Managing multi-supplier technology environments is challenging, even for private companies with sophisticated IT Service Management (ITSM) processes and large IT functions. For government agencies facing intense cost pressures combined with a direct mandate for transparency and accountability, the complexities of reconciling data across suppliers and ensuring accurate charge-back billing can seem almost insurmountable.
At the heart of the problem is the quality and trustworthiness of IT asset and configuration data. For charge-back capabilities to work successfully and provide the transparency that government agencies require, the underlying asset, utilization and component billing data across service providers must be complete, current and accurate without manual manipulation to “cleanse” the data. Ensuring high-fidelity data that is fit for financial management requires a systemic mechanism for integrating data and addressing gaps, redundancy and conflicts, resulting in a single, unified dataset that is 100% trustworthy.
To understand this challenge better, it is helpful to consider the nature of multi-supplier IT environments and the ITSM processes used to manage them. Most government agencies require their suppliers and IT service providers to adhere to industry standards and best practices as described by ITIL. At the core of the ITIL standard is the use of a configuration management database (CMDB) as an inventory of all the assets, components and resources present in the IT environment. Each IT service provider typically has its own CMDB, as does the government agency.
As a part of the multi-supplier integration, the configuration data from suppliers is imported into the government agency’s CMDB to provide a comprehensive picture of the technology environment on which the agency’s operations depend. The challenges to integrating configuration data across suppliers are twofold: the scope of the data that each supplier manages and the format of the data from each supplier’s CMDB.
The challenge with the scope of the configuration data is that each supplier maintains data for the systems that matter to it (not to the agency). When different data sets are combined, there are:
- Redundancies – Items about which more than one supplier cares
- Gaps – Items about which no suppliers care, but matter to the agency
- Conflicts in perspective – Items that each supplier views differently
- Currency differences – Data collected at different points in time
In most cases, a complete and accurate picture of the agency’s technology environment can be assembled if the scope differences can be effectively reconciled. Most ITSM systems lack the features and capabilities for integrating data sets at scale and with the accuracy required for government agencies. As a result, specialized data quality management (DQM) solutions are often needed.
The challenge with the data formats is straightforward. There is no universally accepted industry format for configuration data, and the data set from each supplier’s CMDB is typically unique. Resolving the format challenge requires a relatively simple data translation approach, which is familiar to most IT organizations.
Once the configuration data has been integrated across suppliers (in the agency’s CMDB), charge-back billing, asset allocation and other financial management processes are able to operate as if the service-provider organizations were internal to the agency.
Blazent is the industry leader in data quality and integration solutions – helping companies and government organizations combine diverse sets of IT configuration data while providing the levels of accuracy that their organizations require.
A recent example was the implementation of Blazent’s DQM solution with the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), providing GTA an industry best-practice-based system that enables it to know with confidence which CI records are accurate, current and complete. GTA is now easily able to triage multiple data sources that are used to compare CI’s. Since implementing the Blazent solution, GTA has reduced the volume of billing anomalies and established a foundation for robust project budgeting, inventory accuracy and greater operational compliance. The accurate data in its CMDB provides GTA with confidence in its billing to customers and cost avoidance for the agency that is approaching 2 million dollars.
To learn more about the downstream value Blazent’s solution can provide, please read the CIO Insight article linked here.