2015

AN EVEREST GROUP REPORT

Optimizing IT Service Delivery: Technology is the

Answer
Harnessing the Power of Technology to
Unlock Business Value in IT Services

Jimit Arora, Vice President

Yugal Joshi, Practice Director
Copyright 2015, Everest Global, Inc. All rights reserved.

This report has been licensed for exclusive use and distribution by Tata Consultancy Services.

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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

Executive Summary
As technology disruption continues at an unprecedented pace, IT service delivery
organizations are under significant pressure to respond to the rapidly changing
environment and establish themselves as a strategic business enabler. IT
organizations are expected to drive the adoption of next-generation IT, yet
manage traditional systems with the utmost cost efficiency and agility. Therefore,
they need to balance innovation with rigorous discipline. However, most IT
organizations struggle to effectively meet these conflicting expectations, given the
inherent inefficiencies in the traditional models of IT service delivery.
Most enterprises erroneously equate IT service delivery with IT support and,
therefore, are unable to achieve optimization across the entire value chain. This
suboptimal IT services approach impacts the ability of the enterprises to respond
to the market demands in a timely manner, and raises questions on their ability to
remain nimble, competitive, and relevant.
Everest Group research suggests that a large number of enterprises recognize this
source of value erosion and are adopting remedial steps to optimize IT services.
However, most efforts are piecemeal and, typically, focus on production support
versus the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). These organizations
continue to exhibit over reliance on human skills and run by memory in IT
service delivery, which increases risks and compromises the user experience.
To achieve an optimized IT service delivery, enterprises must focus their efforts
across the entire SDLC. The complexity across SDLC processes requires
enterprises to leverage technology-driven initiatives that are not disjointed point
solutions but deliver end-to-end services for the application lifecycle.
Enterprises need to automate, industrialize, and digitize their processes to make
them measurable and aligned to industry best practices.
Most discussions around IT service delivery optimization emphasize cultural
change and process overhaul rather than pure technology. Our research
suggests that though these are indeed important, they are difficult to implement
and measure. Technology-driven IT service delivery optimization initiatives, on the
other hand, are measurable and generate tangible results. However, these
initiatives should not fundamentally disrupt ongoing IT service delivery. A strong
focus on cross-team collaboration and reliance on technology versus scattered,
fragmented, and inefficient processes residing in team islands will result in an
optimized IT service delivery.
This report analyzes existing challenges in IT service delivery and suggest
mitigation strategies to enable its optimization. The key areas of focus are:

Key challenges in existing practices for IT service delivery

Value erosion from suboptimal IT service delivery

Role of technology across the SDLC to optimize IT service delivery

Value and key success factors technology-led IT service delivery optimization

This complimentary report was funded, in part by Tata Consultancy

Services
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The State of IT Service Delivery

Enterprise IT is supposed to be everything to everyone. The IT services it delivers
are expected to keep systems running efficiently, save costs, transform legacy
platforms for future, and ensure innovation to drive business value. IT is
expected to be agile and continuously evolving to meet business demand. Be it
organically developed or acquired systems, age-old applications,
modernization, end-user experience management, or next-generation digital
initiatives, enterprise IT is expected to accommodate everyone.
Requirements from the business are growing in volume and complexity. With the
proliferation of next-generation services such as mobility, cloud, analytics, and
maintenance/transformation of the legacy environment, the demand on
delivering cost effective yet business-enabling IT service is creating further
challenges.
Agility

Sustainability

Business
requirements

Innovation

Efficiency

Still most enterprises are under an erroneous assumption that IT service implies
IT support. Therefore, they are disproportionately focused on infrastructure
operations. These organizations obsess over IT Service Management (ITSM) and
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) frameworks. These principles though important,
focus more on supporting existing systems than transforming, modernizing, and
preparing systems for the future.
Shrinking product life cycles, increasing adoption of agile methodologies, and
DevOps strategies are pushing IT service delivery organizations to further
optimize operations. Many optimization initiatives that were implemented earlier
could not deliver meaningful value as these were largely focused on IT support.
Enterprises now require integrated technology solutions spanning the entire
application lifecycle that can truly optimize IT service delivery compared to the
earlier piecemeal approach.

