2012 Winners Announced

itSMF Australia presented its prestigious 6th Annual Industry Awards at their 15th Annual National Conference Gala Dinner on Tuesday 21st August 2012 at the Gold Coast Conference & Exhibition Centre.

Congratulations to our 2012 Industry Award Winners

ITSM Project of the Year 2012 - Toyota Motor Corporation Australia

KINETIC IT, ITSM Project of the Year presented by Terry North, Chief Executive Officer of Kinetic IT.

The IT Service Management Project of the Year is awarded to the organisation that, in the judges' view, completed the most successful and/or challenging IT Service Management project during the nominated period.
To catch the eye of the judges, projects needed to demonstrate that new processes adhered to and aligned with the ITIL methodology and other related standards in best practice frameworks. They were looking for ITSM projects that provided measurable improvement in service delivery, effective knowledge capture, and control and governance over change which included high levels of customer satisfaction.

Projects had to show evidence of initiatives that ‘go that extra step' to provide business value and achievement of pre-defined objectives through exceptional management, the use of new or enhanced technology that occurred within time and budget restraints.

The Winner was Toyota Motor Corporation Australia with the award accepted by Ellis Brover, Corporate Manager Service Delivery.

Toyota's Information Systems Division (ISD) extends to over 100 full time staff as well as 20-30 contractors spread over three sites and charged with managing IT and communications for the full gamut of Toyota's business in Australia. This includes multiple divisions within the group covering engineering, design, manufacturing, sales and marketing and corporate administration operations.

In 2010 a review on the delivery of IT services was undertaken and it showed the need to improve the quality of IT services. This resulted in a wide ranging transformation program that encompassed technology, processes and people.

A business plan was developed and executive support sought which led to an comprehensive three-year transformation program of work including a total overhaul of service delivery processes to bring them into alignment with guidelines defined by ITIL V3. The other key parts of the program were an upgrade of the infrastructure, a reorganisation of staff (including consolidation of multiple help desks) and improvement of staff capabilities.

An external ITSM maturity assessment to create a benchmark against the ITIL best practice framework provided recommendations for service improvement which were prioritised in terms of "value" to the key business stakeholders. Detailed project plans included a process assessment and broad organisational changes to support the overall service improvement plan.

Starting from a benchmarked average maturity level of 1.5 (out of 5) for eight key ITIL processes, a target was set to reach a maturity level of 2.5 within three years for nominated key processes:
• Request Fulfilment and Access Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Release and Deployment Management
• Service Level Management
• Service Asset and Configuration Management
• Service Portfolio and Service Catalogue Management*

During the defined eligibility period for the 2012 ITSM Industry Awards a significant phase of the larger transformation was completed. This included the generation of a new tender which would centralise all level 1 support to a single outsourced services provider - saving millions of dollars - as well as the release of the above eight new ITIL-based processes.

Innovation of the Year 2012 - Suncorp

TELSTRA, Innovation of the Year presented by Michael Salama, Capability Specialist, Integrated Services & Outsourcing to Suncorp's Ian Jones.

This award is for the most novel ITSM project, product or service developed during the nominated period. It distinguishes innovative ideas that demonstrate results and clear evidence of benefits, including financial, that flowed from the development of a new project, product or service.

The judging panel was looking for projects that demonstrated a novel / cutting edge nature with clear and concise reasoning as to why it is classed as innovative.

The Innovation of the Year needs to deliver measurable improvement with some novelty value based on sound ITSM improvement rationale. Judges were looking for an innovative approach that displayed balanced levels of complexity and uniqueness while also being inexpensive and able to deliver genuine business benefits and alignment with broader business objectives.

The Winner is Suncorp - Accepting the award will be Ian Jones, IT Service Management Team Leader

Organisations continue to face and generate change at a rapid pace. Consequently, IT departments are being challenged to deliver increasing value by reducing costs and/or being responsive to dynamic customer needs.

IT Service Management (ITSM) functions must contribute to organisational outcomes by becoming enablers of change and not blockers, a perception often held by other IT teams due to the ITSM's need to balance efficient operational support processes while meeting various regulatory and legislative requirements. Suncorp's ITSM team faced a series of such challenges.

Suncorp presented a case study in the adoption of the Agile Methodology to lead Suncorp's IT Service Improvement Plan. Agile is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organising, cross-functional teams.

Suncorp has adopted Agile as its primary approach to service delivery as it offers benefits such as rapid learning and continual service improvement, early return on investment, satisfied stakeholders, increased control and being responsive to change.

Using Agile practices such as the Product Backlog, Scrum, Social Contract, Big Visual Charts and Retrospectives, the Suncorp ITSM team:

* Delivered new ITSM services including an ITSM tool upgrade in one-third of the originally estimated time and at 20 per cent of the originally estimated cost,
* Improved staff morale by clarifying work expectations and motivating staff to go beyond their formal responsibilities,
* Improved customers' perceptions of their services, and
* Established a collaborative approach to Continual Service Improvement.

Service Desk Team Project of the Year 2012 - Fujitsu Australia/NZ

HDAA, Service Desk Team Project of the Year presented by Ian Maitland, Managing Director of HDAA.

The HDAA Service Desk Team Project of the Year award is given to the service desk team which, in the judges' view, has completed the most successful and/or challenging IT Service Management project in a service desk environment during the nominated period.

Judges were looking for a project that brought together all the elements of a quality service desk operation including people, process, procedure and technology. This award is in recognition of the service desk team that was able to best demonstrate its ability to deliver measurable business benefits that met pre-defined objectives.

And the winner is - Fujitsu. Accepting the award for Fujitsu is John Schumacher, GM Service Support.Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand is a leading service provider of business, information technology and communications solutions. Fujitsu partner with customers to consult, design, build, operate and support business solutions, from strategic consulting to application and infrastructure solutions and services. With over 2,000 customers and long term clients in the finance, education, utilities, defence, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, retail and government sectors.

