How Malaysia’s Bank Simpanan Nasional implemented a sweeping enterprise content management system

The next BriefingsDirect big data and information governance innovation case study highlights how the National Savings Bank in Malaysia has implemented a sweeping enterprise content management system (ECMS) project.

Learn how this large community bank has slashed paper use, increased productivity, rationalized storage and documents, and cut security risks, while adhering to compliance requirements.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android. Read a full transcript or download a copy.

To walk us through the bank’s journey to better information management is Alain Boey, Senior Vice President in the Transformation Management Department at the National Savings Bank in Malaysia. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Gardner: What were the major drivers that led you to seek a comprehensive approach to enterprise content management?

HP Document and records management system
Helps meet regulatory compliance issues
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Boey: We were trying to standardize a lot of our processes in the bank and, as you know, in the bank itself we used a lot of paper. There are a lot of documents flying around and documents have to be couriered from one place over to our headquarters (HQ) for processing. We have 14 states all across Malaysia, and all these documents have to be couriered on a daily basis over to our HQ in Kuala Lumpur.

Boey

We were trying to see how we can shorten that process itself, so that we can at least be able to give an answer to our customers in the shortest time possible. By putting in an ECMS, we were able to standardize a lot of the processes that involved paper. Then, documents were able to be retrieved easily regardless of where the person is. In terms of processing times, we were able to shorten the processing time from four days to less than a day.

The documents are now scanned and then uploaded to the server, which is easily accessed  by anybody around Malaysia. The whole objective of going in to the ECMS was to improve the entire customer experience, and also to put in best practices involving processes as well as systems. Ultimately, what we want to achieve is to see how we can serve our customer better.

Gardner: Tell us a little bit about your bank. It’s a quite a distributed organization and there are a lot of moving parts to it. I can understand why it would be a challenge to centralize all of your information.

Promote and mobilize savings

Boey: Bank Simpanan Nasional is owned by the Ministry of Finance. We were incorporated in 1974. So we're 40 years old as of December last year. Our objective is to promote and mobilize savings for the entire Malaysia.

We're specially set up by the Ministry of Finance to provide savings and banking opportunities to all Malaysians. Because we're a national bank, we have branches all across Malaysia. We have 402 branches, and these are serviced by our 6,800 employees.

We also have what we call agent banking. We have 5,200 agents who are able to operate on behalf of the bank. BSN, as what we are normally known in Malaysia, has 982 automatic teller machines (ATMs) and 338 cash deposit machines (CDMs) and this is to serve more than 9.5 million customers. In short, we're a diverse bank. We're the only bank that you can find in the remotest parts of Malaysia.

That's why before ECMS came in, it was very challenging. Documents had to be couriered or had to carried from one place to our central office. Because of that, a simple loan application, for instance, could take up to four to five days before it can reach the central office. That created a lot of challenges in trying to satisfy our customers, especially those applying for loans. They want to know the status of their loan application as soon as possible.

Number two, we also had issues in regard to the management of the documents. Documents had to be stored, and there were issues in relation to the access of physical documents themselves. As we all know, real estate prices have gone up, so storing all these physical documents doesn’t make sense for the bank.

We wanted to put in place a system whereby we're able to track the entire lifecycle of the document.

We wanted to see how we could also find a way to remove as many of these physical documents as possible, and also to make the retrieval of the documents easy. We're also trying to put in controls over access of the documents. Physical paper files can be lost while in transit, or can even be lost because they get misplaced, or a file is missing.

We wanted to put in place a system whereby we're able to track the entire lifecycle of the document. The moment the document is scanned, we're able to see the status of the document itself, as well the status of the application and then the entire lifecycle management of the document. That’s pretty much what we wanted to achieve from this whole exercise.

Gardner: Not only do you get a centralized view and more information about each document much quicker, but you also create a much better security and audit trail, and therefore compliance benefits?

Boey: Definitely. Now, we have a better audit trail of document movement. We have better control in terms of the versioning, like who puts in what. We're also able to rollout a consistent taxonomy for all documents. Whatever documents go into ECMS have to follow a certain methodology in taxonomy inference of the naming. So anybody in Malaysia, when they want to access a file, they're able to identify the file by just looking at the name of the file.

