Healthy service
As project CLIO (Common Language for IT Organizations) aligns all IT services at global healthy food brand Danone, VitAL editor Matt Bailey spoke to Danone IS manager SEE (South East Europe) and Clio Competence Center Aurelian Sin and InfraVision project manager Martijn Adams.
Back in September 2008 we reported that global healthy foods brand Danone was taking unprecedented control of its IT processes through automation, integration and ITIL best practice with the roll out of BMC Service Desk Express Suite from InfraVision. The roll out gave the Danone IT organisations at 253 sites, across 13 time zones and in 11 different languages increased service desk performance, manageability and organisational alignment.
Aurelian Sin, IS manager Danone South East Europe, explains the relationship: “We have worked closely with Infravision on Project CLIO since 2007. We researched the market carefully and decided on BMC Service Desk Express and using InfraVision as implementation partner because they proposed a different approach that was quick and relatively painless to roll out. With the Alignability Process Model (APM) InfraVision offered a completely new approach which differed noticeably from the time-consuming standard of describing every process meticulously. What would normally take a year could now be done in one month. They proposed an original approach, promising that we could start the roll out within the short time frame that was set and they fulfilled that promise.”
Danone combined the InfraVision offer into one Service Management approach named CLIO (Common Language for IT Organizations), with four key components:
- Process model: APM;
- Application: BMC SDE;
- Standard Service Catalogue;
- A BI solution allowing advanced analytics.
Danone’s mission is to bring health through food to as many people as possible. It operates 200 plants, employs 88,000 people, and has a presence in more than 120 countries across all five continents. It has leading positions in its four business lines: fresh dairy products (number one worldwide), beverages (number two in the packaged water market), baby food (number two worldwide), and medical nutrition.
The company has traditionally operated a relatively de-centralised technology support strategy, with most of the countries where it has a footprint typically managing their own IT processes. The result of this siloed approach was that the support environment became increasingly difficult to manage. Spread across different countries, the support teams relied on a variety of tools — in some cases, even spreadsheets — to manage end users’ technology.
“The IT service departments at Danone range widely in size from organisation to organisation; from one or two people, to larger service management organisations. We had to offer the same tools and functionality to all regardless of their scale,” explains Sin. “For example, when we rolled out Clio, we were able to use it, after training for six ITIL processes, straight away in all departments, moving from unit to unit in a fast and pragmatic way.”
“The departments are all different from country to country,” agrees InfraVision project manager Martijn Adams, “so we have to deal with over 30 IT managers and every aspect of the CLIO has to benefit all of them. Clearly, under these circumstances change management and project management are extremely important. A pilot project in Romania led to the first roll-out, which was in the UK and Ireland. The processes had to allow for different levels of maturity of IT organisations to be combined in the system.”
InfraVision uses the Alignability Process Model for implementing service management tools. This model is based on the experience of over 300 organisations over the past 10 years and provides real life best practices for 11 ITIL processes. This approach ensures success and saves a tremendous amount of money, time and frustration for organisations wanting to implement a service management tool based on ITIL best practices. APM was central to Project CLIO. “The APM model has firm foundations,” claims Adams. “It is based on established standards like ITIL, but is not solely based on theory; it is developed from practical experience.”
If there is a downside for InfraVision from deploying APM it’s that the average size of projects has reduced, but as Adams explains, that’s not always a bad thing. “Though the average size of contract is smaller, the quality improves greatly which in turn drives more business. The benefit for the customer is that they no longer have to change systems every six years or so.”
The success with CLIO has driven further partnership. “After working with InfraVision on this project we have started looking into other areas where they can help us,” says Sin. “Run book automation is our next step, but we are considering more.”
InfraVision has over 10 years’ experience in implementing service management processes (ITIL) and tooling. “What we have learned during hundreds of projects is that a ‘tool only’ implementation will most likely fail,” says Adams. “Features of a tool are nice but the important question is; does the tool support my processes? And even more importantly; will the project approach make sure these processes and the supporting tool are embedded in my organisation and accepted by my staff? The answer to the last question depends 95 percent on the partner you select to implement the solution and much less on the tool. Having said that, there are of course good tools and not so good tools on the market.”
“We’re all starting to speak the same language,” says Aurelian Sin. “We have the same problems; we make the same changes and our SLAs are comparable. This allows us to see the best performers and share best practice across all the organisations.”
Looking to the future, Sin sees the process and the change management maturing in the organisation, but he also identifies avenues for development. “One project we have in mind is run book automation,” he says. “We are finding tasks that can be automated, the repetitive tasks where no value is added by staff, and seeing how we can automate them.”
“This is part of the whole vision of service management,” adds Martijn Adams. “The help desk moving towards service desk and on to service management. Automation is a key part of this process. Even in Eastern Europe where salaries are lower, automation can play a role by reducing resources consumed. If you look at how fast we rolled out the initial project you can really begin to see the value. It took less than 12 weeks, where a typical ITIL implementation could take up to two years!”