Fujitsu's main Service Desk is located in Sydney's Olympic Park precinct, with smaller operations in Melbourne, Perth, Wellington, Auckland and Manila. This includes a 24x7x365 operation with over 400 Service Desk agents handling over 1.2 million contacts every year from more than 80 Managed
Service customers. Calls are logged via phone, email and web services.

The Service Desk is the single point of contact for all incidents, service requests, change requests, problems, and access requests in the customer's IT environment. With new business wins in 2012, we are forecasting substantial growth in our Service Support operation.

Early in 2011 it was clear that Fujitsu needed to put more of a focus on service so a program of improvement was initiated. At the heart of this was the ethos of Responsiveness, Ownership and Communication (ROC) - that would enable the Fujitsu Service Desk to deliver a service that exceeded the customer's expectations every time.
Foundations of Service programme is about the execution of "the right practices that contribute to service delivery" through:
■ educating staff
■ providing insight to staff about the practices customers value
■ assessing and monitoring the use of those practices, and
■ rewarding those practices when they are consistently displayed.

Fujitsu introduced The Foundations of Service programme which aims to build "from the ground up" a framework of Service Delivery excellence. Its team is educated through induction to Fujitsu to deliver the ROC values, which in turn delivers excellent service to our customers. Each foundation layer is supported by positive reinforcement in a rewards program so that the right behaviours are consistently displayed and recognised.

Continual Service Improvement
Fujitsu's CSIP methodology is a mature ITIL v3 aligned, governed process which provides the account with a plan to improve elements of their service going forward, and ultimately to deliver a superior service experience, visibility of the plans and progress of actions. A custom-built online tool also enables Fujitsu to produce measures on the progress of plans, overdue action items and the number of new initiatives.

This enables the Service Desk leadership team to have effective oversight and governance of the CSIP process. All employees are expected to contribute to continual service improvement initiatives and this is measured as a KPI.

Service Management Champion of the Year 2012 - Brian Clark (VIC)

Accepting the award from Microsoft's Wally Eastland on behalf of Brian Clark was Dr April Weiss.

MICROSOFT Service Management Champion of the Year presented by Wally Eastland, Consulting Lead for Operations at Microsoft Services Australia.

The Service Management Champion award is given to an individual service management professional who, in the judges' view, has made the most distinguished, outstanding contribution within the Service Management industry.

The judges were not just looking for someone who did their job well, but someone who had gone beyond the call of duty to help foster passion for ITSM, to help raise awareness of the value of ITSM and to create a collaborative environment that championed knowledge sharing, communication of successes and continual improvement. The winner has to be someone who had inspired and motivated peers to advance their careers and achieve outstanding ITSM outcomes through mentoring and good management.

The 2012 Service Management Champion of the Year is Brian Clark, Executive Director of RMIT University Information Technology Services in Victoria. Brian is passionate about the value of delivering and improving ICT through IT Service Management. Since his appointment 18 months ago Brian has overseen rapid change, reshaping and restructuring the ICT unit to deliver "insanely great service" to RMIT's 100,000 customers. Brian has championed the implementation of ITSM processes and aligned existing services with ITSM principles and a customer centric focus to enable ITS to support RMIT's business strategy.

Brian could not attend the dinner so accepting the award on his behalf was Dr April Weiss, Deputy Director - ICT Service Management at RMIT University.

Whitepaper of the Year 2012 - Dave O'Reardon

The itSMF Whitepaper of the Year was presented to Dave O'Reardon by Karen Ferris, itSMF Director of Publications

The Whitepaper of the Year Award is awarded to the best Australian Whitepaper and run in conjunction withthe itSMF International White Paper of the Year award. Judges were looking for the Whitepaper that best focused on the interests of the itSMFA community in a way that shared knowledge as well as being informative and entertaining to read while avoiding areas such as specific products, services or solutions. Whitepapers were requested to be between 3000 and 4000 words with the inclusion of images, charts and illustrations that reinforce the content. The judges found the best Whitepaper this year was written by Dave O'Reardon.

Dave O'Reardon is the Managing Director of Silversix, a management consultancy that specialises in helping IT teams measure and improve customer satisfaction. He's worked in IT for over 20 years in Europe, Asia and Australia and has over a decade of IT leadership experience. He strives to improve the reputation of IT customer service through consulting, presenting and writing.

Lifetime Achievement Award 2012 was presented to Bob Arthars (QLD) by itSMF Director Garry Long and photographed here with Chair, Kathryn Heaton

The first award of the night is only awarded periodically and recognises the recipient's dedication and service to the IT Service Management Forum over a sustained period. The itSMF Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to an individual who has made a significant difference in the life of their peers through their contribution to the Forum and who serves as a role model and inspiration to their colleagues. Whilst this award recognises a single individual, it also reflects the enormous collective value of the work of the many committed and passionate ITSMF volunteers across Australia and their contribution to the IT Service Management industry.

It is the ITSMF's great pleasure to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to, BOB ARTHARS.

Bob Arthars will be well known to many of you for his continued work in the Queensland branch, his support, direction and effort in developing the national conference, his generous support of his colleagues and the continuous advocacy of the benefits of ITSMF membership. Bob has worked tirelessly to promote excellence in the industry serving as a National Director, a founding member of the Queensland Committee, Conference Director and as a judge of the itSMF Industry Awards since their inception in 2005.

Chairman's Prize for Best Speaker at LEADit 2012 went to Ian Jones for his presentation on 'Leading ITSM with Agile'

Best New Speaker at LEADit 2012 went to Todd Bridgeman for his presentation on

'A Procedural Model for the Mature Service Desk'

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