Charles Fraser - Experience
Please find below details of some examples of Consultancy assignments that I have undertaken. If you would like to see a copy of my current C.V. please e-mail me Charles.Fraser@CharlesFraser.net
Consultancy Assignments undertaken
Customer: Major European Public Body
Assignment: ITIL Service Improvement Consultancy & ISO20000 conformance analysis
The customer had spent considerable time and effort in the past two years implementing ITIL operational processes. They now wished to further develop and refine these processes in order to drive greater operational service improvements.
- Reviewed maturity and effectiveness of existing ITIL processes and IT working practices
- Made recommendations for process improvements, and led implementation of revised processes
- Developed comprehensive IT Service Catalogue
- Put in place high level SLAs
- Recommended development of key additional processes (e.g. Change & Problem Management) and led development of new processes.
- Ran ISO20000 conformance assessments to determine degree of conformance against key elements (not all elements) of ISO20000
- Developed and implemented plan to address areas of non-conformance to the requirements of the standard
- Developed and implemented plan to address areas of non-conformance to the requirements of the standard
Customer: UK Central Government Department
Assignment: Development of SIAM based operational model
The customer was in the process of making the strategic change from a traditional single source prime suppler outsourcing agreement to a multi provider Tower based model. Key to this was the clear definition of the scope, role and responsibilities of the SIAM function, and the overall end to end service model.
- Defined the scope and responsibilities of the SIAM function
- Implemented an effective governance model for the SIAM function
- Developed a maturity assessment model to help the customer to undertake on-going maturity assessments of the SIAM function to identify areas for improvement
- Defined and implemented the overall service model ( the service management processes, procedures, interfaces etc.) for the effective management of the of the Tower service providers by the SIAM function.
Customer: UK Telco
Assignment: ISO20000 Gap assessment
- Helped to define scope of certification
- Undertook ISO200000 process conformance assessments in order to determine the extent of the gap between present operational processes and the requirements of the ISO20000 standard
- Developed ‘action plans’ to close the gap for the individual processes
Customer: Major European Science Institute
Assignment: IT Structural re-organisation and implementation of Service Management based operating model
The customer wished to optimise the structure of their existing IT organisation(s), and develop a single common IT operating model for the new consolidated IT function based on IT Service Management Best Practices:
- Formally documented the ‘As Is’ operating model, in order to fully understand present situation. This included building a detailed IT Service Catalogue, undertaking process documentation etc
- Undertook Due Diligence exercise to investigate the true extent of services being provided (this involved understanding the services from a customer perspective) across the 3 primary IT Groups
- Produced standard documentation for each service that could be used to fully understand that service from both an internal IT and customer perspective
- Led workshops to determine the ‘To Be’ IT operational model – this included defining key processes, working practices etc
- Developed recommendations (with justifications) and provided a ‘roadmap’ for structural change within IT (to merge the 3 independent IT units into a single organisation)
- Led implementation of new operational model (processes, working practices and structural re-organisation)
Customer: Major South African Telco
Assignment: ISO20000 Certification programme
The customer wanted to achieve ISO20000 certification. My role was to manage the entire certification programme, and my specific responsibilities included:
- Undertaking ISO200000 process conformance assessments in order to determine the extent of the gap between present operational processes and the requirements of the ISO20000 standard
- Developing ‘action plans’ to close the gap for the individual processes
- Overseeing and managing the implementation of the individual process actions plans
Customer: UK Property organisation
Assignment: Service Improvement Analysis
The customer was keen to improve the quality of service they were delivering to their Head Office and High Street office user base. My role was to:
- Assess the strengths and weakness of their current service provision
- Understand the reasons for the points of weakness in the way they delivered services
- Understand the user perception of the level of service that was currently being provided
- Determine the key user quality service criteria (that would ideally need to be delivered by IT)
- Develop key initiatives, including new Incident & Problem management processes, and overall plan for service improvement
- Develop range of metrics for Knight Frank IT management to use in order to determine rate / scale of improvement
Customer: Global IT Service Provider
Assignment: Service Improvement Plan
The customer was a major third party service provider that was having service quality issues with their largest outsourcing contract. They wished to substantially improve the quality of services they were providing in order to safeguard the contract renewal.
- Undertook formal (qualitative and quantitative) assessment of the 'current As Is' provision of service (this was to identify areas of concern from the end customer perspective).
- Developed detailed recommendations for revisions to operational structure, processes, and associated working practices that would deliver real service quality improvements.
- Developed detailed implementation road map in order to provide clear guidelines as to what needed to be done in order to implement recommendations.
