Software Certification 1

Quality of the product

Juan Carlos Valencia Osorio

Teacher

Hernán Darío Cruz Bueno

Universidad Manuela Beltrán

Software Certification

Quito, Ecuador

2023
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Content

Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
Objectives........................................................................................................................................4
General Objective........................................................................................................................4
Specific Objectives.......................................................................................................................4
Summary.........................................................................................................................................5
Approach.........................................................................................................................................6
Service Catalog............................................................................................................................6
Professional services...............................................................................................................6
Managed services....................................................................................................................6
Medium...................................................................................................................................6
Problem Statement.................................................................................................................7
Justification..............................................................................................................................7
Current status of processes.....................................................................................................7
Issues of the Incident and Problem Management Process......................................................7
Relationship management.......................................................................................................9
Improvement proposal..............................................................................................................10
Objectives..............................................................................................................................10
Expected benefits..................................................................................................................10
Supplier management...........................................................................................................10
Process indicators..................................................................................................................11
Proposed Resolution Management Process..........................................................................11
General parameters...............................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
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Introduction

The present work presents the project for the improvement of the management of services of a
provider of communications services aligned with the international standard of the ISO/IEC 20000
standard.

Firstly, the organization is briefly introduced and the problem it faces is analyzed, for which the
current situation in which it is using the model of evaluation of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard, to after this
develop a proposal for improvement that allows to reduce operating costs and improve relations with its
customers as which is very important because it is a service company.

In addition, the total improvement project is presented with the scope, cost and time that will be
required to achieve a high level of compliance with the best practices of the standard ISO/IEC 20000.

Finally, improvements and recommendations for the organization are proposed in order to
maintain the quality of its processes over time
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Objectives

General Objective

Demonstrate the importance of SPICE under ISO 20000 by demonstrating a real implementation.

Specific Objectives

 Validate the importance of SPICE in IT services.

 Visualize the importance of the ISO 20000 standard in customer satisfaction.
 Inspect the development of a company that implements ISO 20000 and its benefits.
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Summary

This paper presents the proposal to improve the service management processes of a company
that provides communications services.

IT must be a strategic partner for the organization and help achieve the strategic objectives that
have been proposed. Through service management the organization can:

reduce operational exposure to risk, comply with contractual requirements and demonstrate
quality of service, all this will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition and improve
relationships with your customers, as well as reduce internal costs of your processes.

The company on which this work is focused is a service company that is recognized in the market
for its team of specialists in the platforms it sells and has experienced growth in recent years, which has
not been accompanied by the formalization of its processes, which is reflected in the dissatisfaction of its
clients and a reduction in billing for their withdrawal and for the payment of penalties for non-
compliance with contracts in the periods 2012 – 2013.

It has been identified that the problem is not having formal processes for the management of its
processes, it has been possible to calculate the reduction in billing for the last year as well as the billing
that is at risk.

For this project, it was decided to align the organization with the international management
model of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard, for which two of the five processes of the standard were chosen:

Resolution Process and Relations Process, since they are directly related to customer
dissatisfaction, after evaluating the processes to find out the current situation in which the organization
is located, it was identified which standard procedures are not being met, based on these new designs of
processes, roles and responsibilities that must be applied are proposed.

The analysis of the project that contains costs, times and risks has been carried out, as well as
the benefits expected at the end of the project and it is observed that the necessary investment is
recovered in the short time with the economic results that will be obtained due to the increase in
satisfaction of clients and their retention.

Finally, it is recommended to maintain a continuous improvement model, for which the status of
the processes must be constantly monitored and measured in order to propose new improvements.
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Approach

Service Catalog

The company has a very basic catalog of services, which only lists the services offered, which are
detailed below:

Professional services
The company offers a portfolio of services whose main objective is to assist its clients through
advice and consultancy and in the analysis, design, implementation and integration, improvement and
optimization of systems, providing specialized application development services on platforms or systems.
represented and marketed.