Of course, because everything is in soft copy, we have a back-up in terms of the disaster recovery (DR) as well. So, there's no issue, if a document goes missing, in how we access it and how we look for important documents. So, now that we have a proper DR, we're able to retrieve the documents, even if the physical copy is missing.

Primary technologies

Gardner: Alain, tell us how you went about this. What were the primary technologies, processes, and skills that were required to make this happen?

Boey: The journey itself took us about two years. We explored many vendors in the market to look at which available technologies were able to satisfy our requirements. There were a lot of vendors providing document management systems, but we wanted an enterprise-level system so that we're able to use the same system across the entire organization.

We went through a series of vendors and then eventually we decided to go with HP’s Autonomy and also the HP TRIM Records Management System. Of course, there were many solutions that we looked at. It was an open tender, and the evaluation team comprised a combination of business users as well as technical users. Based on the result of this, the evaluators were comfortable with this solution and the technology that was being provided by HP.

Then, during implementation itself, we were able to have better hands-on experience on the HP TRIM software as well as on Autonomy. We found that the software was very flexible. We were able to build workflows together, and they were also able to put in a lot of controls and a lot of parameterized input. That makes usage, as well as maintenance, easy.

Maintenance becomes easier because we don't need to have somebody physically managing the entire lifecycle of the document.

Gardner: When you go to a digital and managed system like this, you also get benefits for archive and back-up and perhaps even reduction in overall storage infrastructure costs. Is there anything about the storage and back-up and archive benefits that also came to play?

Boey: Definitely. Because we're a bank, all the documents that we have have to be backed up. Previously, every document had to be duplicated, so we had two files of it. That made retrieval and storage challenges as well.

Once a soft copy is in, you're able to make multiple copies if you want to, but because we have a DR in place, we're able to replicate the files to our DR. In terms of archival, it's easier because we can follow our standard archiving policy. When it comes to the end of the lifecycle of the document itself, there are proper procedures to manage the expiry of the documents as well as the disposal of the hard copy.

Now that they have the managed soft copy, we're able to track the entire movement, and when it comes to the expiry itself, notifications will remind the users that this document is due for disposal at whatever period of time. The users can then prepare the necessary procedures in regard to disposal of the documents.

HP Document and records management system
Helps meet regulatory compliance issues
Get more information

Maintenance becomes easier because we don't need to have someone physically managing the entire lifecycle of the document. We're leaving it to the system to tell us when what action should be taken for a typical document.

Gardner: Let’s look at some of the results, some of the paybacks that you've achieved as a result of your project. First, I suppose, customer satisfaction is always important. What have you heard from the users, the customers, in terms of how they view this as an improvement? And are there other metrics of success?

User surveys

Boey: We have conducted some surveys with the users in regard to the experience of using the system. Initially, when the system was first rolled out, there were some challenges in the users' options because those were basically changing the way they were used to doing things. Because documents now are all committed electronically, that means physical processes that will have to be eliminated.

There were some challenges from the users in regard to so-called job security, because things were now being replaced by the system itself. We were able to retrain some of these users to other functions. For example, when a document comes in, once the document is scanned it goes into the system, and we need someone to physically eyeball the information.

Previously, someone was preparing the documents for couriering. Now, their new role is basically to eyeball some of this information, to check the consistency, as well as the completeness and the accuracy of the information.

With all of this, we're able to shorten the turnaround time for the loan application and the turnaround time for the commission payment.

Because of this, we're able to see happier customers and users because they are able to see the benefits from using the system.

Sales agents are basically paid by commission. So the faster the loan is approved, for example, the faster they will get the commission. Now, with the system in place, we're able to see shorter turnaround time in terms of the processing. Because of this, the customers are able to get an answer from the bank in the shortest time possible. The customer will then be able to decide if they want to take out the loan with the bank.

With all of this, we're able to shorten the turnaround time for the loan application and the turnaround time for the commission payment, as well as the turnaround time for the feedback to the customers.

