Replacement
Provided by:
Ent ® Federal Credit Union Swaps Out HEAT® To Achieve a Revitalized
Service Desk and Harness True IT Management Capability
The Challenge
Growth and organizational maturity at Ent called for more out of the service desk and IT functions. The IT management and staff faced:
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Inflexible legacy systems that were costly to modify•
Multiple disparate systems and data repositories•
Shortage of time to focus on strategic projects•
Difficulty enforcing newly defined, integrated processesThe Solution
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Implemented Cherwell Service Management® software to automate processes and integrate IT systemsThe Results:
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Reduced time to develop a specific application from 6 months to 2 weeks•
Created collaborative development and support environment that exceeds the business needs•
Generated faster, more reliable throughput•
Produced consistent, reliable results for the business•
Moved IT from reactive to trusted, strategic business partnerExecutive Summary
Award-winning Ent Federal Credit Union has built their business and their reputation on high member confidence and satisfaction. The systems that run the business are a key function of ensuring this continues and is seamless to the members.
That’s why Jameel Qazi, IT Business Support Manager and industry veteran, knew he needed a more flexible, easier to use and integrate, and lower cost solution than Front Range Solutions® HEAT® Help Desk tool. Rather, he required something that would be easy to automate and enforce processes, simple to modify as needs evolved and extensible to other products and IT applications.
In a short pilot program, Qazi saw rapid results with Cherwell Service Management.
His team is now able to create new applications quickly, modify applications based on business needs, and has moved from a reactive mode using HEAT, to a strategic business partner supporting the organizations growing needs through the implementation of Cherwell Service Management.
In addition, Cherwell Service Management is able to help protect Ent’s investment in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) by managing and enforcing these best practices.
“We found a sweet spot Cherwell is a fully functional, configurable and scalable ITSM solution that exceeds the capability of many more expensive solutions on the market today.”
Jameel Qazi IT Business Support Ent Federal Credit Union
CUSTOMER OVERVIEW
Company: ControlCircleGeography: United States
Industry: Banking and Finance ENT is Colorado’s largest credit union, providing a full range of financial solutions for over 197,000 members.
Ent’s Growth Drives Need For More Flexibility
At Ent Federal Credit Union, members expect a friendly, quick and secure transaction. “We have a strong emphasis on support, and our IT tools play a key role in making sure that we are responsive to those needs,” says industry veteran Jameel Qazi, IT Business Support Manager.
Ent is the largest credit union in Colorado, and it’s not hard to see why. The not-for-profit, community-chartered credit union puts their focus squarely on their members, providing a full range of financial solutions for over 197,000 members. To the member, this means confidence in their financial capabilities. To Ent, this means an infrastructure of people, processes and technology designed “...to improve the members’ quality of life by providing access to quality financial products and services consistent with standards of safety and soundness.”
Not surprisingly, this commitment has spurred growth in their membership, motivating Qazi to search for an improved IT infrastructure. “Our IT team supports all the software and hardware that run the business. Safety and soundness is of the utmost importance when we are dealing with people’s financial assets. It is essential that our members have trust and confidence in us – that’s what is at stake here,” says Qazi.
Outgrowing The Existing Infrastructure
The drive to move IT from a reactive position to a strategic business partner had Qazi looking for ways to provide more value. With service as a core value, Qazi looked at the existing service desk solution, Front Range Solutions HEAT, and found it to be lacking in some critical areas that would allow his team to optimize service desk management.
Having implemented ITIL best practices, Qazi needed a system that would support and enforce the process flow, ensuring these new IT standards for service desk management were met.
Qazi considered process enforcement to be a key part of protecting and maximizing their investment in ITIL.
The result of creating integrated processes is driving higher quality customer service and quicker, higher quality application development.
Though HEAT and other IT systems were handling the basics, they were neither tailored towards, nor capable of, the kinds of things Qazi’s team needed to be exceptionally effective.
“HEAT tended to exacerbate the issue that we were always in reactive mode, and couldn’t easily be configured to meet the needs of our new initiatives.”
