Meridian Offers Services Productivity Programs With Measurable Results

We worked with an Information Technology organization supporting a $25-billion financial services firm. This IT organization develops and supports a complicated mix of IT assets, running both custom-built and off-the-shelf enterprise applications on a far-flung global infrastructure. Our Services Improvement program uncovered considerable room for improvement: only 29% of this organization's work was actually done for customers. The remaining work was either "Back Office" work—chiefly internal administration—or "Compensating" work devoted to fixing mistakes. Our services analyses showed that work surrounding Application Development and Support especially needed to be improved. These findings underpinned strategic decisions to implement a leading suite of enterprise management software and to outsource selected application support and help desk functions that were hopelessly compensating. Our Services Improvement program also identified substantial opportunities to reduce baseline expenditures. As later noted in CIO magazine, this IT Services Improvement program "proved especially effective at bringing together the business and IT."