Case Study
UST helped global retailer improve incident closure rate by an impressive 69%
OUR CLIENT
This American multinational company is one of the leading big-box retail chains in the world. With more than 750 locations globally, the company employs more than 300,000 people and generates annual revenue of nearly $250 billion.
THE CHALLENGE
Staffing issues hindered critical business applications
The company needed additional IT resources to manage application maintenance, development, and quality assurance (QA) for its merchandising, finance, and membership portfolio systems. It was using a staff augmentation model to fulfill its needs. Because resources weren’t guaranteed when the company needed them, the IT department struggled to complete projects on time and within budget.
The retailer was searching for a technology partner to help the IT team resolve its project staffing and budget issues and recommend a framework for measuring, tracking, and reporting service-level objectives for incident response and resolution timeframes.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Transitioned to managed capacity engagement with well-defined success metrics
UST recommended that the client shift from a staff augmentation approach to a managed capacity model. This model offered fixed resource capacity to ensure the company’s IT team had the necessary resources to successfully maintain, develop, and test its mission-critical applications. To ensure a smooth transition, UST:
- Tailored application management processes and documentation to meet the company’s unique requirements
- Extensively trained engagement managers on all processes and methodologies
- Validated UST’s knowledge acquisition with tests and reverse presentations
- Established critical success factors, service level objectives, and a periodic reporting plan to quantify value for the new managed capacity model
- Developed specialized trackers and measurements for:
o Application maintenance - such as ticket trends and average resolution timeframes across business units
o The overall managed capacity engagement - like utilization burn rate and work intake - Defined an analysis framework and continuous improvement plan to ensure long-term application stability
- Created a “client university” knowledge repository to train and upskill UST resources
- Implemented a multi-pronged governance and communication plan to keep all management levels informed about KPIs for application maintenance
THE IMPACT
Long-standing engagement dramatically improved mission-critical application maintenance
Once the managed capacity model was in place, IT leaders could shift their focus from daily staffing and budgetary issues to more strategic technology initiatives. The new engagement model also helped the company standardize application maintenance, development, and QA processes across business units. The company has achieved these metrics since the engagement started in 2013:
- Incident closure rate increased by an impressive 69%, from 30% - >99%
- Incident closure SLA compliance rate increased by 32%, from 60% - >92%
- The response SLA compliance rate improved by 17%, from 80% - >97%
- The incident backlog decreased by approximately 30, from the high 60s - >30s