TeamDynamix ‘Health Check’ Helps the University of Montana Transform IT Service Management

How the Health Check Process works

The Health Check process began with an initial meeting to help TeamDynamix process consultants understand the perspectives of the university IT team and the core strategic objectives.

“We talked about the things we were struggling with,” Karklins says, “and we gave the consultants access to our TeamDynamix 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 definitely worth the investment.”