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ITSM at Mahindra and Mahindra
Any time information access and 24x7 availability of IT applications
were the principal areas that Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) wanted to achieve.
Vijay Mahajan |
Organisations need to document, manage and monitor data for
regulatory compliance, and they need to be able to conduct investigations with
audit trial capabilities. Anytime information access and 24x7 availability of
IT applications were the two principal areas Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M)
was attempting to achieve. Network security was also a concern. M&M deployed
IT Service Management (ITSM) from HP to satisfy all these objectives.
Says Vijay Mahajan, GM, M&M, “Because our global presence was growing,
we needed to provide the information anywhere, at any time, through any device.
We wanted to meet business requirements as well. We wanted to ensure that our
applications and infrastructure were secure.”
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The growing speed at which business
is conducted, geographical expansion, and increased user expectations
in terms of uptime, response time and problem resolution were some of
the business challenges that were addressed by deploying ITSM
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Extending the organisational network to new locations, continuously monitoring
or upgrading the network, opening it up to partners (Extranet/Internet), securing
the IT Infrastructure, and providing instant resolution to problems with desktops
and PDAs were other challenges.
“The growing speed at which business is conducted, geographical expansion,
and increased user expectations in terms of uptime, response time and problem
resolution were some of the business challenges,” adds Mahajan.
For improved customer satisfaction and to meet ever-growing
business needs, M&M uses gadgets such as PDAs, smartphones and notebooks.
Access technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMax and GPRS have also been introduced.
After deploying HP’s ITSM solution, the company has Infrastructure Management
Tools that help it manage and optimise the utilisation of its hardware (IBM,
HP, Dell) and OS platforms (Windows 2000/2003, Linux and AIX).
From the service perspective, asset management has improved. Call analysis has
helped reduce the number of repetitive calls that have to be handled. Self tracking
of calls by users and reduced failures due to change management control are
some benefits that have been realised.
- Internet: Web, FTP, Mail, VPN
- Intranet Portal: Mahindra Connect
- VoIP: Cisco Call Manager
- Chat: Web chat, LCS
- Webcast: One-to-many
- PDA Mail: OMA, BlackBerry
- Video Conferencing: Conference room (Polycom),
Desktop VC (Interwise, Webex)
- Office Productivity Tools: MS Office—6,000
users
- Mailing System: MS Exchange—6,000
users
- ERP System: SAP 4.7—2,000 users
- ERP II System: SAP BW, SRM, CFM, CRM
(under roll-out)
- CAD System: UGS Tc Engineering
- PLM System: UGS Tc Enterprise
Future roadmap
The company plans to define SLAs with its business
uses and monitor the same using HPOV. It also plans to integrate SMS 2.0
with the HPOV Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Furthermore, the
company wants to deploy an Identity Management (IM) Solution. The IT department
wants to use a shared service architecture to provide IT services to its
group companies.
Best practices recommended
- Put incidence and problem management processes
in place first before deploying any tool.
- Make users aware of the limitations of IT. Do
not set high expectations, like 100 percent availability of WAN links,
Fraction of a second response for Application, and Immediate delivery
of Server/ Link/ Hardware procurement.
- Have appropriate Service Level Agreements with
Service Providers
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