Overall, in the three surveys that they have conducted by the bank, the results have been positive. We've seen a higher usage of the system since it has been implemented.

On the customer side, based on the feedback that we have received as well as the surveys that have been done, the customers are happier because they're able to get the answers from the bank sooner.

Previously, we had a lot of drop in customers because the time it took to revert back to them was longer. Now, if an application comes in, it’s submitted on one day, and the customer is able to get a reply in less than 24 hours. So this has increased customers' satisfaction.

Gardner: What about the future? What comes next? Does this capability that you've put in place open up the possibility for other improvements in your infrastructure and documented information management, perhaps some sort of analysis capability or search in other higher order functions around business intelligence?

Robust system

Boey: In doing the implementation, the HP team helped us build some of these applications and helped us put in the applications for some of the departments. Moving forward, we're rolling out to all the other departments in the bank, all of the back offices, and these are going to done by our own team. So it shows the robustness of the system that the team is able to pick up the knowledge of the system and then to roll it out.

Now, with all of this information that we have, we're also looking at the analytics surrounding the data, the data that we have received. We're looking to see how we can further improve the customers' experience based on the information that we have in the system.

We're trying to shorten the entire processing time as much as possible, now that we have better management and information on the processing time.

We're also trying to see, based on the information that we have, whether we're able to better understand our users' behavior. Sometimes, our sales agents are quite smart in playing along with their sales target, like what it’s going to be for this month or is this going to be for next month. So we are trying to get a better understanding of our user’s behavior through the information in BSN itself.

We're also trying to see, based on the information that we have, whether we're able to understand our user’s behavior better.

And also similarly for the customers, based on the analytics surrounding the customers and the information in the system, we are also exploring better products and services to best satisfy our customers’ expectations.

Gardner: If you have an opportunity to instruct someone who is starting out on a similar project, what lessons have you learned? What advice might you offer to those who are beginning a comprehensive ECMS project?

Boey: Look at the bigger picture. There are a lot of document management systems, but if you're looking for an ECMS, you need to identify your objectives. If your objective is just to scan a document, then probably an ECMS will not work.

But if your objective is to look at improving the return on investment (ROI), improving the entire costumer experience, putting in better control on the document lifecycle -- then an ECMS would work for you.

Also, explore what's available in the market in terms of the solution and get to know the vendors, the solution providers, well so that you have a better understanding of the technology, and you have a better knowledge of the roadmap of the technology. Then, you're able to plan your future, your three-year plans or your five-year business plans based on the roadmap of the solution.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.

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Ariba’s digital handshake helps Caesars up the ante on supply chain diversity

The next BriefingsDirect business trends interview focuses on Caesars Entertainment Corp. and how they're transforming supplier discovery and improving their supplier diversity through collaboration across cloud-based services and open business networks.

Learn from Caesars' best practices on how they expand diversity across their supply chain and how that’s been accomplished using Ariba Discovery. We’ll hear first-hand how one supplier, M & R Distribution Services, has benefited from such supplier visibility on the business network.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android. Read a full transcript or download a copy. 

For the inside story on improved supply chain visibility and access, please join our guests, Jessica Rosman, Director of Supplier Diversity and Sustainability at Caesars Entertainment based in Las Vegas, and Quentin McCorvey, Sr., President and COO of M&R Distribution Services, based in Cleveland. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Gardner: What are some of the more difficult aspects of finding the right supplier for the right job under the right circumstances?

Rosman

Rosman: Oftentimes, our portfolio managers look into their natural networks of suppliers we’ve already used or suppliers who have contacted us, but that can be limiting. Having a wider network or using the Discovery tool on Ariba has allowed us to open up to millions of different suppliers that we haven’t met before and who we might want to do business with us.

Additionally, we do numerous outreach events into the communities in which we operate, so we can find top suppliers and include them in our supply chain.

Gardner: What sort of supplier requirements are there, and has that been changing over the years? Is there a moving target for this?

