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Findings about financials and process in support of the metrics

Our attempts to trace what is going on in the Hardware Repair area of the service center have revealed some systemic gaps that undermine our ability to actually establish relevant metrics.  The main ones are

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here:

1. Isolating the Hardware Repair business within the SAP cost object is difficult as revenues from the Software side are mixed in as well.   (This would be less of an issue if the RT-ticket-to-SAP-transaction link were more clear and consistent).
2. Reconciling RT tickets against SAP financial transactions needs a link between SAP and RT.  SAP DTR transactions generally do not record the ticket number that match them.  Cases generally do not record the amount expected to accrue back to IS&T, so we don't have much record of what we ought to be taking in from the work done.  The five different ways to receive payment create completely different documentation trails in SAP, two of which make some connection while the rest don't.  
3. Staffing model is a muddle.  Payroll expenses in 1637500 are indeed only for Hardware Service, but an uncertain amount of Help Desk staff also contribute effort to tickets that end up in Hardware; that time is difficult to document.   
4. Metadata fields in RT tickets are note used consistently enough.  These fields are the ones that power management reporting and metrics.  They are the only ones that tell us what kind of work is what within the system of record.  Indeed, one or two additional fields are needed to give a complete picture in RT of the repair lifecycle (see recommendations below).
5. Free text fields sometimes have haphazard entries.  This causes some consternation when exporting data to Excel for analysis, but Excel can also correct for this using lookup functions to convert as-entered text to canonical values at analysis time.  (For instance,"Apple", "Mac" and "Macintosh" can be converted to the one entry "Apple", which is how it shows up in SAP reimbursements.  "Lenovo" and "IBM" are another common pairing.) 
6. Some record-keeping and reconciliation is on paper only.  All important numbers matching work done to money received need to be electronically available and reportable, not just hand-written on a paper that is then filed.  The number that connects Apple reimbursements to RT warranty work isthe case in point. 

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