Buckinghamshire New University

Switching to TOPdesk

We recently spoke with Bilal Ghani, Service Delivery Manager in the Digital and Technical Services Directorate (DTS) at Buckinghamshire New University (BNU), about how they found the process of moving from a previous ITSM tool to TOPdesk.

Why was TOPdesk chosen?

“We were having a lot of problems with our previous ITSM tool,” says Bilal. “We were having problems with the application itself, such as having to manually log tickets, and not being able to upgrade to the latest version and generally being an inefficient way of handling tickets.”

Bilal’s team were tasked with finding a new ITSM solution, and TOPdesk’s help desk software for education was ultimately chosen after a rigorous tender process.

TOPdesk were chosen because of the Enterprise service management (ESM) possibilities, as well as allowing the DTS Directorate at BNU to offer high levels of customer service To BNU stakeholders (students, staff and partners) that weren’t possible before via a more efficient ticket tracking system, increased visibility of updates and the ability to take advantage of a self-service portal.

The University has a strategy in place called ‘Thrive 28’, where one of the pillars is supporting students to succeed. Part of this pillar is digital transformation, which justified and supported the implementation of TOPdesk, as it provides students, staff and other key stakeholders with digital ways of communicating their needs to the service desk in a user-friendly and customer focused way.

How was TOPdesk implemented?

A small project team consisting of Bilal, a Senior Service Desk Analyst, and a Business Project Analyst worked to implement TOPdesk. They worked closely with TOPdesk Consultant Megan Chapman, who held online sessions that were recorded. These recorded sessions were vital for ensuring the implementation was quick and easy, as Bilal’s team could refer back to the recordings at any time.

“It was so useful to have a dedicated TOPdesk consultant. Any queries that we had were followed up really quickly by Megan, and the TOPdesk support team were really responsive any time we needed to log a ticket” says Bilal.

Benefits for operators in the IT team

There were many immediate benefits that the team saw in the way their internal workload improved.

“Brilliantly, there were no complaints about anything not working. It should be the case that you don’t have any problems, but usually this isn’t the case. With TOPdesk, it is”, continues Bilal. “Instead of complaints, the team are now asking ‘what else can TOPdesk do?’”

Team members have now automated repetitive tasks such as permissions, have found it easy to set up selections in dashboards, and managers have been able to see their teams’ tickets as needed, including the ability to log and track preventative and maintenance work without negatively impacting the directorate’s SLA’s.

Bilal went on to say, “In the 6 years I’ve been at the University we have had other successful projects, but nothing to this level where everyone is so happy with it. The self-service implementation project team were highly commended by the University during BNU’s annual Staff Impact Awards for the implementation, which was great as IT teams are usually forgotten”.

Benefits for the users

There were successes for the end users who were logging the support tickets too.

The process of handling tickets was much quicker, so even with the same number of staff members tickets were getting closed faster, creating a great user experience.

Since the implementation in April, over 93% of tickets have been solved within the SLA, with an average feedback rating of 4.8*

This is with nearly 40,000 users, 45 operators, and 5 sites.

In mid-September, the self-service portal was launched to coincide with the new intake of students and this been promoted heavily to them. DTS has found that students are making great use of the knowledge items and also logging tickets as and when needed via the self-service portal.

What’s next for TOPdesk at Buckinghamshire New University?

The next thing to focus on for BNU is self-service portal improvements based on user feedback, expanding the knowledge base for operators and SSP users, asset management and automation.

Knowledge items are currently the responsibility of the Service Desk, but they would like to pass them over to the subject matter experts from the 2^nd and 3^rd line support teams.

The team will also shortly begin researching how it may be possible introduce other teams to TOPdesk. Potential candidates could be Estates, Timetabling, and Academic Registry to begin BNU’s journey towards true ESM.