Rosman: For Caesars, it really depends on the category or commodity that we're searching for. Certain commodities may require larger supply chains or more integrated processes than others. But for all of our suppliers, we're looking for quality, service, and price. That may also include requirements around insurance, delivery time, or other needs to meet those three areas.

Gardner: People are familiar with the Caesars’ name, but your organization includes a lot more. Tell us about the breadth and scope of your company.

Rosman: Caesars Entertainment is the largest globally diversified casino network. We're also the home of Horseshoe, Harrah’s, Total Rewards, Paris, Rio, and obviously, the most famous, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Gardner: Quentin, tell us a little bit about M&R and why getting the visibility from folks like Caesars has been a good thing for you?

McCorvey: M&R Distribution Services, my company, was established in 2008 by my partner Joe Reccord and myself. I came out of banking and had experience and a background of 12 years in banking. My partner has been in the distribution business for over 20 years as a market leader in a regional distribution company. We're primarily focused on distributing products such as disposable gloves. Most maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) product lines are in our portfolio, as well as personal protective equipment and trash liners.

McCorvey

You asked how this has been important for us or how Caesars’ relationship has been important for us. It has been very important, because, as Jessica said, we found each other through some of their outreach events that they have in the community.

It was through a National Minority Supplier Development Council. My company is a nationally certified minority business. With this networking event and through a matchmaking event, I found someone on Jessica’s team, Bridget Carter, and learned a little bit more about Caesars and the opportunities that happened within Caesars. Then, through further connections, we had some opportunities that led to a strong relationship.

Gardner: What is it about making these connections between buyer and seller that’s easier today? What’s changed in the past several years?

It's about relationships

Rosman: Technology has changed, but some things haven’t changed. At the end of the day, business is about relationships. To start that relationship, there are new ways that we can meet different businesses by doing outreach and having the Ariba Discovery tool, where we can team up buyers and sellers through using Naics codes, UnPsc codes, or other types of codes. Using those, we can find those who want to sell and those who want to buy.

But part of it is the same as it has always been, which is about having that face-to-face connection, knowing that there is a potential relationship and feeling comfortable that that business will deliver on the quality, the service, and the need for the internal customer that there always has been.

Gardner: As to your title, Supplier Diversity and Sustainability, how important is that? How did that come about and what are your goals?

Rosman: Caesars Entertainment has a code of commitment. Our code of commitment is our code that says that we have a responsibility to the community, to the environment, to our customers, and to our employees to be the best that we can be. Under that code of commitment and in line with it is our Supplier Diversity Program. Our Supplier Diversity Program sits within our sourcing office, but also has a dotted line into the Diversity Department overall.

We are in unique areas across the country. When we do outreach within the community, in part it’s because in order for our businesses to grow, it’s important that we find community and local business partners that can meet the 24-hour, seven-days-a-week business that we have.

It’s different than other business types that have a delivery on Monday and don’t need it again until next week. That outreach has allowed us to find small, medium-size, and large businesses that are minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, and other diverse businesses that can meet those needs.

Gardner: Quentin, tell me a bit about how long you’ve been working with Caesars? Is this strictly in Ohio with some of their properties there? Is it expanded across the company? Have you got a beachhead that’s then expanded? What’s the nature of the business you have?

While I didn’t win that opportunity, what I did win was the entrée into a relationship with Caesars.

McCorvey: We initially got engaged with Caesars, as I mentioned, through an outreach program, and through that, an opportunity came up for me to bid on a project with Caesars. Because I had bid on that project, I had to get connected to the Ariba Network. While I didn’t win that opportunity, what I did win was the entrée into a relationship with Caesars. Jessica talked about how a relationship is important, and for minority business, clearly, it’s really about relationship development.

As a minority-owned company, I'm not looking for handout. I'm looking for handshake, an opportunity to earn the business of a customer. I have to prove myself in being able to produce tier 1 pricing capacity and helping in solving pains within the supply chain network. Even with not getting this opportunity, I continued having conversations with Caesars and continued to develop the relationship.

Caesars has a mentoring program, which I was involved in and had the pleasure to become a part of. Through that mentoring program, I was able to sit down with Caesars and discuss certain goals that I wanted to accomplish, not only with my business personally, but also with the business opportunity with Caesars.

