Bringing stability to business-critical systems with ITIL-based process improvement

Hope Construction Materials, which has recently been acquired by Breedon Group plc, operated the UK’s biggest cement plant, with a history going back more than 80 years. Hope’s SAP system was critical to the day-to-day running of the plant, as well as the company’s network of concrete plants and quarries throughout the UK. Centralised back-office functions such as finance and purchasing were dependent on the same system.

A modernisation project had left Hope’s support function with a backlog of 500+ tickets and an average incoming ticket level of 250 per week (with as many as 350 some weeks). The company recognised that it needed to take timely action. If the backlog had been allowed to grow, further functionality improvements could have become risky. The SAP system also needed to be as robust as possible, since outages could impact on operational excellence.

Hope decided to work with its IT partner Capgemini – which supported the system and provided 2nd and 3rd level support and development services – to manage and reduce the backlog and safeguard the stability of the SAP system.