When IT leaders talk about “maturing service management,” the conversation often drifts into abstractions: frameworks, governance, and maturity models. But what if you could point to hard data—numbers that prove the shift from firefighting to disciplined, proactive service management?
That’s exactly the type of transformation that Chas, an IT service manager at a large, Ohio-based insurer and one of our customers, led with BMC Helix IT Service Management (ITSM). And the results are the kind of metrics that make even the most skeptical CIO sit up straight.
From quick wins to long-term cultural change
Chas doesn’t mince words about early automation wins, telling us, “This automation reduced unnecessary calls to customer support by 6.1 percent and increased the use of self-service by 40.6 percent.” That’s not an incremental improvement—that’s bending the curve.
And it didn’t stop there. By strengthening problem management with BMC Helix ITSM, he adds, “We reduced our mean time to resolution [MTTR] by nearly 90 percent.” Think about what that means in practice: fewer outages dragging on for hours, more IT time freed up for value-adding work, and business users getting back to productivity faster.
Scaling problem management into real cost savings
The company’s problem management journey wasn’t an overnight story. It started in 2008 with a formal process that stalled, followed by further overhauls in 2019, 2022, and 2023. As the processes became more consistent, the IT organization gained credibility and delivered measurable business impact. Chas shared the before-and-after numbers earlier this summer in a webinar:
- From 2019 to 2023, the company averaged 136 service disruptions per year, with an average MTTR of 13 hours and 26 minutes.
- By 2024, MTTR had dropped to just one hour and 46 minutes—an 89 percent reduction.
- Recurring outages fell by 20 percent.
- Overall time spent on service disruptions dropped by 82 percent.
Lessons for other IT leaders
Chas was candid about the fact that “our biggest challenge was all cultural-based—getting people to stop calling their favorite person in IT and start trusting modernized processes.” This is something we frequently see in this sector: teams clinging to old habits and bypassing official workflows or hesitating to trust automation, perhaps in part because every change feels risky. In the highly regulated insurance sector, small process shifts can take months of negotiation and reassurance.
Hence, our advice to Chas was clear:
- Don’t boil the ocean. Start with the processes that matter most.
- Automate repetitive processes in a way that delivers obvious value, such as ticket routing, escalations, and notifications.
- Create value-driven, transparent dashboards so leadership sees value. Treat process improvement as a team sport.
Why this story matters
ITIL® best practices can sometimes feel like theory. But this is a great example of what can be achieved in the real world: reducing tickets by six percent, increasing self-service by 40 percent, and bringing MTTR down nearly 90 percent.
That’s not a maturity model score—it’s a business case.
Want the full story?
Watch a webinar replay featuring Chas: Enhancing Problem Management
Or catch Chas’s appearance on the BMC Helix Live Podcast: Bringing ITIL® to Life
BMC Helix Product Tour Library
These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.
See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing blogs@bmc.com.