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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

IT Service Delivery Key Challenges

The evolution of most enterprise IT organizations has, typically, been ad-hoc
and reactive. As a result, IT service organizations rarely adopt a comprehensive
end-to-end and consistent model for development and support. Multiple (often
redundant) systems are developed to cater to specific business requirements,
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) bring a plethora of systems, and a
geographically-distributed structure, where teams collaborate across the globe,
further adds to the complexity.
In such an environment, Enterprise IT needs to manage challenges across three
primary dimensions viz., people, process, and information as depicted in
Exhibit 1. Overdependence on human effort, fragmented management of the
application lifecycle, disparate information sources for systems, and poor
adherence to enterprise-wide best practices are some of the key challenges in
IT service delivery.
EXHIBIT

Pr

IT service delivery
challenges

lated

Source: Everest Group

Low value work,

which consumes
significant time

d
te

s re

Overdependence
on manual effort

es
oc

Peopl
e

delivery

re
la

Key challenges in IT service

Limited end-to-end
application lifecycle
management
Poor adherence to
process standards
and benchmarks

Inf
te d
orm
ation rela

Islands of information that

inhibit inhibiting effective
collaboration
Poor information
management that impacts
impacting systems lifecycle

People-related challenges
IT service delivery is almost entirely effort driven. The cost, quality, and enduser experience vary significantly based on the skills of the people involved. This
is in contrast to leveraging repeatable and automated processes that can
consistently deliver business-aligned IT services.
Further, sporadic industrialization and automation is unable to provide the
needed IT service delivery optimization. IT resources spend significant amount
of time on tasks such as test data generation, data masking, gathering
information about applications, manually analyzing legacy applications, and
fragmented project management, rather than focusing on creating consistently
excellent IT service.

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Process-related challenges
Most organizations, fully or partially, follow ITSM processes to align IT service
delivery with business objectives. However, little focus is given to data-driven
analysis for adherence across the SDLC. For example, very few organizations
deploy automated mechanisms to analyze adherence to best practices for code
development (e.g., code reuse, prototyping) to minimize technical debt.
Further, enterprises have fragmented governance processes to manage their IT
service landscape from development to production support. They do not have
access to one view of performance across internal and external service
providers. Various IT projects create their own version of best practices without
organization-wide validation. These create significant cost overheads and
islands of scattered best practices with limited value.
Information-related challenges
Enterprise IT teams have vast pools of internal or tribal knowledge. However,
most of it is hardwired rather than documented. The knowledge within teams is
rarely disseminated, creating significant challenges in transformational
initiatives. The meta-data related to IT inventory (e.g., legacy systems) is either
unavailable or fragmented, and rarely stored in a central platform.
Moreover, there is little cross-team collaboration and information exchange due
to lack of an engaging platform. Information sources are scattered across
multiple teams with little consolidation or centralized access. This creates
significant duplicity of effort and poses challenges to develop a best in class IT
service delivery experience.

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Impact of Suboptimal IT Service Delivery

It is stating the obvious that poor and suboptimal IT service delivery causes
value erosion, produces poor business results, and increases the business-IT
disconnect. In these times of technology-led differentiation and rapid
innovation, suboptimal IT service delivery can limit the capability of a business
to differentiate and grow.
Moreover, as businesses drift further apart from IT-driven objectives, new
funding for the IT service organization gets negatively impacted. This further
exacerbates the challenges, as the agenda of the IT service organization
becomes cost containment versus business enablement. Suboptimal IT service
delivery results in budget overruns and poor quality of business offerings. The
business misses growth opportunities due to delayed timelines. It not only results
in reduced profitability for the business but also creates significant reputation
risk as shown in Exhibit 2.
EXHIBIT

