Service management solution saves time and money

The University of Canterbury caters to over 15,000 students and employs more than 1500 staff. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in over 50 disciplines and has a number of specialist research centres.

The university had been using an IT service management (ITSM) solution to handle the management of incidents, change requests, service requests and problems. However, the software enforced lengthy workflows which could not be modified, wasting valuable time and resources to enter incidents and service requests. Reporting was also inefficient and inflexible.

During a restructure of operations, it was decided that a new solution was needed to meet the needs of the Learning Resources department, which encompasses IT as well as Audio-Visual, Facilities Management and Library Services. A single service desk was required to meet the needs of Student Services, HR and Finance.

The university implemented Axios Systems’ assyst Incident Management and Asset and Configuration Management. Combining all processes into a single solution has provided it with full visibility across its business, plus the ability to control and manage all assets and services.

Using assyst’s Reporting Wizard, along with the real-time information via dynamic dashboards, the university has gained actionable business insight. The Reporting Wizard provides report templates for accurate, fast and reliable data. Designated users also create custom reports to see the information they need, when they need it.

Due to the success initially seen when rolled out to IT, the university is now rolling out assyst to other departments and adopting the assyst Self-Service Portal for remote request logging by staff and students. Over time, the Self-Service Portal will be rolled out across the entire university for all administrative service areas, covering both staff and students.

The university is now managing more than 8300 assets within assyst, with numbers set to double over the next year.

Incident logging has become much more efficient and the time taken to log a call has drastically reduced, with staff on the service desk more at ease with the process. Both staff and students now have the ability from web or mobile to log their own incidents and have full visibility of their progress. The result has been an 8.5% incremental increase in self-logging requests on a monthly basis.

Library Services has been impressed with the uptake of the assyst Self-Service Portal, seeing an uptake of 50% within only six months. Overall, the university saw a 15% uptake on the Self-Service Portal for IT and Libraries. This reduces the pressure on the Service Desk by allowing staff and students to log and track their own requests - and feedback has been very positive.

“The implementation of the Self-Service Portal has significantly improved our engagement with our customers and has produced savings in time and effort through reduced processing of email requests,” said Andy Keiller, the university’s CIO.

Finally, assyst has enabled reporting on cost per call and number of calls per day, allowing the Service Desk to appropriately manage its resources. Reporting has also highlighted further efficiencies, such as saving time, reducing support costs and improved end-user satisfaction.

“The Axios Systems team had clearly addressed the requirements set out in our RFP documentation,” said Keiller. “Not only did they answer the question of assyst’s capability, but also commented on how we could expand the use of the same functionality in the future phases of our implementation.”

Image courtesy of the University of Canterbury