Some of those things included meeting the category managers in the categories where I was supplying into the organization and really understanding how to grow my key performance indicators (KPIs), not only directly, but also with Caesars and some of the other opportunities that are there.

Mentoring program

Through this mentoring program, we began to work on the relationship. I began to meet other people within the supply chain more regionally, as well as the national folks -- from Jessica and her team to up and down and across the Caesars organization. That’s been a very important process for me.

That's how we started out. I've gotten, and I'm going to get, opportunities through the mentoring program to start serving the company regionally. There are casinos in Ohio. My primary markets are servicing the Ohio casinos. Then, moving out of the region is a goal, ultimately growing into being a national supplier with all 52 properties within Caesars casinos.

Gardner: How important have Ariba Discovery and the Ariba Network been for you? How did you get on it? Was it easy? And where else have you been able to extend this visibility?

I actually won a couple of opportunities through the system and through the Ariba Network.

McCorvey: I got into the Ariba Network accidentally on purpose. On purpose because I had an opportunity to bid on a national contract with Caesars. When I had that opportunity, I got an invite from the buyer to sign up into Ariba. So I had to put my profile in there in order to bid on the opportunity that was available to me.

I did that, and it was a quick turnaround on the bid. I spent all of my time trying to figure out how to get through this, how to get my profile updated, and how to get the bid engaged.

I didn’t really know that much about the network and how connected the matches were to opportunities. I started seeing alerts and I started seeing, direct opportunities that really connected with my business. Through that, I said let me investigate a little bit further. And when I did, I began to look at some other opportunities. I actually won a couple of opportunities through the system and through the Ariba Network.

When I say "accidentally and on purpose," I guess it was fortuitous that we had this opportunity to bid. Even though it wasn't a win directly with that opportunity, it was a win for me and my company.

Gardner: Jessica, how about from the buyer side at Caesars, using the network, having the data, the insights, and the visibility. Has that added more value to your process? Obviously, you’ve got a certain specialization, but is there a more general value that you're seeing over time?

Rosman: We've used Ariba Network for a quite a while now. We started off with request for proposal (RFP) or the sourcing phase or module. We extended to the contracting phase or module and then we eventually went to the procure-to-pay.

We've seen a plethora of Ariba services, each one adding and building upon prior Ariba services that we had used. In all of those areas, it’s beneficial, because the lessons learned from a past RFP are archived and you can go back in and find RFPs that were used in the past.

When we're mentoring suppliers, especially within our Supplier Diversity Program, talking to minority or women suppliers, it helps us to know what some of the contract managers might be asking, or a little bit more about the categories. We don't pull the entire RFP. We don’t share all of those pieces, but unique items that might be applicable to future questionnaires. That goes all the way through to the procure to pay (P2P). It keeps it easy in one place and it archives the data for us.

Real standardization

Gardner: It sounds like you have a real standardization about how you are going about these things. Is that fair to say?

Rosman: Yes, I believe it is. Our sourcing team has evolved throughout this process to a category-driven leadership approach, and Ariba has been an integral part of that.

Gardner: Any thoughts or recommendations with 20/20 hindsight now for other organizations that are looking for specific requirements in the suppliers that they're targeting?

Rosman: As we continue to grow, Ariba also continues to grow in this area of supplier diversity. Using Ariba Discovery has also helped us when we're trying to find minority women or vendors in unique industries.

An example of that is also in Ohio. We were looking to find a women-owned or minority-owned company in that region that sells carbon dioxide. We put it into Ariba Discovery assuming that we wouldn’t find anybody that we hadn’t already met through our outreach events.

When you're looking for hard-to-reach vendors and looking for that opportunity and connection, it just takes it one step further.

We had done very extensive outreach events in the community and talked to more than 300 local vendors and yet we still were able to do find some. When you're looking for hard-to-reach vendors and looking for that opportunity and connection, it just takes it one step further.

