ITIL at Celanese

This case can be used to achieve a number of pedagogical goals. In the main,
the case gives students contextually rich insights into the everyday challenges
associated with process improvement work even under the best of circumstance,
i.e., implementing vetted best practices with IT professionals who are typically
proponents of process improvement as the target.
Q1. Describe and assess Celaneses approach to IT service improvement
a. Describe the approach to IT service improvement taken at Celanese.
IT initiatives at Celanese were implemented based on their cost-cutting potential.
With the recent turndown in the economy only projects that clearly supported
the companys strategic direction and convincingly demonstrated a 1-year
payback would be approved.
Decentralized approach to IT: Celanese also had a much decentralized
approach to IT overall with each department in each country running their own
systems and implementing projects often without communicating. This led to not
pursuing IT service improvement in a top-down, process-centric manner, so
people like the Global IT Operations Manager bootstrapped and implemented
unique albeit ITIL-informed solutions that addressed Celanese-specific
problems.

b. How effective was it?

Process Gaps: Celanese IT commissioned HP to assess its IT processes.
This assessment uncovered that the Application and Infrastructure groups
has similar processes that they nevertheless tackled very differently. For
example SAP team has its own Incident, Change, Release and Problem
Management processes which were not replicated to other parts of IT.
Bureaucratic Perception of IT: Engineering culture of Celanese makes
it difficult for the organization for improving internal IT process. The
employees already perceived IT as bureaucratic and implementing more
rigorous process threatens to add weight to this negative reputation.
Below average rating: Celanese achieved an IT Service Management
score which was below the average of other companies HP has accessed.
However company performed well on Financial, security and Supplier
Management etc.
The entire assessment exercise had highlighted many process gaps
apparent in Celaneses IT organization

c. What factors contributed to its ineffectiveness?

1. Lack of Commitment from senior leader: There was a lack of commitment by
senior leadership to focus on IT and only focused on short term results. They

2.

3.
4.

5.
6.

were sceptical of the value that could be derived from an increase in ITIL process
maturity.
Insufficient Budgets due to economic downturn: Over the past several years
they had focused on their customers application and in 2009 they did not have
the budget due to the economic downturn. The CIO was not on board in
supporting all the initiatives or was supporting them inconsistently as was quoted
by the application manager.
Communication Gap: There was Lack of communication between ITILers, OSM,
and the vendors
Long Approval Process: Misconception on how long something should take vs
how long it would actually take to implement. For example completion of OSM
caused significant delays as OSM took 2-4 meetings before they were approved.
Diffused IT structure: Standardizing the PCs used by the company took 5 years
Decentralized Culture: Culture at Celanese where centralization was the enemy
and also the engineering culture made it a hard road for company to improve
internal IT process.

d. What specifically should they have done differently?

1. Celanese in order to make their process efficient did changes in the process
but these changes are not done across the organization. For example SAP
team has its own Incident, Change, Release and Problem Management
processes which were not replicated to other parts of IT.
2. HP assessment makes it clear to follow ITIL however company only
implementing an ITIL like Operation Support Model (OSM) which will cater to
Celanese specific needs they are not following the standards ITIL framework
for process redesigning.
3. Senior leadership should provide and extend support for the IT
improvement so that organization use only a single federate tool solution and
standard process. Leadership should come forward in changing the culture in
which employees perceived IT as be Bureaucratic
Q2. The Infrastructure group was more eager to pursue SLAs than the groups
that had more interaction with the business, for example, applications area.
What explains this difference in the perception of SLAs value?
After the assessment by HP, one of the recommendations was to formalize the
Service-Level Management process to include a service level agreement (SLA)
for every service.
For any Business Process Redesign (BPR), there are two challenges:
- Technical Challenge
- Socio Cultural Challenge
Here we see a Socio Cultural Challenge as all groups were supportive of SLA
change, this is because:
1. Business groups wanted to work on more new, fancy IT applications, than
work on internal process improvement.

2. The business perceived IT as bureaucratic and implementing a fixed SLA

would add to this negative perception
3. There was ambiguity in the advantages of having a formalized Service
Level Management process.
4. Budget Constraints: The IT budget was based on allocation model, than a
consumption model i.e it was an overhead for the business, and business
had no direct control over their IT expenses. Over the past several years
they had focused on their customers application and in 2009 they did not
have the budget due to the economic downturn.
5. The business didnt want to take interest and responsibility in defining
accurate service levels.
6. There was a lack of commitment by senior leadership to focus on IT and
when there was it leadership only focused on short term results. The CIO
was not onboard in supporting all the initiatives or was supporting them
inconsistently.
7. The infrastructure group wanted to pursue SLAs as all IT services were
referred to as best effort( to be responded by nest business day)
whereas, people expected a high availability service ( tickets were
responded to immediately). Due to cost allocations appropriate service
levels couldnt be defined. Also, payment was made only for Best Effort
service and expectations were of high availability service. But, in case of
emergencies, and business critical applications no one followed the
Service levels and resources needed to be allocated to immediate needs.
8. The Infrastructure group wanted SLAs for planning capacity, and allocate
resources effectively for critical tasks, whereas, Demand group was
concerned that if the SLAs were in place would they be followed and their
customers would not be disappointed.
9. There was a lack of trust due to lack of knowledge about each others
functioning and problems.
Q3. If you were the CIO and you were trying to decide which of the five ITIL
projects you should endorse and support financially, what would your decision
be? Why?
Continuous process improvement
-

Behaviour of people is crucial in making a business transformation

successful
http://www.cob.unt.edu/itds/faculty/becker/BCIS5520/Presentations/Class_
13.01_ITSM_ServiceContinuity.pdf

Q4. Do you agree with the CIOs conceptualization of the process performance
trade-off? Why? Why not?
a. Do you agree with his characterization of the Celanese and the ITIL
path? Why? Why not?
-Everything central was evil