Cost overruns

Poor quality

Business impact of a suboptimal

IT service delivery

Delayed
timelines

Result of
suboptimal IT
service delivery

Business-IT
disconnect

Business impact

Source: Everest Group

Missed growth
opportunities

Diminished
profitability

Reputation risk

Sustainability
challenges

Cost overrun
Most IT service delivery resources are engaged in tasks that consume significant
time, however, create limited business value. This increases the cost of IT service
delivery as more resources are deployed than necessary. Senior leadership
bandwidth is consumed in operational tasks for managing manual processes
and their outcomes. Cost of communication and collaboration increases in the
absence of a centralized platform. Everest Group research indicates that
enterprises with suboptimal IT service delivery teams overspend by 25-35% in
delivering the needed services.
Organizations typically lack an end-to-end view of their IT service landscape
that result in islands of costs. Most business critical projects (e.g., legacy
application transformation) underestimate the cost drivers as they leverage
inadequate tools that can comprehensively assist in this process.
Delayed timelines
A suboptimal IT service delivery impacts the agility of a business to respond to
market demands. Timelines of projects are repeatedly missed due to erroneous
effort estimation, incorrect requirements gathering, poor development activities,
and multiple ad-hoc manual interventions. For example, in legacy application
transformation this is visible in the limited understanding of old technologies,
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disproportionate effort to achieve data quality, and scattered documentation.

Consequently, enterprises spend 30-50% more time in delivering the required IT
services due to disjointed service delivery practices. The business lacks agility and
becomes late to market as critical initiatives are delayed. People responsible
for differentiated IT services consume inordinate amount of time and resources
due to lack of enabling tools. The business is unable to cater to rapidly changing
market expectations, resulting in missed opportunities for growth.
Poor quality
Poor IT service delivery results in poor quality of the end product. A half-baked
product or service can be detrimental to the brand image of an organization. As
the overall IT service delivery is compromised at different junctures (e.g.,
incomplete requirements, poor coding practice, and incomplete QA), the quality
suffers.
Our research suggests that enterprises are unable to detect and address 30-50%
of the functional and non-functional defects of the IT systems introduced during
the requirements and design phase. These have significant quality and cost
implications once discovered downstream (i.e., technical debt). These inferior
products negatively impact the sustainability of the business. Moreover, as IT
services become unreliable there are cascading challenges for the business to
launch newer offerings or differentiate.
Business-IT disconnect
All of the outcomes of suboptimal IT service delivery cited above impact the
relationship between business and IT. This disconnect severely impacts the
funding for new initiatives as well as the credibility of the IT organization. Shadow
IT functions within the business tap into alternate budget pools to enable
functionalities that they require but do not trust enterprise IT to deliver.
Consequently, IT is often viewed as a bottleneck in achieving business objectives
making senior business leadership question the credibility and value of the IT
organization beyond keeping the lights on.
Many enterprises, such as Kodak and Borders, became extinct as the business
could not evolve and respond adequately to the technology disruptions. We
believe it is critically important for enterprises to embrace IT service delivery
optimization. A suboptimal IT service delivery construct can hasten the
irrelevance and extinction of an enterprise.

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Leveraging Technology to Optimize IT Service Delivery

Technology, through tools and

other assets, is increasingly
playing a critical role in nextgeneration IT service delivery
eliminating waste, improving
user experience, and aligning IT
service delivery with overall
business objectives.
Peter Bendor-Samuel, Founder
and CEO, Everest Group

Business-IT misalignment has been studied extensively and enterprises have

adopted various strategies to bridge this gap. Despite a strong focus on ITSM
processes, this disconnect is witnessed across enterprises large and small,
alike. Organizations end up managing and creating blind process adherence
for inherently inefficient and suboptimal IT service delivery.
Most enterprises, while undertaking initiatives to optimize IT service delivery,
typically default to a big bang approach of business process transformation.
Though the aspirations are commendable, real execution witnesses significant
challenges. Therefore, the success rate of these initiatives is uncertain despite
massive investments and risks to service disruption. Other initiatives to optimize
IT service delivery typically include investing in the skills of resources and
incentive realignment. These approaches have demonstrated mixed results with
limited consistency across enterprises.

