CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Vodafone India
» Vodafone deployed BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite to create
a single, central service desk

before
»» Multiple service desk platforms
»» Piecemeal incident and problem
management potential impediment to
smooth IT consolidation program
»» Unstructured service desk unable to
measure predictability
»» No data to measure service levels
according to the agreement
after
»» Single unified solution suite to manage
companywide incident management and
change management workflow
»» Predictability has increased and incident
tracking has become easy
»» Available data provides great help in
measuring service level of partners
»» Accelerated approval of change requests
»» Facilitated compliance with IT Infrastruc-
ture Library® (ITIL®) best practices

Reaching out to customers in real time with appealing and innovative products is the
hallmark of today’s aggressive enterprise. And to keep customers happy, you must
offer robust technology. This requires a standard, proven, service management tool
that not only reduces the time needed to handle service requests, but also reduces the
actual number of incidents.
Geography
India To overcome the challenges posed by the localized IT service desks and management
tools across its operations in India, Vodafone deployed the BMC Remedy IT Service
Industry Management Suite to create a single, central service desk managing all users. And as
Telecommunications a bonus, the rollout was completed in less than six months.

Solutions The Shining Telco

BMC Remedy IT Service With more than 94 million subscribers and growing, Vodafone is India’s second-largest
Management Suite mobile service provider with a nationwide footprint across 23 circles. To focus on its
core business and deliver innovation to its customers, Vodafone, in December 2007,
decided to outsource its entire technology infrastructure to IBM, including IT services,
staff, and assets. Since the inception of this partnership between Vodafone India
and IBM, various initiatives were undertaken to streamline and standardize the IT
infrastructure, but the company had to face a lot of roadblocks before reaching the
desirable outcome.
 Challenge NO. 1: Technology Clutter
Vodafone India today is a result of the acquisition of different mobile operators from various regions. All
these operators in their respective “circles” used diverse processes and standards to maintain their IT
infrastructure. “Every circle had its own way of managing IT. The major challenges came from disparate
processes, approval matrices, and workflows followed by those circles,” said D.D Mishra, deputy general
manager, Vodafone India.

At the top of this clutter was the absence of a ubiquitous management tool that could give the sense
of a centralized, automated service desk across all operations. “A few of the circles had implemented
service desk tools, but most others were using Excel sheets,” said Mishra. “The helpdesk was completely
decentralized. The situation was chaotic. If someone wanted to pull out any data regarding service desk, it
wasn’t possible. How could we measure the service delivery of our outsourcing partners?”

One of the most ambitious initiatives that Vodafone wanted to implement to cut through the clutter was to
create a central service desk for all of its 23 circle operations.

Challenge No. 2: Resistance to Change

Between the time of selection of the technology tool and its roll out, the company had to undergo one of
the most difficult exercises of change management. Until now, users – belonging to various circles – were
accustomed of handling service requests in their own peculiar way. After the implementation of the tool,
the internal users were bound to make a call to the call center, log a ticket, and expect a service delivery.
“Unlike the past, when users just walked up to the local service desk, now they had to wait for a call from
the service desk to resolve their problems, and be
around their work stations. That was a big cultural
change,” said Mishra. There were 23 circles, 23 pro-
cesses, and 19 IT heads who needed to be convinced
about the proposed system. But the challenge was
even bigger: The user groups within those circles had

“ so much so that I get instant escalations from

The tool has become the lifeline of our company to be convinced.

Challenge No. 3: Selecting the

senior executives in Vodafone if they are not able Right Tool
to access BMC Remedy,” The first hurdle that Vodafone wanted to overcome
Navin chadha was to roll out a central service desk for its entire
CIO, vodafone India user base, where the incidents are logged and the
service tickets are tracked. To make it happen, the
first requirement was a fully automated tool. “The
discussion centered on which tool to use and how to
justify it,” said Mishra. “We had to choose between a
popular service management tool and BMC Remedy.”

The Vodafone IT leadership team undertook an in-

depth study using different matrices to understand
the value of the options available. Finally, based on
the market share, product alignment with Vodafone global IT, and the history of the product, Vodafone
realized that BMC Remedy was the best choice. “Our decision to implement BMC Remedy wasn’t just an
option to be chosen. It was driven by lot of market information, product performance, and reports from
various consultants and bench markers,” said Mishra.
Riding the Waves of Change
There were many challenges during implementation and delivery. Top management had demanded the
consolidation of multiple incident and change management systems and a reduction in the touch points
for incident, change, and problem management. These demands could only be met by deploying a single,
enterprisewide tool providing a single window for problem resolution. The rollout, explained Mishra, was
to be done riding “Five Waves.”

