CTG Manages Application Portfolio to Drive Operational Efficiencies for Global Imaging Company
The Client
For more than two decades, CTG has served as a trusted and integral partner for a leading global imaging company. As part of the engagement, CTG offers a wide variety of managed application services that empower the client to focus on strategic initiatives and free its employees to do what they do best—deliver world-class imaging solutions and innovations that benefit businesses and consumers.
“Like all enterprises today, our employees rely on a variety of applications in the course of any given business day to achieve their goals. For years, CTG has provided the support and expertise needed to fully maintain and manage our application portfolio so that we can focus on the imaging innovations our clients and consumers demand.” - Chief Information Officer
Challenge
The client required a value-based solution that provided year-over-year savings and met their service-level objectives. Like all organizations, this client’s application-related needs are varied and constantly shifting as new business initiatives emerge.
At the start of the engagement, the imaging company and the thousands of application users within it experienced more than 30 critical application incidents each day. Now, on average, there are one to two critical incidents per day—which are quickly addressed by the CTG team.
Solution
CTG’s experienced team is able to address the client’s changing application-related challenges and requirements while achieving the required cost savings and efficiencies. In the years since the engagement began, the scope of services provided by CTG has evolved as the client’s needs have changed. The delivery of these managed application services continues to reflect CTG’s commitment to ensuring the smooth and continual operation of the client’s critical systems and our commitment to forging long-term strategic partnerships with our clients.
Providing Full Support for an Evolving Application Portfolio
CTG provides support for hundreds of applications that are relied upon by users across all functional areas of the company by leveraging our Application Management solution, which addresses even the most demanding application challenges and needs through Tier 2 and 3 support.
The CTG Managed Services team—which includes one engagement manager, three team leaders, and six to ten application support members—delivers a “keep it running” support model for server, mainframe (now retired), client server, Lotus Notes, SharePoint, internet, and intranet applications. This support model, based on client priorities and service-level agreements, also includes SAP application operations and maintaining compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley act regulations.
The services provided by CTG’s team include maintenance and incident management areas. The support provided to the client within these areas is varied and extensive—ensuring that users who depend on applications always have the full support they need.
Maintenance
CTG’s experts oversee all work to keep applications running at required performance levels. Maintenance can include routine work such as batch job management, data cleanup, performance monitoring, and year-end processing, as well as non-routine support such as consulting in response to ad hoc queries regarding business challenges for new or existing applications. CTG manages all application upgrades, patches, and the administrative processes associated with the supported application portfolio. Team members address changes due to new regulatory requirements, answer general questions, and produce needed reporting.
CTG utilizes and maintains testing scripts for applications. During the course of our work with the client, CTG has created, and continues to maintain, detailed work instructions and support documentation, which are important client assets. These test scripts, work instructions, and documentation ensure a consistent approach to support for all issues and work processes associated with the application portfolio.
Incident Management
CTG’s team resolves defects to existing application functionality. CTG experts prioritize and respond to routine and critical issues based on established ITIL procedures and client priorities and provide after-hours support for critical issues. They initiate the agreed-upon escalation process if there is a risk of a critical failure causing a major business interruption. CTG analysts conduct investigations to determine the root cause of issues that impact the application in question and which may stem from issues with middleware, infrastructure problems, or other varied causes. CTG team members ensure users’ adherence to all required security protocols and restrict access to applications to approved users. Based on client desires, the team institutes additional safeguards, such as multi-factor authentication.
Additional Project Support
CTG’s managed services deliver flexibility by periodically supplying additional team members and “burst support” based on changes to the client’s strategies and annual project demands. Examples of this support include:
- Dynamically augmenting the project team with specific skills to support various technologies not in the original scope, including IBM Notes and Microsoft SharePoint databases and applications, internet/intranet applications, and SAP application operations.
- Temporarily increasing staffing levels to address business initiatives by filling roles such as business analyst, developer, tester, database and server support, etc.
Past projects include:
- Converting legacy systems to SAP functionality—supplied the business knowledge to develop SAP requirements and supported functionality testing.
- Upgrading application software—supported modifications by evaluating, making, and testing changes and then moving these changes to production and monitoring.
- Developing new applications to support manufacturing and business needs—used full lifecycle methodologies and rapid application approaches (at times employing business process reengineering) to develop internal and external-facing applications, including finance, payroll, customer service, U.S. customs and regulatory reporting, and executive reporting.
Results
Through its engagement with CTG, the imaging company has achieved significant savings, with the first five years of the engagement delivering double-digit, year-over-year savings, a return on investment that has remained consistent. In addition, the client’s employees have benefited from having direct access to a trusted partner who can answer any of their application-related questions.
Since the start of the engagement, CTG’s application experts have provided the support and know-how needed to effectively manage hundreds of applications, of which about 10 percent are critical applications requiring resolution times of eight hours or less, often with hundreds of users relying on each one.
At the start of the engagement, the imaging company and the thousands of application users within it experienced more than 30 critical application incidents each day. Now, on average, there are one to two critical incidents per day—which are quickly addressed by the CTG team.