The most surprising aspect across enterprises regarding their initiatives to

optimize IT service delivery, is the lack of focus on leveraging technology
solutions as analyzed in Exhibit 3. Everest Groups analysis reveals a surprisingly
low adoption of technology-driven initiatives to improve IT service delivery,
despite the achievable impact on end-outcomes.
EXHIBIT

Approaches to optimize IT

Focus
Process
reengineering

service delivery and their

adoption

IT skill
development
IT incentive
alignment

Source: Everest Group

Technologydriven initiatives

Organizational Risk of service Assurance

of outcome
resistance
disruption
Enterprises have a hard-wired
assumption regarding the benefits of process reengineering
and transformation
Investing in skills and aligning
IT incentives have displayed
mixed and inconsistent results
Technology-driven initiatives
are surprisingly ignored,
though they can have the
maximum impact on
optimizing IT service delivery

Though enterprises deploy multiple fragmented tools to achieve modular tasks

(e.g., smoke testing, code conversion, performance analysis, disaster recovery,
and server patching), very few leverage technology consistently and holistically
across the SDLC and post production support processes.
Our research and experience causes us to contend that the challenges
confronting modern IT organizations cannot be addressed meaningfully by
traditional methods of process reengineering, skills development, and incentive
realignment. With agile delivery becoming mainstream and traditional models
still continuing strong, enterprises require technology-enabled transformational
initiatives to optimize IT service delivery.

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Adopting Technology Solutions Across the SDLC

Most enterprises invest a fortune in improving IT service delivery. There are
numerous commercial software available that focus on streamlining and
optimizing sub processes within the SDLC. However, most of these disjointed
tools serve a specific function and operate in their own silos. These silos prevent
traceability across design, development, QA, and support processes, which in
turn impact the cost of operations, project timelines, and accountability.
Everest Groups research reveals that enterprises do recognize the value of
technology-led IT service delivery optimization initiatives. However, they
erroneously believe that investing in point solutions and focusing on specific
tasks can optimize IT services. Exhibit 4 depicts that to fundamentally optimize
IT service delivery, enterprises must necessarily invest in technology-driven
initiatives across the SDLC processes and post production support.
EXHIBIT

Service level assurance

Adherence to industry frameworks (e.g., ITIL)

service delivery optimization

Source: Everest Group

Code once deploy anywhere

Role of technology solutions

across SDLC

Implement and
maintain

Zero day transition and knowledge digitization

Adopting technology-led IT

Prototyping and codeless development

Faster development and support for

Test and validate

agile delivery
Build and design

Enable test data creation and

management
Continuous integration and

testing
Requirements
and design

Accountability by event tracing

Centralized storage and management of requirements

Analyze and plan

Detect gaps early and integrate with other tools

Enhance cross-team collaboration

Application lifecycle

For example, code reuse can save 25-35% of effort of developers. Further, a
strong focus on code quality during build and design leveraging code
diagnostic tools, can reduce approximately 30% of application tickets during
production1. Collectively, these initiatives result in over 20% productivity
improvements in activities such as application maintenance whenever tools are
holistically leveraged across the SDLC.
For enterprises to realize the full value of IT service delivery optimization
initiatives, these technology solutions need to enable the following changes that
are meaningful yet manageable:

1 In search of ADM productivity You have Got to Start Somewhere

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Process digitization and automation

