Community Driven Approach to ITSM Software Delivery Helps Indiana State Optimize IT Service with Support Operations

Case Study: Indiana State

With TeamDynamix, organizations get much more than just a comprehensive platform for managing IT and enterprise service. They also get a full partner who’s invested in their success — as well as a network of thousands of users committed to sharing ideas. 

This community-driven approach through TeamDynamix has served Indiana State University (ISU) well in its journey toward greater IT maturity. 

Taking advantage of the TDX community, Indiana State has learned new ideas and improved service delivery across campus.

Leveraging the Broader User Community 

With support from the TeamDynamix platform, the people behind it, and others who are using it, ISU’s Tech Support Services team are becoming more mature with its IT operations — and the ISU community has noticed the difference. “People are thrilled with our service now,” Yancy Phillips, team director, explains. 

Key areas in which ISU has made great strides include ITIL Adoption, Resource Capacity Planning, Workflow Automation, SLA Management, and Project Intake. The team at Indiana State has relied on a combination of process consulting experts at TeamDynamix and the broader user community.  

In addition to the TeamDynamix community, Phillips and his team have also benefitted from TDX Converge, the annual TeamDynamix client summit. “Interacting with the TeamDynamix user community has helped us learn new ideas,” he says. For instance, ISU initially didn’t use the platform for project intake — but after hearing ideas from other institutions, the university is developing a project intake process. 

Moving up the maturity ladder often depends on not only the supporting technology but also the broader supporting team. By belonging to a strong peer community, the team at ISU can quickly bounce around ideas, get feedback and share best practices. To help facilitate this, TeamDynamix hosts monthly advisory calls, user group forums, and the annual client summit. There is also an online community board where users can post questions and ideas. 

Supporting ITIL Adoption  

Prior to implementing TeamDynamix, ISU’s Tech Support Services team had a basic ticketing system in place to manage the delivery of IT service. “The system served its purpose for many years, but as we started to adopt more ITIL best practices and worked to improve our service delivery, we knew we needed something more,” says Phillips. 

Phillips wanted to create a knowledge base and an IT service catalog that would empower users to find answers to their questions online, or request help in an automated fashion if they couldn’t resolve an issue for themselves. He also wanted better visibility into IT service operations, such as how long it was taking to resolve tickets and the number of hours staff was spending on various activities. 

To meet these goals, the team needed a much more robust IT service management solution. After an extensive RFP process, TeamDynamix emerged as the right choice, in part due to the strong user community. 

With TeamDynamix, Indiana State has been able to automate workflows to build out their knowledge base and resolve tickets faster.

Gaining Better Visibility and Resource Planning 

With TeamDynamix, ISU’s Tech Support Services team has set up automated workflows to build a knowledge base and develop a service portal. Service requests submitted through the portal are routed automatically to the appropriate group or technician for a response, leading to a faster resolution. 

Tech support staff have also created automated workflows to help guide service delivery. Before, once each step in a multistep process was completed, service technicians would rely on email to alert the next person in the process chain. This resulted in “a lot of wasted time,” says Christopher Middleton, a systems support manager for IT service management.  

Now, entire processes run much more smoothly. “Tasks are completed faster than before, the staff is more organized, and there are no lingering requirements that are overlooked,” Middleton says. 

What’s more, the service team has better insight into how long tasks are taking, so they can set realistic service goals and measure their progress.  

“The ticketing system we were using before didn’t have the reporting we needed to understand how we were doing,” Phillips says. “With TeamDynamix, we have a plethora of reports right out of the box — and we can also configure reports to meet our specific needs.” 

Using these reports, “we can drill down to understand why certain tasks might be taking so long,” Middleton says. IT staff are using this insight to improve their processes. 

 

Process Consulting Optimizes Service Delivery 

ISU hasn’t relied only on the platform’s comprehensive reporting features for insights on how to improve. The university has also received valuable advice from TeamDynamix process consultants. 

“The consultants showed us how we could improve our delivery of service even more by empowering service owners to make changes within the system,” Phillips says. For instance, service owners are now responsible for approving knowledge base articles and setting service level agreements (SLAs) for their area of service. This simple change has made it clearer to everyone who has what authority, while further streamlining processes. 

By looking at historical data within TeamDynamix, service owners have been able to set practical SLAs for their area of service. “Knowing they’ll hear back from us within a specified time period makes a big difference to users,” Phillips says. 

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