The challenge

Simply to the max

Complexity is messing up simplicity. How can we unmess the bank? Tons of KPIs made it increasingly difficult to manage IT at ING. When ING needed to renew the managed services contract for unified communications, they wanted radical simplification. Giarte was tasked to design an entire new way of performance management.

The solution

Performance management and service levels

We redesigned performance management and service levels based on two guiding principles: user experience and project excellence. How employees experience the quality and the delivery of projects on expectations became the two leading experience indicators (XIs). Our first XI is the ​‘happiness ratio’ of happy versus unhappy. The incentive is to improve the happiness ratio year over year. The second XI is ​‘project excellence’ and it is based on the satisfaction of the project business owner. The rating is a 5‑point scale. According to expectations is a 3, below expectations 1 to 2 and exceeding expectations 4 to 5. There is a reward for >3, and a service improvement plan for <3.

The result

Elimination of traditional SLAs

The subjective data on the user experience was part of the dataset for improvement analytics. The new contract eliminated the use of traditional SLAs. Ever since, the XI ratios have been improving.

The challenge

Consolidate a complex landscape

The global IT strategy emerged to consolidate the complex landscape of vendors, systems and processes. For the head office it all makes perfect sense to reduce IT spend. But the local operational companies (OpCo’s) need to focus on the needs of their employees. They all depend heavily on seamless IT operations. How could Heineken combine the freedom to operate within one framework?? Based on the employee’s voice?

Heineken lacked a comprehensive feedback system to get to the bottom of the user experience. Giarte was asked to design the methodology, embed the experience indicators (XIs) in outsourcing governance, and implement the reporting dashboard. But how could we get all OpCo’s to buy into it?

The solution

Service process as guiding principle

The consolidation and outsourcing of IT is always a delicate move. We needed to keep a close eye on what was happening throughout the organization. So we made monthly scorecards for local IT stakeholders part of our reporting sequence. We also invited the two major service providers to become part of ​‘Team UX’. After a set of bespoke XLA^® workshops, we all agreed that an upward trend is more important than the absolute target value. Determining the cause of dissatisfaction and improving the service process became the guiding principle for constant progression.

The result

Heineken’s ServiceNow environment

The Giarte experience measuring solution was migrated to Heineken’s ServiceNow environment in 2019 and used globally. From the beginning the user experience was managed with a positive mindset. There was no drop in UX for the service desk and workplace services during and after the transformation.

The challenge

Babylonian confusion upstream

What the IT organization laid down in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) did not resonate in the business organization. It caused a further Babylonian confusion upstream to the service provider for workplace management, infrastructure, and user support. Heijmans wanted a breakthrough solution and reached out to Giarte.

The solution

A better user experience & increased efficiency

Effective performance management in outsourcing is about positive reinforcement. The service provider has to be motivated to do the right thing. Heijmans embraced XLA^® as the right thing for the business. The first out of the five experience indicators (XI) we designed was ​‘No Hassle,’ indicating how much effort it took a user to get something done from the service provider. Too much hassle reveals that there is something wrong with your underlying processes. We combined ​‘No Hassle’ scores with underlying data to eliminate causes of irritation. It kills two birds with one stone: a better user experience and increased efficiency. Other XI’s are overall satisfaction on IT, First Time Right (FTR), and First Contact Fix (FCF). With FTR, everything gets done the right way for the user the first time, and FCF shows that the service desk itself is capable of solving problems.

The result

Moving the digital transformation

Thanks to XLA^®, Heijmans’ IT organization shared the same mindset as their counterparts in the business. This proved to be a condition for moving the digital transformation of the company along. The number of incidents dropped, Lean IT was kick-started, and the user satisfaction improved to a firm 8 (on a scale of 1 to 10).