Johannesburg, 09 Dec 2021
Enterprise service management is the practice of applying IT service management to other areas of an enterprise or organisation with the purpose of improving performance, efficiency and service delivery.
It is taking what works best in ITSM and applying it to the entire enterprise. Leveraging ITSM across departments had been increasingly popular, but as COVID has greatly accelerated the digitisation of processes, products and services – ITSM has also evolved from traditional ticketing systems to comprehensive workflow solutions.
A recent case study published by Ivanti highlighted Capitec’s approach to leveraging ITSM to meet its business goals:
“It’s impossible to achieve great service on high volumes of requests without great supporting platforms,” said Rickard Chambers, Team Leader for Service Management Systems, IT/Business Development at Capitec Bank. “Our former desktop-based service management application had served us well, but as it reached end of life, we sensed that we could offer more effective services using a cloud-based delivery platform that transferred processing from the user’s desktop to our back-end servers. This upgrade would help the bank effectively record, track and service incidents to make agent interactions simpler, faster and more productive for clients.”
The financial services industry, in general, could realise additional value in leveraging ITSM. Recent trends supporting a more innovative approach include:
- A Global Payments Report for 2020 published by McKinsey found that the digital payments sector experienced half a decade’s worth of growth and development in just a few months.
- A recent Financial Services Digital Transformation Survey on the Future of Financial Services by BDO found the top digital priority for financial institutions was simplifying or modernising legacy IT systems.
- Specific to South Africa – A recent bank's analysis report by audit firm PwC said South Africa’s Big Four banks (Absa, FirstRand, Nedbank and Standard Bank) were counting on digital innovations to keep them relevant to customers in the face of rising competition from new entrants in the financial sector, as well as mobile phone network operators and retailers.
- In October, Capitec, South Africa’s fastest growing retail bank, reported the number of clients using digital channels increased by 22% to 8.9 million over a six-month period ending August 2021.
At the start of the pandemic, businesses with foundational technology processes and platforms were able to adapt more quickly. The financial services industry in particular is known for traditional legacy systems – which is why a more innovative, enterprise-wide approach to ITSM is particularly valuable.
Previously, ITSM was process-based, but now the emphasis is on seamless user experience, transparency and collaboration.
Reflecting back on the Capitec Case Study – after detailed evaluation of three market-leading solutions, Capitec’s Service Management Systems team contacted Ivanti, who outlined how their cloud-based service management capabilities had expanded dramatically through their IT Service Manager solution. Ivanti detailed how the solution would meet Capitec’s high availability and ease-of-access requirements, while decreasing the time to market for agent performance gains. Procurement began with Capitec engaging their technical partner, Think Tanks, for detailed advice on technical configurations and migration of the bank’s more complex processes, before the phased roll-out began.
The benefits realised by Capitec in implementing Ivanti, with the support of local South African partner Think Tank Software Solutions, included:
- Achieved high availability of essential business systems through load balancing;
- Facilitated time savings and productivity gains, faster searching, integration, incident management, data imports and launching of new customer promotions;
- Increased customer satisfaction through better agent follow-up; and
- Reduced administrative complexities and decrease implementation requirements.
Click here to read the full case study.
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