its configuration management process.

Assessment
The firm concluded that they needed an experienced team to implement HP Service Catalog in a limited time frame and to maintain best practice policies so that future upgrades of the product would not require a re-implementation. The enterprise chose SmallCart Systems for the technical implementation of HP Service Catalog and the modification of the HP ServiceCenter Request Management Interface. SmallCart Systems was chosen because of its previous experience in Request Management work and its positive reputation of being able to implement projects in a short time frame.

Implementation
SmallCart’s technical team was provided with only 8 weeks to implement and train the client’s technical team on HP Service Catalog. The Service Catalog product was in its first release from HP, and a number of issues were addressed throughout the implementation cycle. SmallCart collaborated with several client resources and another technical services partner to provide a complete Request Management and Service Catalog pilot implementation that could later be utilized in Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as in North America.

Results
In a short time frame, the technical effort at SmallCart Systems had successfully stood up a pilotable implementation of HP Service Catalog and provided the detailed As-Built documentation for technical reference. Also, SmallCart was able to identify a number of issues with the original release of HP Service Catalog that were slated to be patched in Service Manager 7.0. Through developing an integrated implementation approach with the client’s technical team, they were able to obtain the knowledge of HP Service Catalog for future enhancements and did not risk any development time to the organization throughout its phased rollout to the global enterprise.