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Use Simulations To Collect and Analyze Data, Make Informed Business Decisions, and Test Solution Impact
The Challenge
In July 2011 the Security Operations team of a top 20 Fortune 100 company was implementing a new vulnerability management tool. Vulnerability management is the quarterly process of identifying, remediating, and mitigating vulnerabilities. A vulnerability generally refers to software weakness in computing systems or applications. To meet compliance service level agreements all identified vulnerabilities must be process by the end of the quarter they were identified.
The business was entering the third quarter, the backlog of open vulnerabilities was rising, and the vulnerability management team had resource constraints due to competing projects and budget cuts. The historical process data recovered was unreliable and incomplete. Unfortunately, the data collection process was managed by a single resource no longer employed by the company. The data lacked the necessary key performance indicators to accurately measure and analyze the process. The process for remediating a vulnerability requires multiple weeks of development and testing before the fix can be released to production. It was determined by the stakeholders that a 3 month data collection period was not reasonable or cost effective.
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BlueLine Chief Consultant Reveals Wasted Resources, Under-utilization, and Develops Organizational Efficiencies in 4 Months
The Challenge
The technical support group within IT Operations of a top 20 Fortune 100 company had just completed the reorganization of its site support structure. The consolidation of resources across multiple states was the start of an effort to streamline IT support operations. During the course of this transition the tech group has maintained the majority of its operational staffing. The group employs 100+ managers, supervisors, and techs which results in $12M in operational costs. The technical group interacts with all levels of users, including senior executives, to perform services ranging from password resets to the installation of equipment.
Due to reductions in operational and business functions within the organization there is a need to evaluate the services being provided by this group as well as the value added time within these services to figure out appropriate staffing levels. BlueLine was tasked to; define services provided by associates; baseline current organizational structure and workflow; analyze value added activities, workload volumes and processing procedures; design future state organizational model and workflow; and develop managerial metrics resulting in the identification of $3.6M in operational savings.
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BlueLine Associates enables legal department to cut outside counsel costs and boost customer satisfaction
The Challenge
The legal department of a large property casualty company frequently receives specialized services from outside legal counsel. These firms however were becoming increasingly frustrated due to delinquent payments, which at times were in excess of 150 days past due. The target measurement was dramatically flawed due in part to outliers on both ends of the spectrum - as quick as a one-day turn around or as long as 60 days. Both were operational problems, but were canceling each other out and leaving a deceivingly acceptable average turnaround time.
In addition to upset vendors, the company was faced with other operational challenges. They lacked a reliable method of tracking invoices and were unable to isolate the cause of billing inefficiencies within the department. BlueLine Associates was engaged to address the situation, identify root cause, measure inconsistencies, and implement the necessary changes to the existing process.
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BlueLine Program Decreases Information System Related Incidents by 91%; Decreases Mean Time To Recovery by 57%
Incident Management Initiative Results in Shorter Time to System Recovery, Decreased Cost to the Client, and Increased Customer Satisfaction
The Challenge
The volume of Information System related incidents was too high and the time to restore service when there was an incident was too long. This meant that a piece of company technology went down – from something as simple as Microsoft Office to something much more complex and dramatic, like the systems that local pharmacists use to fulfill customer orders.
What further contributed to the problem was the fact that there were limitations with the data available. There were multiple sources of incident data, incidents that were not tracked at all as well as inconsistent mean time to recovery (MTTR) measurement. Therefore, it was challenging to assess past incidents and downtime. Furthermore, there were no formal processes in place to address incidents as they arose.
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