Company Profile

MobileGR$8$ was started and is based in South Africa and has grown to become a large international telecommunications company. MobileGR$8$s head office is in South Africa; its main business is providing digital mobile telephone $($cell phone$)$ and data networks $($internet$)$ for mobile phone users and has about thirty million subscribers globally. Importantly, MobileGR$8$ is completely dependent on digital Information Technology $($IT$)$ and$/$or Information and Communications Technology $($ICT$)$ to keep its digital mobile telephone $($cell phone$)$ and data networks $($internet$)$ up and running.

External business environment

MobileGR$8$ operates in a very competitive market since there are many telecommunications companies and they are all are competing in a saturated market. This means that it is difficult to get new subscribers and revenue. Thus, margins or profits have fallen and business is difficult.

Given the very strong competition in the market and the difficulty in obtaining new revenue, MobileGR$8$ needs to find other ways to boost its bottom line and survive. The board of directors have determined that the company$$s survival depends on improving customer service, reducing costs and increasing efficiency by doing the same work with less resources and reducing wasted resources and costs.

Internal business environment

The Information Technology $($IT$)$ department and IT staff at MobileGR$8$ do not interact directly with MobileGR$8$s external customers, who are the cell phone and data subscribers. The IT department and IT staff at MobileGR$8$ only interact with internal IT users, who are the business staff at MobileGR$8.$ However, MobileGR$8$s internal IT users or business staff interact directly with the external customers $($the cell phone and data subscribers$).$ This is depicted in Figure $1.$

Figure $1$: Internal business environment

IT department structure and context

The IT department consists of several teams of brilliant IT staff and they all report to the Head of IT$.$ All the IT staff respect the Head of IT$,$ enjoy working for her and are happy to do any work that she allocates to them. In particular, the IT technicians are very good at finding the root causes of IT problems and implementing solutions. However, MobileGR$8$ still experiences many IT problems even though MobileGR$8$ has implemented high quality IT hardware and software systems. The reporting structure in the IT department is shown in Figure $2.$

Figure $2$: Reporting structure

Significant IT problems$/$issues$/$circumstances at MobileGR$8$

Many of the IT problems at the company related to IT support that was needed to keep the daily IT services running. The Head of IT realised that her first priority was to clarify what is the set of services recommended for operational management support services.

The Business Director had an urgent discussion with the Head of IT where he explained to the Head of IT that the business was experiencing many negative impacts due to the frequent IT outages and downtime. The Head of IT then called an IT department meeting to discuss the problems that the business was experiencing. And, during the meeting it became apparent that there was much confusion over the ITSM operating model principles.