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Alaska District Improves IT Service Delivery for Students and Faculty

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Like most K-12 school systems, 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 IT management. But with the help of certain tools and processes, Senior IT Program Manager Justin Michaud and his colleagues are delivering more value to the district—while adopting a “customer-focused” mindset.

 

Prioritizing Self-Service for ITSM Excellence

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.

 


IT maturity is not going to happen overnight. It requires process changes.
The way you look at things has to change over time.

 


 

Ease of Use, Visibility is Key to Success

The TeamDynamix platform helps IT staff keep track of which service requests are still open, so no request falls through the cracks. It provides valuable metrics that help IT leaders measure 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 request response times.

 

TeamDynamix Helping to Improve IT Maturity

In moving toward a more mature approach to IT management, Michaud and his colleagues now project costs and manage projects more effectively.  IT staff can 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.”

 

Investing in Self-Service for Faster, Better Response Times

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.