Proof of Concept In A Matter Of Weeks
What they needed was a tool to handle all IT processes in one centralized database. What they found was a wide variety of prices for what seemed to be very similar solutions.
“In one instance, we were able to build an application on Cherwell in two weeks that would have previously taken us 6 months.”
Jameel Qazi IT Business Support Ent Federal Credit Union
Then Qazi discovered Cherwell Service Management, which quickly proved to be both a world-class service desk solution and a true business process platform -- with a small footprint and big flexibility.
Cherwell’s money back guarantee gave them the flexibility to start with a few licenses, build some core modules and determine the value for themselves. Once they knew how they wanted their processes to work, it was simple and quick to implement, and was up and running in a matter of weeks.
Using Cherwell Service Management’s® out-of-the-box blueprints for service requests, incident management, problem management and change management, they also added and tailored applications to fit their business. Now when a change is made to production, it follows a very precise change management workflows that ensures all the approvals are in place before that change goes live. This is similar for incidents and problems – the whole process is streamlined and consistent. It also provides the evidence report necessary to comply with strict regulatory requirements.
According to Qazi, “Even ITIL can get implemented slightly differently in every organization.
We created a project management module using the Cherwell platform. To me, this illustrates the ultimate flexibility and configurability.”
A Fully Integrated Solution
As the organization grew, it also became more challenging to keep all the departments coordinated. System changes almost always affect multiple departments, and Cherwell ensures that these changes are kept in sync. Each department has a role-specific, permission-based view into the data and the processes.
Now Qazi’s team enjoys the benefits of Cherwell’s naturally integrated system with a single repository:
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When a service request turns out to be a bigger issue, it is easily integrated with a project that gets prioritized and resourced.•
In their custom configured test module, testers are involved more directly with their releases and test cases are linked with the change management system.•
Process enforcement protects their investment in ITIL best practices.•
Potential issues are squashed early with control over how information moves through IT, having better control over Service Level Agreements, and knowing exactly who is assigned to what issue at any point in time.•
Project management allows projects to be prioritized accordingly, bringing bigger impact projects to the top of the list and be resourced appropriately.•
Cherwell’s easy, fast upgrades ensure that Qazi’s team is focused on serving the needs of the business rather than converting data.•
Allows for greater collaboration within IT and better information for making decisions.•
Puts key business data into the hands of the business management.“With Cherwell, we didn’t just buy a service desk solution. We bought a process automation platform.”
Jameel Qazi IT Business Support Ent Federal Credit Union
Cherwell gives Qazi’s team a seamless way to do things like modify processes, add custom fields or drop down boxes, and have it published in a matter of minutes. This has allowed his team to respond quickly to requests, instilling more confidence in the IT department. “It’s that clean sheet of paper design that they’ve started off with that has an inherent flexibility,” muses Qazi. “We can release a whole new module within a couple of weeks that would take 6 months to build in another tool.”
From Reactive to Strategic
Sharing information with the business units and delivering on promises has bred well-deserved confidence in the IT organization and moved Ent’s IT department into a high value position.
Forecasting available resources has allowed them to make better commitments to the organization. Improving their throughput has provided the opportunity to take on larger, more strategic initiatives that have made significant improvements to the business. “What the organization sees is that we are better able to execute,” shares Qazi. “These are all factors of the capabilities we have with Cherwell Software, now our system of record and used by our entire IT organization.” Qazi has experienced many vendor relationships in his career, and says many companies talk about forming a partnership with their customer. “This often turns out to be just words. But with Cherwell, we have access to the core team and are encouraged to share our ideas. We have found that Cherwell not only listens, they act.”
What’s next?
Says Qazi, “With Cherwell, we didn’t just buy a service desk solution. We bought a process automation platform. Its natural scalability means we can quickly and easily add new modules without buying a new solution. There are always ideas for ways to improve processes. I don’t know how we’ll be using Cherwell a year from now, but I’m looking forward to finding more and more innovative ways to leverage this platform for moving our business forward.”
