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Health Check Helps to Transform ITSM at University of Montana

Published Date
Author Brooke Tajer

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Transforming IT Service Management (ITSM) is a big undertaking. You can have top-notch technology in place to enable greater efficiency, but if your underlying processes aren’t in order, even the best technology won’t help you fully achieve your goals. 

For the University of Montana, a Health Check from TeamDynamix helped employees make improvements to their management and delivery of IT service. With a Health Check, process consultants review your current processes and technology, and then they make key recommendations.

“I would recommend a Health Check wholeheartedly to any institution that knows it’s not working as efficiently as it could be. It was definitely worth the investment.” 
- Alex Karklins, IT Applications Administrator

Looking to improve ITSM Process Efficiency

The University of Montana adopted the TeamDynamix platform for managing IT and enterprise service beginning in 2017. Campus IT leaders were happy with the system but knew they could optimize their processes to get even better outcomes. “We had a highly functional ticketing system, but we wanted to be a better partner with other groups on campus and handoff tickets to them more effectively,” says Jesse Neidigh, executive director of client experience.

IT leaders also wanted to improve efficiency for both end-users and IT staff through better automation, and they wanted to leverage the system’s extensive reporting features more effectively.  “Even though we had a hunch that what we were doing was not ideal, we didn’t know how to change,” Neidigh says. When IT Applications Administrator Alex Karklins attended the TDX Converge annual client summit in July 2020, he learned about the University’s Health Check service and viewed it as a perfect opportunity to improve the university’s IT service operations. 

 

We didn't have metrics on how well we were providing IT service because
too many services were grouped together in one bucket.

 

How the Health Check Process works

The Health Check process began with an initial meeting with the TeamDynamix process consultants to walk them through our core strategic objectives and current state. “We talked about the things we were struggling with,” Karklins says, “and we gave the consultants access to our data and configurations so they could see how we had things set up and where gaps might be that we needed to address.” Within a few weeks, the university received a report with detailed recommendations.

“The report was like gold,” Karklins says. “It gave us a blueprint for what we needed to do to improve.” In their report, TDX process consultants indicated that the university had created too many forms within the system. They recommended reducing the number of forms in order to streamline functionality for users. They also made suggestions for how the team could improve automation in some areas, as well as make ticket handoffs from one group to another more efficient. In addition, the consultants revealed how the university could improve its service catalog to drive further enhancements.

For instance, they said IT staff could reconfigure the institution’s service portal to make it easier for users to find the information they needed by bringing the most requested services to the top of the page. IT staff could also enhance their reporting capabilities, the process consultants said, by differentiating between services more effectively and attaching a specific service category to every ticket request. “We didn’t have good metrics on how well we were providing IT service, because too many services were grouped together in one bucket,” Neidigh explains. Following the Health Check, the university can now measure its IT service success.

 

Positive Changes Result in Big ROI

Equipped with this advice, university IT staff were able to make a few simple changes to get some early “quick wins.” They’ve also begun the more difficult work of revising their service catalog and other underlying processes. Having highly skilled insights from an external, authoritative source has helped Karklins and Neidigh secure the necessary buy-in from their IT staff to make these changes. “It’s extremely valuable to have that assessment come from someone outside our IT department,” Karklins observes. With help from TeamDynamix, the University of Montana has already improved its delivery of IT service and is on its way to becoming even better. Karklins concludes, “I would recommend a Health Check wholeheartedly to any institution that knows it’s not working as efficiently as it could be. It was worth the investment.”

 

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