An ITSM migration was necessary to remove admin burden.
Automation and workflow is easy to configure on a no-code ITSM platform.
Configuration is easy and flexible, significantly reducing admin drain.
Industry: Higher Education
End-users: 4,000
Previous System: Cherwell
Having the right tools to support IT service management can make a big difference. Elon University, a mid-sized private university in North Carolina, learned this lesson firsthand.
Elon was challenged with systems that could not flex easily to meet ITSM processes. What’s more, changes to these platforms took time and effort. This ultimately drove Elon back out to market for a better fit which ultimately resulted in an ITSM migration.
Elon implemented TeamDynamix and realized numerous benefits immediately. For instance, this cloud-based platform has helped the IT service team automate many processes that were done manually before with flexible and easily customizable forms and workflows. It has also driven user self-service with better knowledge management practices and an intuitive customer-facing interface.
Both enhancements have saved IT employees time while improving the user experience for students, faculty and staff alike.
It was easy to spin up a knowledge base and portal – and now adoption is high.
With a bolstered KB and easy searching, the self-service portal is highly adopted.
Before implementing TeamDynamix, Elon University didn’t have an IT service catalog, and its knowledge base consisted of a publicly available wiki. To initiate a service request, users would have to call or email the IT support team.
TeamDynamix made it easy – it was easy to spin up a knowledge base and portal; it was easy to hook up the service request catalog; and it was easy to build out the automation and workflows to streamline the process. The transformation was completed quickly, and now users have the option to submit their requests through an online service portal hosted within the platform.
“We have configured ways to route service requests directly to the team that’s responsible for resolving them, based on the answers to questions in the service forms,” says Brooke Spires, Service Design Analyst. “By bypassing the first point of contact, we’re cutting down on the time it takes to resolve tickets.”
This service portal also contains the university’s knowledge base articles, which have been imported from the wiki — and this enables IT staff to create simple workflows for creating, reviewing, and updating articles on a regular basis, improving the accuracy of the information.
By crowd sourcing content and feedback, the team is able to keep the knowledge base up to date which drives increased usage.
“Before, it was cumbersome to update knowledge articles,” Donohue says. Now, when a technician creates an article describing the steps that he or she has taken in resolving a problem, a knowledge expert is alerted automatically to review and approve the article for publication. Users can rate the effectiveness of articles in helping them resolve their own IT issues, and knowledge experts are notified after a certain period of time to review articles again to make sure the information is still relevant and up to date.
“When people use our knowledge base now, they can be confident that they’re getting accurate information. That’s critical,” Donohue says.
Not only that, but it’s much easier for users to find the information they’re looking for, “Before, people would get frustrated when they couldn’t easily find what they needed,” Spires says. “Now, we can format and tag articles more effectively to improve their searchability.”
Creating an automated service portal with an integrated knowledge base has enabled Elon University to deliver better IT service to its entire community.
“We can meet our customers where they are, in whatever manner they would prefer — by phone, email or online,” Donohue says. “That’s a dimension we were missing before.”
Preserving knowledge in a separate wiki presented a dilemma for IT staff before, “Where should we post information? On our website, or in the wiki? Integrating these functions has given our staff a single, unified place to post information,” Donohue says. “This has helped our teams work better together, while also transforming our knowledge base into a living, breathing collection.”
Donohue and his staff worked with two consultants from TeamDynamix to help them implement the system. Not only was the platform itself a better fit, but the company has gone above and beyond to ensure that Elon succeeds.
“We have been very happy with Team Dynamix’s ability to develop their platform in a short time,” he says. “With TeamDynamix, most of the changes we suggest are implemented within the next system update. The company really listens to our needs.” He concludes: “TeamDynamix has become a key strategic partner for our ITSM initiatives.”