Customer: UK Council
Assignment: IT Service Management training workshops
Developed and delivered a range of tailored workshops on key elements of IT Service Management, including:
- How to develop a Service Catalogue
- Implementing effective Incident & Problem Management
- Writing meaningful Service Level Agreements
Customer: UK NHS Trust
Assignment: Development of Service Catalogue and Service Level Agreements
- Developed ITIL based Service Catalogue to show the scope, quality and quantity of services that IT Division was delivering to their internal user base
- Mapped each service to the major infrastructure components that underpinned that Service (effectively developing a technical service catalogue)
- For each service within the Catalogue identified a major business owner and negotiated business based service criteria
- Developed Service Level Agreements for each service based on the business based service criteria
- Where appropriate developed Operational Level Agreements and Underpinning Contracts to support the Service Level Agreement
Customer: UK Airport
Assignment: ITIL process maturity Assessment & Service Catalogue and SLA Development
- This compared the maturity of the existing operational processes with the ITIL (v3) framework.
- This was undertaken by a combination of formal audits, individual and group interviews and observations.
- The result was an assessment showing the extent of current process alignment (using a CMMi maturity scale), and a detailed roadmap for increased alignment over a defined period of time.
- Defined high level Service (with underpinning Technical) Catalogue
- Developed Service Level Agreements for high / critical level Services
Customer: UK Travel organisation
Assignment: Investigate current state of IT Service for Thomas Cook Airlines and propose Global Service Management Framework
The assignment was to undertake an evaluation of the quality of services being provided to Thomas Cook Airlines (UK) and to then propose a high level framework for a Global Service Management Framework that could be applied throughout the Thomas Cook Group:
- Undertook a number of interviews with senior Airline business users to evaluate success / failure from customer perspective of the IT Services being delivered.
- Analysed reasons for IT Service issues (non-technical) in order to understand how best to address causes of failure.
- Developed high level recommendations for improvements in Service Management processes to address causes of service issue.
Customer: Global airline
Assignment: Service Improvement Analysis
The customer was experiencing considerable issues with the service that was being delivered to their office locations across APAC by a 3rd party service provider. The requirement was to understand the causes of the service failures, and then implement measures to remove the causes and thus improve both the overall service and customer satisfaction. This involved
- Assumed full operational and commercial responsibility for a complete IT Desktop / Infrastructure outsource covering all CX locations across APAC.
- Tasked with undertaking a complete remodelling of service provision to address critical service and commercial issues.
- Achieved through introducing ITIL processes for Incident and Problem Management, Change and Release Management, Service Level Management, and Availability Management.
- Negotiated new and improved service agreements and contracts with all service providers (internal and external).
Customer: Singapore Telco
Assignment: Service Level Agreement Implementation
The customer wished to develop fully comprehensive and business focussed Service Level Agreements so that it could ensure that the quality, quantity and scope of services being provided was that truly required by the business. To achieve this required:
- The development on an ITIL conformant Service Catalogue, detailing both the customers of the services, and the actual services themselves.
- Determining and documenting the service needs of the various customers within QHB, and ‘matching these to the capabilities of the IT Division to deliver service.
- Ensuring that IT was capable of measuring and delivering the required quality, quantity and scope of Services.
- Negotiating and developing the Service Level Agreements.
- Negotiating and developing the Operational Level Agreements and Contracts that underpinned the SLAs.
- Putting in place mechanisms to ensure the on-going review of the SLAs, OLAS and Contracts.
Customer: Global IT Service Provider (Philippines office)
Assignment: IS020000 Certification
This customer wished to gain ISO20000 certification for the services it was providing for a single key client contract.
- In conjunction with customer defined and agreed exact scope of certification required.
- Undertook ‘gap analysis’, determining what would be required in order for customer to gain ISO20000 certification (e.g. processes, working practices to be implemented etc)
- Provided detailed advice to customer on steps required in order to progress certification.
Customer: Global IT Service Provider (Hong Kong office)
Assignment: ISO20000 Certification
The customer wished to achieve ISO certification. I was engaged to manage the accreditation process:
- Undertook formal gap analysis to understand the process development etc that would be required in order to achieve accreditation
- Developed detailed road map for required process enhancements
- Developed revised process models to required standard
- Managed the formal accreditation assessment by the RCB
Customer: Dublin based Logistics organisation
Assignment: Implementation of formal Service Management
The customer wanted to improve the quality of their IT Services by implementing a more formal approach to Service Management.
- Led Project to ‘implement’ effective Service Management
- Undertook initial gap analysis to determine which parts of the ITIL framework would bring greatest benefit
- Developed effective Incident, Problem, Change, Service Level, and Service Continuity processes – based on ITIL framework
- Evaluated new Service Desk toolset
- Implemented new process and procedures across IT organisation
- Managed communication with key stakeholders
- Managed all project related issues and risks
Customer: UK Retailer
Assignment: Service Quality Assessment process improvement
The customer was experiencing considerable service related problems in the provision of their in-house IT Operations. They wished to undertake a full investigation of the situation, and explore potential improvements:
Customer: Major UK financial institution
Assignment: Implementation of formal IT Service Management processes
The customer wanted to develop formal operational IT processes and working practices based on the ITIL framework.
- Led process definition workshops
- Defined standard process format and structure
- Developed key operational processes (inc Incident, Problem & Change)
- Implemented processes into operational environment
- Evaluated process performance and identified improvements
- Handover of processes to in-house process owners
