News & Research: Client Successes

Case Study: Reviewing IT Shared Service Standards and Policies

ScottMadden worked with an IT shared services organization to perform a current state assessment of its IT standards, policies, and guidelines, and to recommend business process improvements designed to enhance standard adoption and enforcement.

• The IT shared services group served software application development teams in three different organizations across the company
• IT shared services had developed standards, policies and guidelines for the administration of IT services that were not being uniformly adopted across the enterprise
• Application development teams in the customer organizations viewed enterprise standards as a threat to their operations

• Researched best practices and benchmarks for IT standards development and enforcement
• Developed new standards for creation and adoption processes that include stakeholders in every step of the standards lifecycle
• Business process included recommending a new system of chargeback for IT cost allocation that highlights the impact of customer behavior on enterprise costs, thus increasing customer accountability for expenses incurred by the shared services organization

• Increased transparency of the enterprise standard creation and adoption process
• Improved buy-in acceptance among application development teams to the need for enterprise shared IT standards, which is expected to improve standards enforcement across all three constituent organizations
• Enhanced communication among application development teams and the shared services organization about the requirements for new standards, policies, and guidelines