Managed services
It offers routine monitoring, maintenance and support. Its main characteristics are that they
correspond to Remote Comprehensive Services, are pre-paid on a recurring monthly basis, have
affordable costs due to economies of scale, are governed by an ANS, and are scheduled, preventive, and
proactive.

Among the tasks included in the Managed Services is the continuous and online monitoring of
networks and devices, the detection and solution of incidents, the management of communications
between the parties involved, and the presentation of reports to clients.

Medium
 Development and implementation of specific applications.
 Advanced trainings.
 System integration.
 Applied software support.
 Stress services and simulation of use in IVR.
 Proyect Management.
 Implementation of solutions.
 Instruction to users.
 Managed services.
 Remote administration and monitoring from our BOC.
 Comprehensive and proactive maintenance.
 Regional Service Desk 7x24.
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Problem Statement
"The company does not have formal procedures for service management, which is reflected in
the reduction of billing for dissatisfied customers and internally in cost overruns of its processes."

The company has a qualified support team that places it in the market as one of the most
experienced in communications solutions, which has allowed it to increase its sales and the number of
clients in the last 5 years. This growth has not come accompanied by the formalization of its processes
for the management of its services, this is reflected in the low level of satisfaction of its customers in the
after-sales service (this service means approximately 30% of the company's monthly billing), which has
even meant the loss of 6 clients in the last year due to breach of support contracts, which has been
valued at USD $60,000.00, in addition to causing costs for incident attention to rise and resources not to
be used properly.

Justification
The proposed service management process improvement project seeks to support the
organization to meet the strategic objectives of the company:

1. Quality of Service and Attention.

2. Leadership in communications products.
3. Improve the Operational Management tools.

It is in the support service where the greatest deficiencies have been found and where the IT
team can propose new processes that increase customer satisfaction and be aligned to an international
standard with the best IT service management practices.

The current processes were evaluated, for which the ISO/IEC 15504 standard was used as an
evaluation model adapted to the processes of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard, level 3 (Established Process)
was selected as the level that must be reached with the improvement, after the evaluation, only 22% of
the procedures of the standard were fulfilled.

Current status of processes

The processes evaluated are:

 Resolution
 Relations

Issues of the Incident and Problem Management Process

The problems that have been identified are the following:

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 There is no clarity about the life cycle of an incident and the problem, since engineers
only close the incident when they find the root cause, causing incident resolution times
to be high, affecting measurement statistics actual of this information.
 There is no formal process for recording incidents, incidents are not classified or
prioritized correctly since there is no detail of the type of failure (which has been
established by each client according to the size of their solution/ service in the ANS),
which causes serious incidents not to be given the required priority, breaching the
service level agreement, resulting in financial penalties.
 Requests are incorrectly recorded, classifying them as incidents, affecting the actual
number of incidents.
 It does not have a standard format (template) to enter and/or update customer data,
with information on their category (Platinum, Gold, etc.), platform, service level
agreements, which prevents the Service Desk as the first point of contact can carry out a
correct classification of these. Of the total number of clients, only 40% have updated and
reliable information.
 The roles and responsibilities within the process are not clearly defined, so there is no
person responsible for following up on incidents.
 Support engineers do not inform or delay in informing the client formally of the status or
closure of the incident, which causes repeated complaints due to not having visibility of
the status of the incident, if it is being attended to, escalated internally or was referred
to the supplier.
 The customer database is not updated with the information of the customers and their
current contracts, there have been cases of customers who do not have a support
contract or which is not current, which are attended free of charge, affecting the billing
of the company (in very few cases these can be billed later). In 2013, constant attention
was given to incidents involving 4 clients who did not have support or had it expired.
 Customers contact the support engineer directly to report their incidents and not
through the established formal channel (Service Desk), which prevents follow-up on
these incidents and makes it difficult to calculate the total number of incidents that have
been attended to. The number of incidents that are not registered is equivalent to 30%
of the total number of incidents (5,500 incidents per year). In addition, incidents that are
not closed do not allow maintaining a knowledge database to improve future attention
times.
 There is a tool acquired to improve operational management: CA Service Desk, which is
not used or does not take advantage of all the available functionalities, so the
investment made is not yet justified.
 The staff is unaware of the existence of a knowledge base (BDC), despite the fact that
the CA Service Desk tool has this module, the support team does not use it due to
ignorance and lack of training on this tool.
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Relationship management