Enterprises need to move away from over reliance on human intervention and
skills of individuals. Significant process documentation, team knowledge,
configuration parameters, and related IT service delivery aspects are leveraged
by memory, rather than through a structured approach. A technology-driven
IT service delivery paradigm must digitize as many processes as possible, to
limit human intervention and error.
Different tasks need to be broken down into modules that can be industrialized,
automated, and integrated to perform operations. For example, tasks such as
test data generation, data masking, and collating events from multiple
repositories, should require minimum human intervention. The platform should
enable capturing and benchmarking of requirements. It should also automate
correlation of events and standardization of processes. There must be defined
process flows to adhere to for delivering optimized IT services.
Data and analytics
Enterprises have amassed colossal amounts of data across their IT
environments. All the way from configuration data, application logs, events,
incidents, defects, embedded business rules, and process flows, enterprises
have vast repositories of data. Moreover, legacy systems accumulate precious
data that can be effectively leveraged for transformational objectives. Any
technology-driven IT service delivery optimization initiative must encompass
fact-based data-driven analysis of applications and infrastructure.
The solution must ensure data relevancy, consistency, and accuracy for
business. This data must provide complete insights into the application and
infrastructure landscape for the best decision making. The fundamental metadata across systems must be collated and enhanced. For example, rather than
relying on extensive human effort during an application rationalization or
consolidation exercise, technology-driven initiatives must automatically extract
and gather relevant application metrics (e.g., configuration, business rules).
Collaboration and process adherence
Enterprises have a plethora of stand-alone and siloed tools for tasks such as
project management and service governance. However, maximum focus is on
production support and IT operations. There is limited support for different
SDLC activities, resulting in poor process adherence. IT support is generally
centralized, whereas new projects reside with business and, therefore, are
scattered. There is little collaboration to improve IT services right at the
inception.
Technology-driven IT service delivery optimization should embed intelligence
beyond post production support and encompass the entire SDLC value-chain
(e.g., design, development, QA, and service transition). It should provide
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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

reusable components and modules to improve productivity and ensure

consistent practices in code development and QA. Collaboration must be
digitized to enable dissemination of best practices and seamless
communication between developers, QA, sponsors, and project managers.
Global system repositories
Technology platforms need to aggregate the fragmented system information
across the enterprise. These platforms should provide an easy mechanism to
store, retrieve, and update system-related data. Scattered information prohibits
transformation of legacy systems, hinders business agility, and increases cost of
operations. Optimized IT service delivery must rely on a consistent global
repository of meta-data related to different applications and systems that
augments the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
This repository should be easily accessible for developers and support engineers
to quickly meet changing business requirements. Moreover, the technology
solution should enable consistent view and updated system documentation to
deliver optimized IT services (e.g., migration, effort estimation, and continuous
improvement).

Value and Key Success Factors Technology-led IT Service

Delivery Optimization

CIOs are increasingly looking to

simplify their IT portfolio and
increase the return on investment
for their technology decisions.
Key to making this happen is
innovation so that the service
delivery process is standardized,
helping reduce customer costs
while delivering a high quality
service.
Allen Brown, CEO and
President, The Open Group

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As enterprises seek to technology-led optimization of IT service delivery they

need to focus on tangible benefits from these initiatives. Everest Groups
research indicates that technology solutions can optimize various processes
within the SDLC. End-to-end integrated technology solutions can significantly
enhance quality of business offerings. These solutions can detect problems at
an early stage, reducing the downstream cost of rework. Moreover, they
automate and digitize manual processes improving productivity and time to
market.
Exhibit 5 summarizes the impact of technology solutions on driving IT service
delivery optimization initiatives and the resultant business value generated.
Technology-led IT service delivery optimization inculcates and encourages a
culture of collaboration and data-driven IT services. The focus shifts from standalone KPI management to application-centric service delivery that maps to
business outcomes. The technology solutions enable integrated SLA governance
and an enterprise-wide view of IT services.

