Behind the scenes of GS: Service orientation CERN-wide
A far-reaching project to improve the management of services was initiated in 2010, through the implementation of standard methods and tools to improve the efficiency of CERN services continuously.
Everyone at CERN now knows the telephone number 77777, the e-mail address service-desk@cern.ch and the CERN Service Portal. Behind all this lies a one-stop-shop where a team of operators is ready to answer your call as swiftly as possible and help you send that over-sized parcel to Patagonia or repair those faulty blinds (see Bulletin article 44-45/2013). But that’s not all, as Reinoud Martens, head of the Service Management Support Group in the GS Department, explains: “As far as the service management project is concerned, receiving and assigning incoming calls is just the tip of the iceberg! More generally, the aim of this massive project, launched in 2010 in close collaboration with the IT Department, is to enhance service management and implement standardised methods and tools.”
A number of initiatives have been taken to improve the efficiency of services on the CERN site and to save precious time for the people working here. In so doing, the GS-SMS Group follows industry standards, such as ISO 20000 and ITIL V3.
The Service Desk handles 400 tickets per day, but these only account for 50% of the service requests. The other half come directly from the services managing the jobs. “Whether a request comes through the Service Desk or not, what counts is to standardise the methods,” explains Olaf van der Vossen, the GS-SMS deputy Group Leader. “That way, the resolution of problems is no longer left to one individual with specific knowledge but can be taken over by colleagues, without the 'customer' needing to understand the organisational mechanisms by which the problem was solved.”
This new approach has been adopted by more and more CERN services. The service management system today covers 300 registered services, provided by 1000 people (“supporters”), who therefore use it on a regular basis. Outside the GS and IT Departments, more and more services in the FP and HR Departments as well as in the DG groups (e.g. radiation protection) are interested in adopting or have already adopted the system.
In addition to the tool for managing service requests, the service management system also includes quality indicators. These provide instantaneous data on parameters such as the number of requests that have been resolved in a given time. “The tool can be used by all supporters to improve their service offering,” explains Olaf van der Vossen. ”These dashboards are used more and more because they oblige discussions on services to focus on objective data rather than on hearsay.”
In addition, supporters can contribute to a knowledge base which documents repetitive actions and centralises information on similar incidents. Once such incidents have been documented, internal discussions are initiated to try to understand root causes and bring about broad solutions to problems. “Problem management is the second part of the project,” van der Vossen explains. In the same framework, the Group has launched an initiative enabling services to improve on the basis of user feedback. “We’ve started organising service analysis meetings with heads of services and representatives of users,” Martens explains.
The Group will organise other such meetings in the coming months, also to encourage people to use the knowledge base. The overall aim remains the same: continuous improvement in services and adoption across the Organization.
