IT complexity
transform into control
OLA – Operational Level Agreements – are of central importance for IT organizations to reliably manage daily operations and create clear responsibilities within IT.
Customer profile
Location: NRW, Germany
Employees: Approximately 3,800 employees
Revenue range: 3.5+ billion euros
Industry: Process industry
Locations:
- 11 production sites
- 13 office locations
Initial situation at the customer's site
Our client, a globally operating company in the process industry with a complex IT environment, is growing faster than clarity can be established regarding processes and responsibilities.
Although the customer's essential systems functioned reliably, responsibilities, service expectations, and escalation channels were not uniformly defined across all teams and service providers.
In particular, the customer desired a clearer allocation of responsibilities for services and operating rules regarding user access and identity management, as availability and service reliability are crucial for daily business operations in this area.
The challenge was to create transparency, responsibilities and control in an environment that lacked a unified operating model that aligned people, processes and expectations.
Tasks
Although eAces was engaged through a recruitment model, the company deliberately positioned itself as an implementation partner by assembling the right mix of governance, security, and operations experts, integrating them into the client's environment, and taking responsibility for coordinating between business, IT, and external service providers. Many competitors stop at this point: they deliver documentation, hand it over, and move on.
The result often looks good on paper, but fails when responsibilities are unclear or pressure is high. Unlike others, eAces is committed to developing an operating model that lasts beyond workshops and audits. Our team of experts helped the client gain distance from individual systems and clarify four fundamental questions:
- Who is responsible?
- What does "good service" mean?
- How is performance measured and reported?
- What happens if something goes wrong?
The experts at eAces established a clear and unified service framework for the client's key IT platforms, ensuring transparency regarding responsibilities, expectations, and escalation channels for the business, IT, and service providers. Service performance was anchored in management-ready KPIs, supported by structured reporting and governance mechanisms that made performance not only reportable but also visible and actionable.
In parallel, as part of the OLA/SLA program, eAces developed an ISCP for Active Directory that was tailored to the customer's continuity requirements and designed for structured validation throughout the program. All results were geared towards immediate operational use and were not intended as theoretical concepts or mere documentation.
Through the introduction of structure, responsibilities, and practical service governance, eAces achieved:
The roughly ten years of collaboration demonstrate that successfully staffing complex IT projects goes far beyond simply placing individual specialists. Crucial factors include a deep understanding of the technological requirements, the precise selection of experts, and long-term support for the teams.