Gardner: Quentin, I imagine that, as a business owner, you're curious about what new business opportunities are available. Has the visibility within the Ariba environment, seeing what alerts come across, seeing what the bids are about, led you to pursue other business opportunities and lines of business within your company? Has it helped you grow?

McCorvey: It has definitely helped us to grow. When I initially looked at the Ariba Network, I saw it as a procurement platform. But for me it's actually more of a supply chain accelerator, and I say that because as with any good business what's important is deal flow, how you get projects and opportunities in the pipeline.

Ariba has been a minimal level of inputs with a maximum level of outputs. So as a company and as a smaller growing company, you’re constantly looking at ways to grow opportunities, to grow market share. Do you invest $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in a B2B website? Do you engage in Google Analytics? Do you put sales executives in other parts of the country to begin to grow?

Those are all the decisions you have to make every day with a limited amount of resources, because you really want to put that into growing your company. Ariba has has been able to do that. I don't necessarily have to have a larger sales team or some of the other things out there. I can begin to look at opportunities where I can grow my company in other markets. I can service those markets. It also gives me access to other Fortune 100 and 200 companies that I don't necessarily have the access to, to begin to look at.

A lot of ideas

What's important for me is to get a lot of ideas. Jessica talked a little bit about the archived RFPs. But really mining through those archived RFPs, I can see what companies are looking for, what their RFPs have been about, when are their sales cycles coming up again, when can I begin to look at those opportunities and target those opportunities, who are the purchasing and procurement managers that’s managing those lines.

That’s tough data to find. It’s tough to be able to find out who, for example, is procuring resins for a company. You can Google over their website, you can search for it, and you can’t find it, but you will never find that opportunity. It really, really closes down the sales cycle loop for me and gives me maximum value.

Gardner: Well, we're here at Ariba LIVE, and there's lots of news being made. We're hearing about integrated services for travel and expenses. We’re seeing more emphasis on the user experience, end-to-end processes that would end up in a mobile environment or any number of environments.

What's of interest to you? Where do you see yourselves taking advantage of some of these new technological and process innovations?

Rosman: One of the areas that's most interesting is learning about how to implement Ariba within your internal team and externally. We've done a great job of it within Supplier Diversity Program, but how do we roll that out further amongst our entire supply chain? The takeaway is how can we train internally and train externally to find results using Ariba?

It's worth spending some time really understanding how Ariba works and what are the components there within the system.

Gardner: Quentin, any thoughts about what’s of interest to you and then perhaps words of advice you could give other companies that are trying to improve their business using a business network?

McCorvey: Jessica hit on it again. Technology is really driving the market. My partner, who has been in the business for 25 years, often tells a story about how when he first started out. He left home every day with a pocket full of quarters and a pager. That day is gone. This is not your father's Oldsmobile. We really had to begin to leverage technology in a different way.

As a distributor, I'm looking at, and have been typically looking at, the sales side. How can I look at opportunities here? But what’s also been important for me to see and really learn is that I can look at it on the buy side. How can I not only find other manufacturing partners to begin to drive more cost out of my supply chain and even be more competitive in my business and my business environment.

Relative to advice for other customers, other people or other suppliers who are using the network, it's worth spending some time really understanding how Ariba works and what are the components there within the system. Ariba has some very knowledgeable account executives who work directly with you. You need to spend some time with your account executive to make sure that you update your profile to the point where you can get maximum amount of exposures to the maximum amount of hits.

To reiterate what I said before, it’s important to not only look at to the opportunities that are available to you, but closed opportunities, and see where you can begin to look at opportunities, and see if there are other business ideas or business partnerships that you can develop through the Ariba Network.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Ariba, an SAP company.

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Redcentric orchestrates networks-intensive merger using advanced configuration management database

The next BriefingsDirect performance management discussion uncovers how Redcentric PLC in the UK tackled a major network management project due to a business merger. We'll hear how Redcentric used an advanced configuration database approach to scale management of some 10,000 devices across two disparate companies and made them accessible as a single system.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android. Read a full transcript or download a copy.