This process is important for the organization, since as a service provider it must manage
relationships with its customers and maintain a high satisfaction rate. In turn, the organization maintains
relationships with suppliers that provide the service platforms, for which reason relationship
management has been divided into two levels: with its customers and with its suppliers.
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Improvement proposal

Based on the best practices for service management, new processes are proposed which will be
designed and executed within an improvement project that is described below.

Objectives

The following objectives are defined for the management process improvement project:

 Achieve the Long Satisfied level in the Relationship Management and Resolution
Management processes in the first 12 months.
 Obtain trained and certified personnel in ITIL (minimum 50% of the certified personnel in
the support area).
 Raise the level of customer satisfaction to 85%.
 Improve the operational management of your processes by using the functionalities of
your CA Service Desk management tool.
 Implement a knowledge database, which allows reducing incident and problem solution
times.

Expected benefits

The expected benefits at the end of the project are:

 Align your processes with the best global practices for service management.
 Reduce the operating costs of your processes and improve response times for incidents
and problems through the use of a knowledge database.
 Minimize the number of customers who terminate the contract with the company due
to dissatisfaction with the service.
 Improve the relationship with your customers.
 Obtain real metrics of the resolution time of the incidents and issues.
 Comply with the ANS agreed with the clients and avoid the application of economic
penalties.

Supplier management

The purpose of this process is to manage the suppliers to guarantee the provision of the service
without interruptions.

The Contract Manager will be the contact with the suppliers. This will agree with the provider
the service levels that will support and align with the SLA that the organization has with its customers.
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The Contract Manager must have documented the exceptions of the contract, the escalation
levels of the supplier.

The supplier's performance must be measured to see if it meets the objectives set by the
organization towards its customers.

Having this clarity in the contracts with the suppliers will support the resolution process that
must often refer incidents or problems to the supplier.

Process indicators
In order to measure the fulfillment of the objectives proposed for this process, the following
indicators will be considered.

 Number of current contracts.

 Number of contracts not in force.
 Number of contracts renewed before the expiration date.
 Number of follow-up meetings with clients completed.
 Number of claims made by customers.
 Reduction of clients entered in CA Service Desk with duplicate information.
 Number of customers surveyed to measure the level of service provided.
 Number of customers satisfied with the service.
 Number of customers dissatisfied with the service.
 Number of incidents escalated to the supplier.
 Number of issues escalated to supplier.
 Number of incidents attended outside of what is established in the ANS.

Proposed Resolution Management Process

The resolution process encompasses incident and problem management. This proposal aims to
better manage these processes, seeking to minimize the negative impact on the operations of its clients,
providing them with a better service and maintaining the agreed levels of quality and availability of
services based on the provisions of the ISO 20000 standard.

General parameters

The parameters that must be defined for both incident and problem management are:

 Categorize the incident and problem.

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 ANS and priorities.

 Escalation Levels.
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Conclusion

At the end of the improvement project, it will be possible to reduce the operational cost
overruns of the processes, the penalties for non-compliance with Service Level Agreements will be
reduced and customer satisfaction will be improved, which will be reflected in benefits for the
company's billing.

Through the ISO 20000 certification, the organization will obtain a competitive advantage since
currently none of its direct competitors is certified, in addition to the economic benefits indicated above
that are obtained by align their processes to the quality practices proposed by the standard.

In order to measure how well the organization is doing and to be able to control the processes, it
is necessary to create a service catalog to know which areas and resources are involved, and which are
the most required services, on which the organization must focus its efforts to improve satisfaction of
clients and optimization of resources.