Starting Situation
Our customer, a global chemical company with highly developed specialty chemical products that are found in countless things in our daily lives, decided to start a project to optimize the IT area around Managed Desktop Services, especially as the contract with the current service provider was about to end. The company currently employs around 15,000 people, has 24 production sites, 32 subsidiaries and sales offices around the world.
Goal of the project was to harmonize all already outsourced as well all non outsourced services into one new service contract.
qedcon’s approach
qedcon provided several consultants for the project-, outsourcing consulting- as well as the transition management. We supported the company in all cycles within the overall project, especially in the selection of a new service provider but also in the contract creation and negotiation.
Challenges and dependencies
It was identified that not all services (especially the ones which were not outsourced so far) were not documented in a way so that the existing documentation could already be used for the Request for proposal; therefor all Services have been basically newly documented and described and put into corresponding service descriptions.
It was as well identified that there exists a big language and cultural barrier for internal IT employees but also for customers. This was of course a challenge as with the new contract services were outsourced and transitioned from Germany to India and eastern Europe.
Extensive project planning and implementation
The Successful implementation of a project in such a large and complex environment required extensive project planning and execution. Our experienced project and transition managers developed a detailed project structure and schedule that considered all aspects of the implementation.
We worked closely with global and local IT teams (and key users) at the different locations to ensure all requirements were met and the transition went smoothly. Our project managers held regular meetings with management to present the progress of the project and to identify and solve potential problems early on.
Successful Implementation
Withing roughly 10 months the entire RfP (including a RfI) was done, followed by final contract negotiation, finalization, and signature process so that the transition to the new service provider could be done in time before the current contract ended.
The transition for all services could also be done successfully within a timeframe of roughly 8 months (incl. hypercare).
Conclusion
Thanks to the expertise and dedicated commitment of qedcon GmbH, the chemical company was able to successfully complete the transition to a new managed desktop service provider. This transition enabled the company to save costs, improve service performance and to be in a better state to manage the new provider. Our project managers were able to successfully manage the various challenges and dependencies and ensure a smooth implementation of the project.