Merging to Service Desk Organizations?

[mjspade]

I have been placed in charge of a support desk at an Medical College, and on of the first project I am being tasked with is merging (absorbing actually) the clinical support group. The clinical support group works on a revenue cycle that correlates directly with the clinical operations. The merger is a cost savings measure and I will be in charge of the combined groups. I have been looking for information on how to merge two helpdesks who have different cultures and different models into one cohesive unit. I know it isn't going to be easy. Does anyone have any advice they can loan, or point me to resources that I could use to come up with a merger plan? Thanks.

[dboylan]

Yes, I have been through this before and the best tip I can give is fully define both groups' processes first.

This is no easy thing to do. Much of the organizations' processes will be institutionalized. It will take a lot of very insightful investigation to uncover many of the subtle aspects of their processes.

Get out Viso and flow their entire core processes from cradle to grave. Then find out what processes take place outside their primary roles and flow them out fully (some of these might include processes for Reporting, Extraordinary Event Handling, Afterhours, VIP, Disaster Plans, etc).

Once you have done this, you can then map the processes against each other and make some best-of-breed decisions. In this step, you will need a lot of management support.

At the end, there will be some unhappy people around the table. That is the nature of the beast.

Good luck,
Don