The practice of aligning an organization’s practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing identification and improvement of all elements involved in the effective management of products and services.
ITIL 4
Our Focus is to identify gaps and opportunities in current state processes which are impeding an optimal customer experience. The goal is to make recommendations to address these gaps and opportunities, thereby optimizing the customer experience.
- We will provide recommendations to optimize selected processes based on our analysis.
- The team is composed of individuals who are knowledgeable in continuous improvement best practices.
- The team also enlists subject matter experts on the process(es) being evaluated for each process improvement engagement.
How to Engage
Continuous improvement engagement can occur through the project intake request process, through identification by a project manager or by contacting the Assistant Director of Business Analysis to conduct a needs analysis.
What to Expect when Engaged
For each engagement, the Continuous Improvement (CI) team:
- Talks with subject matter experts, stakeholders, and others for various insights and perspectives
- Assesses current state
- Documents current state in multiple ways (Visio diagrams, step-by-step description of the process, etc.)
- Identifies gaps and opportunities
- Makes recommendations to address those gaps and opportunities
- As part of the recommendation, the CI team recommends which groups/teams would be the appropriate ones to move forward with implementation
- If the work is large enough to warrant setting up a project, the project intake process will be followed
- Provides status updates and arranges monthly steering committee meetings with sponsors
- After changes are made, the CI team gathers data to analyze the results of the changes and determines whether the changes succeeded in improving the process and the customer experience
Previous and Current Engagements
VIP Service Enhancement
This engagement addressed the need for a better user experience for Very Impactful Persons (VIPs) with WashU IT, which in turn created a more efficient and effective experience for everyone. The CI team made recommendations regarding the creation of new VIP-focused IT positions, teams, triage and workflows.
These recommendations were implemented on the Danforth campus in February 2022. A pilot project continues on the Washington University Medical School campus before the process is implemented.
IT Billing
After evaluating existing process, the CI team made recommendations for streamlining the IT billing process.
Research Onboarding
The CI team made recommendations for creating a standardized onboarding approach, including drafts of documents to be used in various stages of the process.
The team also addressed re-onboarding of current employees, providing them updates and revisiting existing information and processes.
Software Licensing
The CI team documented all existing processes and workflows, then made recommendations for streamlining.
IT Vendor Management
The CI team documented and evaluated all current processes and workflows, then made recommendations to address gaps and opportunities.