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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

EXHIBIT

Business value from optimizing

IT service delivery

Source: Everest Group

Impact of technology
Design and
development

Management and
support

Implementation

Transformation

Reusable

Knowledge

Integrated

Data-driven

components
Enable low skill
development
Optimized testing

management and
transition
Automated
deployments
System data stores
and mappings

governance and
collaboration
Data management

Factual application

Program

management

transformation
and systems
analysis
Quick turnaround
and transition

Business value
Responsiveness to
market demand

Improved operational
efficiency

Enhanced customer
experience

New avenues for

growth

However, for this to succeed, organizations need a plan of action that does not
introduce overwhelming changes to the overall environment. These initiatives
should not be perceived as unmanageable by the stakeholders. Enterprises
deploying technology solutions to optimize IT service delivery need to
incorporate the vision of simplification at the core of their strategy.
Though the idea of process reengineering is attractive, it is not always the best
suited mechanism to optimize IT service delivery. Optimization initiatives should
ideally be run in the background without requiring significant change
management. In our experience, most well intentioned big bang optimization
initiatives introduce unmanageable and unwarranted changes that result in
failure. We believe that most business value resides in automating and digitizing
manual processes, rather than in defaulting on process reengineering.
The success of technology-led IT service delivery optimization initiatives rests on
five major pillars as summarized in Exhibit 6.
6

Key success factors in optimizing

Put IT simplification as the core focus of optimization initiatives

Avoid overwhelming and unwarranted changes

IT service delivery
Ensure coverage across SDLC processes
Source: Everest Group

Get executive and line manager buy-in

Plan and mitigate potential IT service disruption

Key success factors for optimizing IT

service delivery leveraging technology

EXHIBIT

Most IT-related initiatives require executive championship and commitment.

However, optimizing IT service delivery is successful only when these initiatives
also have the support of and buy-in from the line managers. Thrusting an
initiative on them due to organizational mandate is unlikely to deliver
intended outcomes.

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Case Study: Woolworths Limited

Client overview
Founded in 1924, Woolworths is the largest supermarket and grocery chain in
Australia, with over 198,000 employees, serving more than 28 million
customers, and generating ~US$54 billion in revenue.
Woolworths has more than 3,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand
spanning food, petrol, liquor, general merchandise, and home improvement
products.
Context and background
Technology plays a key role in Woolworths business given its scale and the
nature of the retail industry.
Woolworths Quality Assurance (QA) environment consists of multiple
applications being tested by over 200 professionals (internal and service
providers). At any given instance, the QA organization runs ~50 projects of
different sizes across functional, performance, security, and integration testing.
Woolworths has been working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for over ten
years and TCS is considered as a strategic partner by Woolworths, especially in
the QA domain.
The challenges
Lack of process standardization,
focus on testing than QA, and
business frustration due to long
testing cycles were the key
challenges.

Woolworths QA processes, though efficient, suffered from lack of

standardization and integrated workflows. Woolworths realized that despite its
process efficiencies, broader QA management had room for improvements.
For example, on various occasions, the provisioned test environment differed
from requirements and the QA team began every project new with limited
leverage from earlier efforts. The QA organization was more focused on testing
than on end-to-end quality assurance. This resulted in delays in service delivery
to the business, prolonged time-to-market, and significant demands on time
and resources during QA.
The solution
Woolworths earlier relied on an industry point solution for managing its QA
processes. However, it realized the value of a platform integrated with broader
IT services and replaced the point solution with TCS MasterCraft Application
Lifecycle Manager (ALM).
TCS MasterCraft portfolio consists of 30 technology products across eight
suites, focusing on software automation tools and platforms to optimize and

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enhance different SDLC processes such as application development, testing,

data management, legacy transformation, and IT service management.
The results
TCS led the change management, in close collaboration with Woolworths QA
organization, for deploying TCS MasterCraft Application Lifecycle Manager. The
solution was deployed in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model with TCS
hosting it.
A rigorous functional, performance, and integration testing of the platform
(e.g., data exchange with on-premise systems, security concerns, and feature
richness) provided comfort to Woolworths regarding the suitability of the SaaS
solution. Further, the SaaS model allowed Woolworths to focus on business
issues versus managing the underlying infrastructure.

