CEPSA (Spanish Petroleum Company)
Since October 1, 2007
Until October 1, 2011
How did I get to this job
Although I was very comfortable at CEPSA Gas, milestones were happening at CEPSA that led me to work with them.
The management carried out at CEPSA Gas had drawn a lot of attention, but CEPSA was going to a model focused on ITIL where the Information Systems Department sells its services to the subsidiaries. That was incompatible with the subsidiaries having their own structure. We were the first subsidiaries to join that model.
It is also complemented by a very attractive economic offer, and a position of greater complexity. Both reasons were enough to start at CEPSA as a Service Desk Manager.
Work description
CEPSA has outsourced the HelpDesk with TECNOCOM. But the service had been stagnant for some time. The quality index perceived by the user was close to 65% and did not stop falling. All this while CEPSA embarked on the adventure of being certified in ISO 20,000, being the first company not belonging to the services sector to acquire said certification.
So as soon as I arrived I had two priorities:
- Improve the HelpDesk.
- Support certification.
There was no better excuse to improve HelpDesk than certification. TECNOCOM, which was then called Getronics, turned very well in this process.
In addition, CEPSA, did not stop assuming subsidiaries in this computer model, saturating more and more the HelpDesk, which gradually became a Service Desk.
At the end of the project, in October 2011 the photo was as follows:
- More than 15,000 users (In 2007 there were about 5000)
- 10 countries to be supported in 24 × 7 (in 2007 only Spain was supported)
- The quality senses by the user was 85% in October 2011. (65% in 2007)
All this only including 2 technicians to the Service Desk, while reducing costs (about 40% with the last RPF), loading the Service Desk with more tasks.
The HelpDesk divided it into 3 groups, creating the Service Desk
- Level 0: Pure Service Desk, recorded calls, and applied basic operations.
- Level 1: Responsible for resolving service requests related to user platform.
- Level 2: Performed the operation tasks in systems and solved the more complex tickets that levels 0 and 1 had not been able to handle.
In addition, in this structure there were two co-ordinators, one looking for the day to day, and another looking for the part of ITIL (development of manuals, support for the processes of problems and incidents, monitoring of critical incidents, etc …)
At level 0 it was formed as a call center, with techniques taken from these centers.
While doing these tasks, he assigned time to support the evolution of the user position. Which in turn helped reduce the burden of the Service Desk:
- Migration to Windows 7: With unattended migrations, training actions and all the previous part of compatibility tests,
- Evolution of software to GNU licensing to reduce cuts: We are looking for free alternatives for some applications.
- Implementation of an automatic installation system on demand (MDT + SMS): The idea is that authorized persons will install the software when they need it. This allowed to download the basic model of the equipment.
- Automation of the platform and migrations.
- Workarround development and support manuals, supported by the problem management process
- Reduction of the request time: (The delivery of equipment went from 1 month to 24 hours. The software went from 40 hours on average to be instantaneous in 80% of the requests thanks to the automation of the facilities)
- Reduction of the privileges of the users in their equipment: That it was noticed in a considerable increase of the requests and a radical fall of the incidents in a time less than two months.
Also support the SmartPhones deployment process, working with all operating systems:
- Windows mobile
- BlackBerry (own BES server)
- iPhone / iPad
- Andorid
Not only did we support those that CEPSA deployed (Windows Mobile at first, then they were BlackBerrys) But we supported the terminals that people acquired. (iPhone and iPad)
Regarding the implementation of the ITIL incident management, change control and problem management processes, we evolved a classic support service to the ITIL standard to later certify Incident Management and the Service Desk service in ISO20000.
This led to the following tasks
- Evolution of the tools to the ITIL model
- Search for new tools and conduct the relevant tests.
- Remedy 7 (Implementation of the Asset Management and Change Managment, and CMDB modules only)
- Service Now (Being the substitute for Siebel in Incident Management)
- Remedy OnDemand (Incident Manager module thoroughly tested)
- SharePoint, was implemented for numerous processes:
- Critical Incident Tracking
- Problem management
- Solutions Repository (Knowledge Management)
- Process documentation
- Scale Matrix
- Training of the 150 support groups in the ITIL processes and the exploitation of the mentioned tools.
In addition, going to assume new subsidiaries meant:
- Train them in ITIL and new tools (Remedy, Siebel, Sharepoint)
- Follow up as service providers
- Incorporate them into the support model, document their services.
- 100% of the service was not always assumed, so there was another important coordination work with the part of the service that remained there.
- Add your language to the Service Desk (We first add Portuguese then English and French)
Why I left
The project reached a point where it stagnated, and with the Spanish crisis CEPSA had to make complex decisions. One of them was to do without my services.