The university of the west of england streamlined and revitalized services with Ivanti ITSM

The University of the West of England (UWE), based in Bristol, faces the daily challenge of providing modern, automated and digitally enabled delivery of essential services to its over 33,000 staff and students. Two years ago, partly to address waning IT service levels, the university embarked on a full IT transformation program, starting with the rollout of Ivanti Service Desk.

The transformation began with restructuring the entire IT department and creating key change management roles that would evolve IT from reactionary mode to a modern IT services facilitation department, with automation and best practices at the core.

Adrian Moore accepted the position of service desk manager within the new department. Back then, one of his first priorities was to address the flagging internal service desk that was ill-equipped to deal with requests, especially at peak times of the academic year.

“This wasn’t simply a question of updating a waning 10- year-old service desk with a swap-out solution,” Moore says. “This was a tool for the university to fully embrace change and create ITIL best practice adoption for IT services that would benefit the student experience for many years to come.”

Prior to the transformation, few processes existed for the former UWE Service Desk. Individual support staff tackled queries independently, with little automation or logging to assist and track each call. All tickets were universally classified as "incidents", with open dates that frequently spanned back months. Internally, self-resolution by users was becoming the norm as confidence in the service desk’s capabilities plummeted. First-time fix rates hovered around the 15% mark, far below UWE expectations. The overhaul to enrich the student experience was an immediate priority. Adrian Moore invited responses and a month-long proof of concept from four service desk solutions.

From the outset, Adrian had three key expectations for a successful cloud-based solution:

1. It had to include a self-service portal that was as accessible and usable on a student’s mobile device as it was on a PC.

2. It had to offer automated and correct classification and routing of inbound change, incidents and requests.

3. It needed to offer full asset management across the environment.

Additional points were awarded for ease of use and ability to configure and customize. Ivanti’s ITSM solution was judged to be the most functional requirement match for the price and offered UWE a unified interface regardless of device. Further demonstrations to the wider UWE analyst and project team followed before final approval was gained. Week one of the installation featured on-site training and valuable knowledge transfer from Ivanti’s consultant included within the bid. This quickly increased team confidence to create processes that would ultimately transform the service.

Adrian recalls: “After training, 150 analysts within IT Services went live with Ivanti Workspaces. This gave us a common self-service portal with customizable dashboards, a full-service catalog, and accessibility from any device equipped with a web browser, which is critical for digital enablement.”

Completion of rollout and initial results

Not only has the service desk function been transformed, the internal perception of IT Services has started changing to that of positive enablers. “Available” and “self-service facilitators” are now terms associated with IT.

Staff and students can now include requests and log inbound services.

Today, when a UWE user requires a new laptop for example, the request is accomplished through these steps:

• The user can view the available PCs, select and submit their inbound request, which then routes to finance with associated costs for approval and cost coding.
• At any stage, the user can view the status of their request and view updates at different stages of ordering and delivery.

The same automated process occurs when users want to access new apps. The user selects the app of choice from within the service catalog, which is flagged for approval. Once approved, the app is installed automatically on the nominated device. For chargeable apps, the user’s manager receives an email for approval, which routes automatically to finance for budget coding. A dynamic dialog box allows for special justifications to be noted.

For inbound incidents logged, users can also see updates and exchange advice and act upon comments online. Also users have the choice to contact the Service Desk for ticket updates. Incidents can be raised, worked collaboratively and closed – all online.

The impact internally for IT services

Today, after just a few months of using Ivanti, first-time fix rates have improved by more than 30%, with a first-time fix rate of 65 percent. Moore continues to note monthly improvements. These service improvements have transformed internal perceptions, with the ITIL- based processes positioning the department to soon achieve the CMMI best practice model (Capability, Maturity, Model, Integration).

For asset management, IT Services is now fully aware of the assets that reside within its estate, giving a more accurate license management overview. Patch management is also now automated. Ivanti identifies exactly who is using which software app, which version, and who needs updates and patches. Before, regular blanket update notifications were delivered to all users and frequently ignored. Today, it’s possible for only subscribed users of apps to receive targeted notifications that an essential patch is available for installation.

Moore concludes, “As a new team, we have come a very long way in a relatively short time thanks to both the university’s vision of enablement and to Ivanti’s ITSM solution, supporting and tracking our journey from a service that was once viewed as largely ineffective to one that is digitally enabled.”

_{Note: A customer’s results are specific to its total environment/experience, of which Ivanti is a part. Individual results may vary based on each customer’s unique environment.}