Findings about financials and process

1. 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 summarized here:
2. 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).
3. 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.  
4. 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.   
5. Staff use of clarifying metadata fields in RT is inconsistent at best.  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.

Recommendations

To be able to make meaningful measurements of the work being done in the Hardware repair area of the service center, some specific fixes need to be made to certain business processes. 

1. Fill in  the existing clarifying fields in RT 100% of the time.  Content in them needs to reliably available and correct.  These are at the heart of the measurement process.  The ones that matter for every ticket are:
   - Warranty Coverage
   - Manufacturer
   Others matter only for tickets of certain types, but need to be there when they apply:
   - PMAT # 
   - Order Repair #
   - Labor Reimbursement
   If the burden of recording these fields is considered too great for the bench staff, then the process manager needs to do this work afterward.  By the time the case is billed out, the fields need to be filled in. 
2. Create new custom fields to clarify and document billing:
   1. price of the repair.  This numerical field would hold the amount expected to be paid for by someone, whether a manufacturer warranty reimbursement, cost object billing, credit card payment, etc. 
   2. billing method.  This pulldown text field would specify how the client was expected to pay: warranty reimbursement, cost object, credit card, etc.  This would tell us what kind of SAP transaction we ought to be looking in for the matching revenue event.