TCS MasterCraft ALM has good

reporting functions, enhanced
feature sets, and integrated
workflows that help us in
optimizing QA activities.
Richard Lewis, QA Manager,
Woolworths Limited

Given that the QA management platform is the nerve center for the entire
QA organization, the deployment was performed in phases where dedicated
TCS engineers provided live demo, deployment, customization, and support to
Woolworths.
Woolworths unlocked value in its QA process by deploying the TCS MasterCraft
Application Lifecycle Manager. Apart from the fact that it is SaaS delivered,
resulting in cost savings on infrastructure and support, the solution offered
useful feature sets and workflows. Some of the key benefits derived till date
include:

a) Improved time-to-market: In the legacy environment, Woolworths witnessed

challenges in accessing and managing defects. This resulted in business
frustration and longer time-to-market. Post transition, Woolworths received
feature rich capabilities for effective QA management, resulting in quicker
and streamlined services delivered to the business
b) Reduced governance overheads: Woolworths believe that TCS MasterCraft
ALM offers improved and integrated workflows for QA resources to create
and access QA-related data and information. These workflows assist in
assigning and tracking QA-related responsibilities resulting in efficient
operations, limited downtime, and reduced governance efforts and costs
c) Unified QA view due to improved reporting: Woolworths leverages the
improved reporting functionality of the platform that assists in making
correct decisions aligned to the business objectives. This has increased QA
productivity, created a unified view, and reduced costs
d) Comprehensive QA assuring business satisfaction: Unlike in the legacy
environment, QA resources do not spend an inordinate amount of time in
ensuring scope adherence, as the platform readily provides needed
information. Moreover, various aspects of QA processes are well captured
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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

and accountability is transparent. This assists in increasing focus on core QA

tasks, expanding coverage, and ensuring better quality of service delivered to
the business
Lessons learned
Some of the key lessons learnt by Woolworths were:
a) Have a plan: Woolworths realized that any critical platform that is deployed for
the long term needs to undergo structured implementation. Woolworths and
TCS jointly developed an action plan for the entire adoption journey. This
ensured that the platform did not disrupt QA operations and was incorporated
with limited hindrances
b) Do not disrupt operations: Woolworths and TCS collaborated to ensure that
there was minimal process transformation required. This is imperative to avoid
large scale change management and QA disruption. Any process change, if
required, was preceded by a detailed analysis and a strategy for subsequent
change management
c) Make users aware: Woolworths realized that simply deploying a different QA
management platform will not create business value unless the end-users are
made aware of its benefits. A structured program was devised to ensure that
users are systematically made aware of TCS MasterCraft to extract maximum
value from the platform
d) Right skill the resources: The QA resources were trained on the additional
features of TCS MasterCraft. This upskilling was required to derive the best
value out of a new platform. Unless the end-users were skilled enough to work
on the available enhanced functionality they could not add business value
e) Value of platform enhanced by IT services: QA platforms can provide
enhanced business value when augmented with IT services. Though not a
prerequisite, platform providers need to offer IT services beyond typical
deployments. There needs to be a handholding process and downstream
support where clients are provided all the enabling services
Woolworths is contemplating extending and adding similar functionality to
different parts of the IT organization, beyond the QA function. The company
has achieved success in deploying a large-scale platform at a fairly
comfortable pace with limited downtime and business disruption. It would like
to leverage this experience further in deploying other platforms and products.
This exercise has provided Woolworths with significant best practices in
platform selection, end-user awareness, and making the overall program a
success. These are valuable lessons and will offer great help in the future
across other programs

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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

