Case Study:

Single Point of Truth (SPOT)

Unreliable data causing instability and frustrating efforts to plan change.

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Highlights

1200
Apps to Manage
☁️
Process & Tools
>30
Data Sources

"

Many thanks for all the efforts from CSX, a great set of outcomes achieved. I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future!

"

Head of Group

IT Service Management

Unreliable data causing instability and frustrating efforts to plan change.

CSX were approached to help with a large cloud migration programme.  However the lack of a reliable data to underpin analysis was flagged as a major impediment to planning.  When we looked for good data, we found more:

·      Frequent outages due to inability to accurately monitor/manage/change services

·      Multiple overlapping tools being used by different teams to provide data and reports

·      A lack of consistent baseline across the estate

·      People pulling data from different repositories and editing / enriching it for their own purpose.

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A Single Point of Truth.

CSX recommended a factory approach to provide a reliable and trusted Single Point of Truth (SPOT) for service data and to coordinate efforts for improving configuration management and the CMDB.

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CSX incubated the SPOT capability and kick started the drive for better data.

CSX delivered a proof of concept (“POC”) for SPOT data to cover a set of critical business applications with effective service-to-app-to-infrastructure mapping.

  • Process integration control points across the ITSM and software development life cycle – including a review of the configuration management process and roadmap
  • Associated reporting capabilities, BI dashboards, service maps and health dashboards
  • Communications and awareness training for the agreed SPOT Principles and for relevant aspects of the configuration management process
  • A single tooling framework for generating, maintaining and presenting SPOT data
  • Agreement to adopt the ServiceNow Customer Services Data Model (CSDM) and integration with local enterprise architecture tools
  • Integration with monitoring and alerting capabilities for technology elements that make up the top applications
  • Governance model for process and tool management
  • Gamification concept to drive end user behaviours in data updates

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Foundational change in data management and automation.

  • Project outcomes achieved:
  • Single source of truth for business apps established with controls in place
  • Data completeness and accuracy improved by owners agreed
  • No more unmatchable spreadsheets
  • End to end visibility of data in ServiceNow
  • Bi-directional integrations managing data flow
  • Credible data and reporting enabled
  • Common Service Data Model (CSDM) adopted
  • Integrated audit capability
  • Future roadmap defined and agreed.

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750 of 750 targeted apps completed.

Remaining 550 handed over to BaU.

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Key Client Information:

Major Global Insurance Provider - Multi-billion turnover - Tightly Regulated

Staff Size:

14,000 users

Location:

- 25 countries - 54 managed locations

Snapshot Of Problem:

- No single point of truth for IT configuration data - Non-standard ways of working - Data spread across three ticketing systems and a variety of non-standard sources - Fragmented ownership of applications and infrastructure

Snapshot Of Solution:

- Workshops - Service Mapping - Enrich the Data - Codify the Rules - Populate the CMDB - Verify & Iterate Outputs: - SPOT Principles (e.g. “Automate discovery & verification where possible”) - Mapping of critical business applications - Impact Assessment - Process flow - BI / Reporting capabilities - Audit procedures - Health Dashboards / KPIs - Single tooling framework - Monitoring and alerting integration - Governance model - Gamified Certification - Automated interfaces - Data usage guides - Data modelling

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