Improved IT Performance: Increased Resource Productivity & Reduced Cycle Times

The Challenge:

Vestcom saw the need to improve the performance of the IT department and believed that area was a constraint to increased growth. Vestcom recognized that not enough of its IT human resources were dedicated towards tasks that actually delivered value for the organization, causing projects to move slowly through the pipeline. With increased pressure from competition, Vestcom faced the challenge of improving an IT department that lacked the processes and operating tools required to effectively manage the area. A project was initiated at the IT headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas with a focus on increasing IT resource productivity, reduced cycle times and no degradation of quality.

The Results:

The project exceeded financial goals, providing Vestcom with a 3:1 ROI.

Key Changes in IT included:

• New upfront processes implemented for collecting and transitioning client business requirements from the Customer Service to IT department.
• Reduced downstream issues encountered during programming through the creation of stage gates for approving, launching and updating projects.
• New Change Management process installed to capture and re-quote project scope changes.
• Improved integration of Product Quality Assurance team into the IT group; including new forecasting and resource scheduling tools.
• Streamlined code review process.
• Rationalization of meetings, reports and other non-value added administrative activities.
• Creation of tiered-support system and integration of Issue Resolutions team into IT department.
• Centralized deployment process, leading to significant reductions in quality issues and cycle time.
• Installation of daily time tracking process and systems tools to improve project planning, scheduling, execution and performance measurement.

The Client Experience:

“…a plan to enable our management team to actively facilitate changes in our methods was introduced. The plan, through a series of distinct measurable actions, defined a path toward improved processes and continuous metrics. Each of these method changes were sound, measurable and most importantly, could be justified with a compelling return on investment. By virtue of our collaboration with Carpedia, in less than a year, Vestcom IT has greatly improved our productivity (+25%) as an organization and is making a higher contribution to the business. The Carpedia methodology and people enabled us to accomplish our objectives in a time frame we could not have achieved on our own.”

Chief Information Officer, Vestcom International Inc.