To learn more about how two major networks became merged successfully using automation based on systems data, we're joined by Edward Jackson, Operational System Support Manager at Redcentric in Harrogate, UK. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Gardner: Tell us a little bit about your company and this merger. What two companies came together, and how did that prove to be a complicated matter when it comes to network management?

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Jackson: The two companies coming together were InTechnology and Redcentric. Redcentric bought InTechnology in 2013. Effectively, they were reasonably separate in terms of their setup. Redcentric had three separate organizations, they had already acquired Maxima and Hot Chilli. And the requirement was to move their network devices and ITSM platform base onto the HP monitoring and ITSM platforms in InTechnology.

It’s an ongoing process, but it’s well on the way and we've been pretty successful so far in doing that.

Gardner: And what kind of companies are these? Tell us about your organization, the business, rather than just the IT?

Jackson

Jackson: We're a managed service providers (MSPs), voice, data, storage, networks, and cloud. You name it, and we pretty much deliver it and sell it as part of our managed portfolio..

Gardner: So being good at IT is not just good for you internally; it's really part and parcel of your business.

Jackson: It's critical. We have to deliver it and we have to manage it as well. So it's 100 percent critical to the business.

Gardner: Tell us how you go about something like this, Edward, when you have a big merger, when you have all these different, disparate devices that support networks. How do you tackle that? How do you start the process?

Data cleansing

Jackson: The first phase is to look at the data and see what we've got and then start to do some data cleansing. We had to migrate data from three service desks to the InTechnology network, and to the InTechnology ITSM system. You need to look at all the service contracts. You need to also look at all the individual components that make up those contracts, and effectively all the configuration items (CIs), and then your looking at a rather large migration project.

Initially, we started to migrate the customer and the contact information. Then, slowly, we started to re-provision devices from the Redcentric side to the InTechnology Managed Services (IMS) network and load it into our HP management platforms.

We currently manage over 11,000 devices. They are from multiple types of vendors and technologies. InTechnology was pretty much a Cisco shop, whereas at Redcentric, we're looking at things like Palo Alto, Brocade, Citrix load balancers and other different types of solutions. So it's everything from session border controllers down to access points.

It was a relatively challenging time in terms of being able to look at the different types of technology and then be able to manage those. Also, we've automated incidents from Operations Manager to Service Manager and then notifying customers directly that there is a potential issue ontheir service. So it's been a rather large piece of work.

Gardner: Was there anything in hindsight that you did at InTechnology vis-à-vis the data about your network and devices that made this easier? Did Redcentric have that same benefit of that solid database, the configuration information? In doing this, what did you wish you had done, or someone else had done, better before that would have made it easier to accomplish?

It was a relatively challenging time in terms of being able to look at the different types of technology and then be able to manage those.

Jackson: Unfortunately, the data on the Redcentric side of the business wasn’t quite as clean as it was on the InTechnology side. It was held in lots of differnet sources, from network shared drives to Wiki pages. It all had to be collated. Redcentric had another three service desks. We had to extract all the data out of them as well. The service desks didn’t really contain any CI information either. So we had to collate together the CI information along with the contacts and customers.

It was a rather mammoth task. Then, we had to load it into our CRM tool, which then has a direct connection automatically using Web Services and into Service Manager. So it initially creates organizations and contacts.

We had a template for our CIs. If they were a server CI or a network CI, it would be added to a spreadsheet, and would use HP Connect-IT to load into Service Manager. It basically automatically created CIs against the customer and the contacts that were already loaded by our CRM tool.

Gardner: Is there anything now moving forward as a combined company, or in the process of becoming increasingly combined, that these due diligence efforts around network management and configuration management will allow you to do?

Perhaps you're able to drive more services into your marketplace for your customers or make modernization moves towards perhaps software-defined networking or other trends that are afoot. So now that you are into this, you are doing your due diligence, how does that set you up to move forward?

New opportunity

Jackson: It opens up a new sphere of opportunity. We were pretty much a Cisco shop, but now we have obviously opened up to a lot more elements and technologies that we actively manage.

We have a lot of software-based type of firewalls and load balancers that we didn’t previously have -- session border controllers, etc and voice products that we didn’t deliver previously -- that we can deliver now due to the fact that we've opened up the network to be able to monitor and manage pretty much anything.

