First National Bank merged with Rand Merchant Bank last year. "With the move towards a profit centred approach the FNB IT department will also have to develop as a separately measurable and fully accountable unit," says FNB`s Kevin Kassel, AGM Service Delivery Management & Support.
"We need to be in a position to provide a high quality of service to the business, and we need to be able track our performance," he says. The IT department recognised that reporting is crucial to measurement and tracking of service targets and on investigation found that SAS Institute IT Service Vision met the business requirements, and can improve on the reporting that was in place. In addition, says Kassel, "the software is easy to use and the flexibility provides the different customers with the graphical service level reports and data which can also be distributed across the Web to our different customers over the Bank`s extensive intranet. This way our users can access management information without having to use the mainframe, at the touch of a button"
IT Service Vision gives the user autonomy to produce the reports giving them more control over when these are produced, as well as over the content of the report. "We can drill down to examine areas of high cost, and we can monitor the daily performance of any area with ease," adds Kassel. He says that IT Service Vision allows for better management of services and preventative action can be taken on by the business unit managers. "An important aspect of the software that convinced FNB to choose it included the ability to access data from different platforms and to give a wide area view of the entire system", says Kassel.
IT Service Vision allows the enterprise-wide service management solutions and deals with all elements of the IT mix.
FNB`s first project using the software is already underway and involves monitoring and tracking the performance of the total ATM service availability (From terminal to host, including host processing.). "With IT Service Vision we can track and manage all of our IT resources within the organisation". Various aspects of ATM service availability can be tracked. Previously this data was gathered from various sources, integrated and then manipulated to give a total service delivery view/report.
Now a manager can look at the total service situation of the ATM service availability and report on its well being, because business data can be combined with operational data.
A team of twelve experts including international consultants are currently working on the system and putting the first prototype together. The final phase will be completed by the end of the year.
Stephanie Olivier, Executive Consultant for SAS Institute, is acting as product manager for IT Service Vision and IT Change Manager. She says that companies like FNB are exploring ways of obtaining a total view of their IT systems, and IT Service Vision is an ideal tool for IT managers to put them in total control.
She believes that as more companies follow the kinds of business principles and vision of FNB in terms of making each area accountable and measurable, the search will be on for software that carries out these tasks with minimal difficulty.
"With the SAS Institute software, FNB is in the position to exploit the wealth of information present in the data gathered from the various data sources in order to improve business decisions and optimise service delivery to the business. We at SAS Institute are sure that FNB made the right choice when they acquired the IT Service Vision software," she says.
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