Conclusion
The rapid disruption in technology, importance of maintaining & transforming
existing systems, and aligning IT to business objectives requires enterprises to
reinvent their IT service delivery.
We believe right technology solutions deployed and integrated across different
sub-processes across the SDLC can deliver significant value. However, these
technology solutions need to be augmented with long term changes across
different dimensions as shown in the Exhibit 7 below.
EXHIBIT

IT service delivery optimization

Level 1: Ad-hoc

Delivery model

continuum

Level 2: Reactive

Level 3: Optimized

Over reliant on manual

effort and ad-hoc
interventions
Limited collaboration
even within teams
IT service delivery
focused on surviving the
day

Sporadic industrialization
and automation
Little cross-team
collaboration and
knowledge dissemination
Reactive and over
focused on IT support
with misaligned practices

Limited understanding
and adoption of tools
No clear tool strategy or
vision
Little tangible business
impact

Fragmented and
expensive tool ecosystem
Tools leveraged in team
island
Limited focus on
estimating business ROI

Source: Everest Group

Technology
solution

Metrics and
SLAs

Organization
design

Digitization, industrialization, and automation are

the core focus
Strong cross-team
collaboration and
knowledge management
End-to-end application
lifecycle management
aligned to industry best
practices
Integrated and cost
effective tools strategy
Tools deployed across
SDLC
Well-defined business
case and outcome linked
to tools adoption

Project-based metrics
Tower-focused SLAs with Application-centric
with limited portfolio
limited business
delivery
perspective
alignment
Business-aligned SLAs
Incomplete and
Unstructured IT-aligned
Metrics focused on Total
inconsistent definition and
metrics and measurement
Cost of Ownership (TCO)
assessment
Limited overarching
design
Poor accountability
across technology and
processes

Segmented by complexity
and business process
Decentralized with
multiple vendors and
shared services

End-to-end ownership of
technology and business
process
Seamless internal and
third-party vendor
management

Technology solutions can indeed play a significant part in optimizing IT service

delivery. These solutions can assist in the industrialization, digitization, and
automation of various processes. These automated processes are modular and
can adhere to best practices and industry frameworks, creating greater
accountability and transparency while improving business reliance and
confidence of the business on the IT organization.
These technology solutions should provide measurable and quantifiable Return
on Investments (ROI) and can be supported by other long term initiatives (e.g.,
cultural change, delivery organization design, metrics strategy, and IT-business
KPI mapping). Moreover, they can also expose the gaps across IT service
delivery processes and help enterprises address these adequately in a timely
manner.
However, for this to happen, enterprises need to rethink their tools strategy,
refocusing across SDLC, rather than only on point support. They need to
inculcate a culture of assessing the entire application lifecycle end-to-end,
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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

rather than in the silos. The focus needs to shift away from IT-aligned KPIs to
business outcomes. This will be possible when these tools can assist in an
application-centric IT service delivery that can support business objectives.
Leveraged correctly, technology can make IT service delivery optimization a
reality. The upside is too big to ignore, and the downside, well, it is outright
scary!

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OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

About Everest Group

Everest Group is an advisor to business leaders on next generation global
services with a worldwide reputation for helping Global 1000 firms dramatically
improve their performance by optimizing their back- and middle-office business
services. With a fact-based approach driving outcomes, Everest Group counsels
organizations with complex challenges related to the use and delivery of global
services in their pursuits to balance short-term needs with long-term goals.
Through its practical consulting, original research and industry resource
services, Everest Group helps clients maximize value from delivery strategies,
talent and sourcing models, technologies and management approaches.
Established in 1991, Everest Group serves users of global services, providers of
services, country organizations, and private equity firms, in six continents across
all industry categories. For more information, please visit www.everestgrp.com
and research.everestgrp.com.

For more information about Everest Group, please contact:

+1-214-451-3110
info@everestgrp.com
For more information about this topic please contact the author(s):
Jimit Arora, Vice President
jimit.arora@everestgrp.com
Yugal Joshi, Practice Director
yugal.joshi@everestgrp.com

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