Improved portal design drives self-service adoption in k-12 district.
Improved ticket triage, workflow and automation drive optimized IT Service.
Better tracking and escalation is driving improved SLA adherence.
Industry: K-12 District
End-users: 19,000
Previous System: iSupport
Like most K-12 districts, Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District finds funding to be a constant struggle.
The district’s IT department, which consists of 32 full-time staff members, must support nearly 14,000 devices used by 18,800 students and approximately 2,200 staff in 47 schools and three additional facilities spread across a geographic area the size of West Virginia.
This task would be nearly impossible without improving the maturity of its ITSM software. But with the help of certain tools and processes, Senior IT Program Manager Justin Michaud and team are delivering more value to the district—while adopting a “customer-focused” mindset.
Part of that “customer-focused” mindset is investing in self-service, the district uses a self-service portal and knowledge base hosted by TeamDynamix, which allows users to resolve many of their own IT issues—such as resetting their network password.
Students and staff can search the district’s knowledge base for articles or advice pertaining to their questions. “We have made it easy for end-users to find what they are looking for,” says Michaud. “We’re trying to get people the help they need more expediently. Gone are the days of filling out a support ticket and waiting a week for service.”
Matanuska-Susitna has identified a “digital first responder” (DFR) in each school. These are teachers who are paid a stipend to help resolve issues that users can’t solve for themselves. If the DFR can’t fix the problem, then it gets escalated to an IT support employee.
With an easy-to-use portal, the IT team can easily update KB articles.
With an easy-to-use platform, the IT team can keep track of tickets and SLAs.
The TeamDynamix platform helps IT staff keep track of which service requests are still open, so no request falls through the cracks. It also provides valuable metrics that help IT leaders measure their success in resolving issues, so they can set goals for continuous improvement.
“If we’re not meeting our service level targets, it jumps out at us now,” Michaud says. Having the ability to measure success has helped the district’s IT department reduce how long it takes to respond to IT problems.
With built-in SLA tracking, escalation paths and dashboards, the team can keep track of service levels and jump on any critical issues.
In moving toward a more mature approach to IT management, Michaud and his colleagues now project costs and manage projects more effectively. In addition, IT staff closely monitor software usage to see if they should renew contracts as they expire. “You need tools in place to help you make those decisions,” Michaud says.
He observes: “IT maturity is not going to happen overnight. It requires process changes. The way you look at things has to change over time.”