The task was intriguing, but required a very systematic approach. “After the due diligence, we picked
up one of the seven newly acquired circles to run a
pilot. This was ‘Wave One,’” said Mishra. “We decided
to rollout BMC Remedy and allow users to attach
the document in the workflow and approve it. For
example a manual form - specific to that particular
circle - was allowed to be attached. This gave users
the confidence that the basic processes for that circle
were not changed. This facilitated an automated in-
formation capturing. With little resistance, this wave
showed the desired outcome.”
“
Before implementing BMC Remedy, the service
desk was unstructured,” said Mishra. “But post im-
plementation, the predictability has increased and
During the pilot, Vodafone was able to manage its incident tracking has become possible. It is now
bandwidth, which could have been a disaster if BMC possible to measure and take decisions based on
Remedy was rolled out simultaneously across 23
the data available. With an unstructured approach
circles. This also allowed the process to streamline
before it was ready to be rolled out in other circles.
to service delivery, it was impossible to deal with
“We got appreciation from various stake holders and a partner. Now we feel empowered to talk to our
we were confident that the implementation had now service partners because we have data to support
matured for the next step,” said Mishra. the arguments.”
D.D Mishra
Slowly, this model was replicated in the rest of the Deputy General Manager, IT
seven new circles. The company made all-out efforts
to run BMC Remedy service desk smoothly across
these seven circles before moving on to the other
circles, which were already using management tools
and service desks. “After the new tool started show-
ing good results across those seven circles, other
circles were eager to have the same system,”
said Mishra.

In the second phase, Vodafone decided to roll out the BMC Remedy in the smallest of the remaining
circles. This exercise was gradually carried out in all other circles. The challenge was that a few of these
circles were already using highly matured legacy tools. “We were rolling out BMC Remedy from the
ground up, whereas the legacy systems in some of the circles were already at a high maturity level. This
was a massive challenge to be tackled very tactfully,”
said Mishra.

During the roll out process, certain changes were inevitable. The implementations teams of Vodafone
and BMC worked constantly to create a roadmap that ultimately convinced the users of the matured
legacy tools.
Once BMC Remedy was rolled out across all circles, it was time to ride the “Wave Two,” which was to
standardize the processes. “Now, since everyone was using BMC Remedy, it was time to communicate
that working with different processes and templates was difficult,” said Mishra. “We sent standard work-
flows and templates to all users and sought their feedback. Based on the feedback, a revised workflow
and template was created. Once it was agreed, we implemented it across all locations.”

The first two waves were about satisfying the “want.” Now came the wave that was about satisfying the
“desire.” This was the idea of “Wave Three.” Users’ desired the ability to approve service requests while on
the move. “If the user is travelling, they don’t need to access BMC Remedy,” Mishra said. “We enabled the
systems to approve service requests over SMS. BMC Remedy throws up multiple screens for multiple
workflows, which people in Vodafone didn’t like. We worked with the BMC team to provide ‘single-screen’
workflows without changing the underlying architecture.”

Within this third wave, the operational efficiency and high availability also was extended to the users. “This
third wave was to ensure the optimization of the tool and influence the outcome of the implementation in
the best possible way,” said Mishra.

Thus far, Vodafone has implemented BMC Remedy Service Desk, BMC Remedy Change Management,
BMC Remedy Asset Management, BMC Atrium CMDB, BMC BladeLogic Client Automation (formerly BMC
Configuration Automation for Clients), and BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping.

Delight at the End

With minimum efforts, the company took just 21 days to implement the tool to suit its needs. Today, the
change and incident and problem management workflows are gracefully managed. “Before implement-
ing BMC Remedy, the service desk was unstructured,” said Mishra. “But post implementation, the
predictability has increased and incident tracking has become possible. It is now possible to measure
and take decisions based on the data available.

“With an unstructured approach to service delivery, it was impossible to deal with a partner. Now we feel
empowered to talk to our service partners because we have data to support the arguments.”

This whole rollout was completed in five months, including the time required to deal with the resistance
from various circles and to deal with those circles that were at a high level of maturity. This implemen-
tation is rare in that a vast geography was covered in short amount of time. “It became possible only
because Vodafone, BMC and the Service Provider worked like a single team,” said Mishra.

Vodafone CIO Navin Chadha said the tool is well-marketed within Vodafone and touches the heart and
soul of the entire organization. “The tool has become the lifeline of our company so much so that I get
instant escalations from senior executives in Vodafone if they are not able to access BMC Remedy,”
said Chadha.

Preparing for Future Waves

The company is ready to ride on the “Wave Four” and “Wave Five” with BMC Remedy. Wave Four is about
linking the assets with the incidents, about problem and change management modules, and about ana-
lyzing the assets such that you can determine which configuration item is causing the most trouble. “If we
see that a server is causing a lot of problems and most of the incidents are happening there, we can focus
our service delivery on that area and reduce the number of incidents,” said Mishra.

The Fifth (and ultimate) Wave is to roll out the service automation modules and achieve Business
Service Management. These last two waves are expected to be completed by October 2010 and
October 2011 respectively.
About Vodafone India
Vodafone Essar is the Indian subsidiary of Vodafone Group and commenced operations in 1994 when
its predecessor Hutchison Telecom acquired the cellular license for Mumbai. The company now has
operations across the country with over 94.14 million customers. The Essar Group is a diversified
business corporation with a balanced portfolio of assets in the manufacturing and services sectors of
Steel, Energy, Power, Communications, Shipping Ports & Logistics, and Projects. Essar employs more
than 50,000 people across offices in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

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