Gardner: Any words of advice for other organizations that may have been resisting making these moves. You were forced to do it across the board with the merger. Do you have any advice that you would offer in terms of doing network management and modernization sooner rather than later, other than the fact that people might just think good enough is good enough, or if it's not broken, don’t fix it?

Jackson: When you're looking at a challenge like this, you have to make sure you do your due diligence first. It’s down to planning, an "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail" kind of thing, and it’s very true.

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You need to get all the information. You need to make sure that you normalize it and sanitize it before you load it. The cliché is garbage in, garbage out, so there’s no point in putting bad information into a system once again.

We have a good set of clean data now across the board. We literally have 150,000 CIs in our CMDB. So it’s not an insignificant CMDB by any stretch of the imagination. And we know that the data from the Redcentric side of the business is now clean and accurate.

Gardner: How about proving this to the business? For MSPs it might not be as critical, but for other enterprises, this might be a bit more of a challenge to translate these technical benefits into financial or economic benefits to their leadership. Any thoughts about metrics of success that you've been able to define that would fit into a return on investment (ROI) or more of an economic model? How do you translate network management proficiency into dollars and cents or pounds or euros?

Jackson: It’s pretty difficult to quantify in a monetary sense. Probably the best way of quantifying the success of the project has been the actual level of support that customers have been given and the level of satisfaction that the customers now have. They're very, very happy with the level of support that we have now achieving due to Redcentrics ITSM and business service management (BSM) systems. I think, going forward, it will only increase the level of support that we can provide our customers.

As I said, It's quite difficult to quantify in a monetary sense. However, when churn rates are now as low as 4 percent, you can basically say that you're doing something good.

Fundamental to the business

In terms of things like the CIs themselves, the CI is fundamental to the business, because it describes the whole of the service, all the services that we offer our customers. If that’s not right, then the support that we give the customer can’t be right either.

You need to give the guys on support the kind of information they need to be able to support the service. Customer satisfaction is ever increasing in terms of what we are able to offer the migrated customers.

Gardner: How about feedback from your help desk, your support, and remediation of people. Do they find that with this data in place, with it cleansed, and with it complete that they're able to identify where problems exist perhaps better, faster, and easier. Do they recognize whether there is a network problem or a workload support problem, the whole help desk benefit. Anything to offer there?

The CI is fundamental to the business, because it describes the whole of the service, all the services that we offer our customers. If that’s not right, then the support that we give the customer can’t be right either.

Jackson: About 80 percent of the tickets raised in the organization are raised through our management platform, monitoring and performance capacity monitoring. We can pretty much identify within a couple of minutes where the network error is. This all translates into tickets being auto raised in our service management platform.

Additionally, within a few minutes of an outage or incident we can have an affected customer list prepared. We have fields that are defined in Service Manager CI’s that will actually give us information regarding what devices are affected and what they are connected to in terms of an end to end service.

We run a customer report against this, and it will give you a list of customers, a list of key contacts and primary contacts. You can convert this into an email. So for a network outage, within a few minutes we can email the customer, create an incident, create related interactions to that incident, and the customer is notified that there is an issue.

Gardner: That’s the sort of brand reinforcement and service quality that many organizations are seeking. So that's enviable, I'm sure.

Is there any products or updates that could make your job even easier going forward?

Jackson: We're looking at a couple of things. One of them is HP Propel, which is a piece of software that you can hook into pretty much anything you really want. For example, if you have a few disparate service desks, you can have a veneer over the top. They'll look all the same to the customers. They'll have like an identical GUI, but the technology behind it could be very different.

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It gives you the ability then to hook into anything, such as HP Operations Orchestration, Service Manager, Knowledge Management, or even Smart Analytics, which is another area that we are quite keen on looking at. I think that’s going to revolutionize the service desk. It would be very, very beneficial forRedcentric..

There are also things like data mining. This would be beneficial and also help the auto creation of knowledge articles going forward and giving remedial action to incidents and interactions.

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