Application of Lean to a Help Desk

Lean
Overview of the Company
IT All-Stars is a managed service provider targeting small- and medium-sized enterprises. The service desk is the typical point of contact with customers, and a basic workflow begins when a customer has a problem. The customer submits a ticket, and then a technician works to solve the problem (i.e. Internet not working, person forgot password, etc.). The business model is that the company proactively manages the IT function for the client, so also does things like managing the hardware (i.e. replacing it when the warranty expires, servicing, managing domains, etc.).
Justification for Lean
A lean approach in services is utilized in order to streamline the delivery of routine processes. The objective of implementing lean is to ensure consistent service delivery through consistent process delivery, which in turn means that delivery will be faster, and more accurate. Faster response times mean happier customers, and when techs spend less time working on each ticket, the company will need fewer techs, resulting in costs savings. Govekar and Agarwal (2017) note that call centers are excellent candidates for lean because most processes are repeated frequently.
A further benefit in the IT sector is that a lot of client knowledge is relatively specialized. For example, it is often the case that one tech is more familiar with the physical environment of a server room than other techs, so ends up being the go-to tech for handling calls from that client. However, specialized knowledge in silos ends up being inefficient if the customer has to wait for that tech to become available, or has to be served by a tech who is much slower. The managed services business is basically a complex call center where technical help, troubleshooting and problem-solving are the norms, yet most processes are ultimately repeated with some frequency.
Implementing lean in this environment will break down information silos, will improve call response and resolution times, as well as service desk accuracy. This will lead to lower costs to the company, along with better service and happier customers. The ability to deliver superior service means that the company can charge more, while having lower costs, leading to a company that is much more profitable than its competitors.
Implementing Lean
Implementing lean at the service desk of an IT service provider begins with culture and organizational buy-in, as senior management need to be involved in driving lean implementation in order for others to see the value and commit to this process of continuous improvement (Lean.org, 2017).
The new step in lean implementation is to map out a particular process that has been targeted for improvement. If management is unsure of whether a process is suitable it can ask the perform a certain task how they do it – if they all give different answers, doubtless that is a good candidate for lean implementation. Map out the current process, and understand the workflows that are in place today. From there, identify and eliminate the structural barriers that are reducing performance (Lean.org, 2017). Visualization of the process is important to seeing the roadblocks and constraints that exist. A process of problem-solving should then be undertaken in order to find solutions to overcome the constraints and roadblocks (Netland, 2015).
The Example
In this example, the process is a simple ticket response, say a router reboot. It actually doesn't matter what the problem is – here's the basic high-level flow:
There is no need to outsource delivery here – the provider is actually the outsourced company. There are no purchasing operations in this process. The lean tenets here are that there needs to be a streamlined flow. For example, there is a decision point where the tech needs to determine if the client needs to be called or not. That will slow the process down – an information system that gathers all the information about the problem and reports it to the tech automatically at the creation of the ticket will reduce the number of times the tech has to contact the client. In fact, if there is a way to create a ticket automatically so that the tech can fix the problem before the client realizes that the problem exists, that is the ideal situation.
There are other points where lean tenets can be applied. For example, at each stage a process must be conducted. Consider "look up how to execute the solution." At this point, the tech knows what is wrong and what need to be done to fix the problem. What the tech does not know at this point is how to fix the problem, because each client has different technology, and a different architecture to that technology. How things are set up physically at the site, or how they are structured digitally will be different, and could impact on the how. At this point, the tech will benefit from having an easy-to-search bank of SOPs, in order that the tech can find as quickly and effortlessly as possible how to solve the problem within the context of this client environment.
This could be a significant delay in the process, but with the right information management system, the tech could cut down the time it takes to find out how significantly, and thus be able to solve the problem much more quickly. This is where a lot of savings can be extracted – there are savings to be extracted at other stages as well, but one of the tenets of lean is to solve the big problems first, and get the most incremental gains early on if possible. So if this is where that can occur, this is the step that should be the focus.
The concept of push-pull applies here. One model of being an IT help desk is basically to wait until something breaks, then when the ticket comes in, it gets fixed. The managed services model actually starts from the lean tenet that proactive management can reduce the number of errors in the first place, for example by maintaining up-to-date hardware and software. The client will still pull solutions to problems when they arise, but the IT provider will push solutions to prevent the pull – and will also automatically pull issues on its own, proactively, in order to avoid the client having to demand. Thus, much of the demand that has been forecast is addressed proactively, leaving the IT provider only having to do relatively minimal on-demand production.
Then applying lean to this minimal on-demand production to ensure that the process of handling a ticket is as efficient as possible allows the IT provider to deliver not fixes to problems, but a problem-free environment, which is really what the end client wants.
All in all, the application of lean to IT service is something that holds a lot of promise. As more work is done on applying lean to service organizations, the benefits of lean become quite evident in that most service organizations deal in repeated processes, and demand can be forecast fairly easily as well. The organization then is in a position to calmly and efficiently deliver the desired end service, which is having very few problems, and whatever problems do occur are dealt with very quickly.


References

Govekar, J. & Agarwal, P. (2017). A lean approach to improving service call center performance. iSixSigma. Retrieved December 3, 2017 from https://www.isixsigma.com/operations/call-centers/lean-approach-improving-service-call-center-performance/

Lean.org (2017) The five steps of lean implementation. Lean Enterprise Institute. Retrieved December 3, 2017 from https://www.lean.org/WhoWeAre/LEINewsStory.cfm?NewsArticleId=17

Netland, T. (2015) Five critical success factors for implementing lean programs. Better Operations. Retrieved December 3, 2017 from http://better-operations.com/2015/11/23/5-critical-success-factors-for-implementing-lean-programs/