MCT is BACH’s Secret Weapon to Rapid IT Service Improvement

Background

Bahamas Automated Clearing House (BACH), based in Nassau, Bahamas, is a network connecting the seven Clearing Banks and the Central Bank to facilitate the clearing and settlement of electronic debits, credits, and cheques. It was created, among other reasons, to modernize the payments system, bringing it in line with global best practices. BACH, which went live in January 2010, has sliced deposit clearance time from up to five days down to one, and continues to provide a boost to Bahamas businesses by expanding online bill payment and commerce. The establishment of BACH drastically improved security by eliminating the need for cheques to be physically transported between banks with messengers.

Having transformed the banking experience for businesses and residents in the Bahamas, one of BACH’s next steps was to look internally at how it managed its service delivery and interactions with its clients (the banks) and suppliers. With years of experience in managing IT operations and formal training in ITIL, BACH’s leader, Brian Smith, knew it was time to put ITIL best practices to work for his operation. Brian also recognized the need for a new Service Desk solution to help him automate processes and facilitate the effective use of ITIL best practices. However, BACH was challenged with a tight timeframe and an even tighter budget to make this all happen. Having worked with MCT Solutions in the past, Brian knew who to call for the best in ITIL experience, Service Desk solutions, and value!

Having partnered with MCT in the past, why choose them again?

“MCT is driven by values like honesty and fairness – so I’d be crazy not to work with them again!”
Brian Smith, BACH

Goal

BACH reflected on its current Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Availability Management, and Change Management processes. Some of these processes were more mature than others, so BACH prioritized where to focus its energy and resources first. The focus was first in improving its Service Desk, Incident Management, and Change Management processes. By analyzing current pain points, strengths, and customer service requirements, BACH identified several key objectives, including the following:

Improve the customer experience by designing a portal to log incidents or requests for services, monitor or inquire on the status of requests, search and download solutions and other documentation, and access a Forward Schedule of Changes.
Improve communication with customers, support staff, and suppliers, through the use of ebulletin boards.
Measure customer satisfaction. Set a baseline and improve results, strategically.
Integrate the new Service Desk solution with current email system for automated record creation and update and the facilitation of customer alerts and support team escalations.
Improve operational efficiency.
Strengthen the Change Management process by capturing and linking all relevant data (e.g., CIs, incidents, problems, cost, impact, service, vendor, service contract), and tracking change success and failure.
Improve Incident Management and Change Management reporting and analysis capabilities to more easily draw from lessons learned and foster an environment for continual service improvement.
Support the existing Service Level Agreements, which include some performance expectations unique to a clearinghouse service provider.

Action

To any other service provider, BACH’s objectives might appear to be too lofty, especially on a short timeframe and budget. Fortunately, partnering with MCT allowed BACH to take advantage of MCT’s experience, innovative tools, pre-established templates, and expert consulting team to help BACH get to where they wanted to be … faster!

MCT reached into its arsenal of solutions, and selected The MCT Express as the weapon of choice to help BACH! The MCT Express is a rapid deployment model using precise pre-defined process maps and experienced consultants to simplify and accelerate process review, design, system configuration, service automation, and training to help MCT clients get up and running in nearly half the time. It allows clients to take advantage of the ITIL based structure, automation and flexibility pre-built into MCT process and service desk tool solutions! The MCT Express is most effective with clients, who have well-defined processes, and experienced ITIL staff, who can be dedicated to the short but intense project efforts. Considering Brian’s background and his organization’s current environment and needs, it was the perfect choice for BACH.

As the project began, MCT worked with BACH to perform a detailed review of its incident processes, service request processes, service level agreements, change management process, configuration management process, and data mapping requirements. The results of this review helped identify process improvement opportunities and directly fed into the design phase of the project. The refined process designs were then carefully configured by MCT’s team into a new service desk tool. Using innovative technology to automate processes and equip BACH with the reporting and analysis capabilities it so desired provided BACH with a major boost to achieving many of its aggressive goals. After proper testing and targeted training, BACH and MCT had met the project goals on time and within budget!

Brian Smith acknowledged MCT’s consultants as being “very knowledgeable” and pointed out that “much can be done in a rapid deployment approach.”

Result

In less than a month, BACH was up and running with refined processes, the latest in Service Desk automation, and a solution that can be expanded and further customized to stay current with changing business needs! BACH was well on its way to achieving many of the objectives it had identified at the start of the project, including improvements in customer experience, satisfaction, communication, system integration, operational efficiency, SLA support, reporting, and its adoption of ITIL best practices. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, the value of BACH’s partnership with MCT didn’t end there … in fact, it was just getting started!

In order to maintain the momentum for adopting best practices, fully leveraging technology investments, increasing customer satisfaction, and ongoing service value, BACH signed up for MCT’s Continual Service Improvement package. This exciting service delivers high value for a very reasonable annual subscription fee. Although the initial process improvement and automation project was now complete, with MCT’s CSI package BACH is able to:

Monitor KPI performance trends and easily perform real-time drill down analysis
Conduct Process Maturity self-assessments at regular intervals
Measure, trend, and analyze Executive and Customer satisfaction
Access an MCT ITIL Coach on line, as needed
Benefit from quarterly performance reviews and planning by MCT consultants

So how does BACH feel about their experience working with MCT?

“The bottom line is I am very happy. We accomplished more than anticipated. I would do it all over again.”
Brian Smith, BACH