How London Borough of Harrow Council transformed their IT service

As part of a wider programme of IT transformation initiatives in 2020, Harrow decided to transition to a SIAM delivery model and in-source a number of capabilities in order to have greater control of their services.

In Q2 2020, Harrow appointed a new IT Director, Ben Goward, who understood the benefit of transforming the Service. Ben set the team the challenge of implementing the new operating model before November 2020, when the outsourced agreement was due for renewal. This bold decision to transform within 6 months rather than extend the existing contract for a year, set the pace and context for delivery.

Kerv Consult was engaged to design some key elements of the service, such as processes to underpin the operating model, to ‘be the glue’ and ‘protect the service’, highlighting any gaps and to ensure that the elements of the complex new SIAM worked together. We were also selected to manage the transition of the most directly customer-facing services of End-User Computing (EUC) and the Service Desk.

It became clear early in the project scope that more extensive work was needed than originally foreseen. This additional work would be required to be completed within the remaining five months to achieve a successful go-live. As part of our analysis, we highlighted additional activities required to structure and stand up the services, both in-house and those with suppliers. This meant extensive planning and focus on the goal if it was to be achieved, however, by identifying these areas as early as possible, we ensured there was time to address gaps and protect the service.

We worked collaboratively, ticking off all of the specific deliverables we had committed to, but recognised that we could support Harrow above this and so worked to take additional ownership for some other areas such as operational readiness testing.

This project could easily not have run this smoothly. A key element to avoiding unforeseen issues at go-live was an absolute focus on operational readiness. We approached testing in 2 ways, bringing best practice to develop a generic test plan, but then identifying specific areas of risk through analysis of ticket data from the six months prior to this transition.

The project team identified three key areas in which the new organisation had to be prepared: access, capability and knowledge. There was a strong emphasis in the weeks approaching go-live on ensuring that all teams validated their ability to deliver services to customers. Through stringent operational readiness checks, any risks were highlighted, or mitigated, and the goal of readiness for day one was achieved, with the fall-back of a “minimum viable product” being greatly surpassed.

“When the incumbent supplier was compromised our users really felt impact of the reduction in support. The decision to take an early cutover was unanimous amongst all involved as users could only benefit.

Working with the Harrow ICT team and all our suppliers, the Kerv Consult team efficiently helped guide the new service into an early start. Their positive attitude was crucial to the early success and resulted in happy users from day one.”

Ian McArdle, Transformation Programme Manager

The actual cutover was quiet and uneventful. As the Service Desk had already cutover early in order to support business-critical needs, the rest of the transition went seamlessly. When the formal go-live day arrived the following week, the remaining suppliers and towers were ready to go, all resolver groups were working and, most importantly, users were noticing improvements. This successful transition was further reinforced through positive customer feedback.

The most obvious beneficial outcome is the move to IT being managed in-house. This successful transition underpinned by a new ITSM tool and a clear operating model outlining each team’s roles and responsibilities. Several ITIL processes are now being run by Harrow in a more streamlined, efficient manner – the impact of which is evident in the positive customer feedback received so far.

With the Service Desk being the front line of the newly formed organisation, Kerv Consult dedicated much time and effort to ensuring that this team had all the tools and skills required to hit the ground running. This hard work paid off at go-live when the team processed an increased number of tickets than received by their predecessor within the same period. This was likely due to the accessibility of the new service portal which, in itself, marks a notable improvement in the service offering. The team excelled, working cohesively with their new colleagues both internally and externally, and, contributing heavily to the favourable feedback received by customers.

We laid solid foundations for the Service Management team to ensure that these new ways of working could be maintained, as they move forward into 2021. Kerv Consult ensured this by not just designing but truly embedding the operational best practice which was embraced by Harrow. It was encouraging to see the enthusiasm with which the new ways of working were received and the positivity with which the team view the “new world”.

Cultural change is a key part for any transformation. There was a combination of strong top-down leadership from Harrow driving the user-first culture and bottom up Business Change from Kerv Consult. We were able to employ techniques such as engagement meetings, clear processes, user guide materials and robust knowledge to ensure the team could embrace the new ways of working but also know where to reference it when needed.

Harrow Council released their own video Case Study talking about the benefits of the transformation 18 months after the launch. This was not commissioned by Kerv Consult, but filmed in partnership with Version 1, the cloud partner during the project described above.

We are delighted to share this as it shows the lasting effects of the change, in the customer’s own words…