UniDesk

The power of a partnership

Partnerships can be powerful, which is evident if you look at UniDesk and TOPdesk. They joined forces to achieve an immense task: deliver unified service management to Higher Education (HE) institutions.

We spoke to Dawn Dodd and Catherine Hetherington, Collaboration Services Team Managers and Service Owner for UniDesk, about the importance of working together.

What is UniDesk?

Wanting to make complex educational processes smoother for institutions around the world, the University of Edinburgh, University of St Andrews, and Abertay University jointly created a service management solution to share with the wider educational community in 2008. TOPdesk was the chosen vendor for the service named ‘UniDesk’.

The founding members developed a community of best practice guidance before sharing their solution with educational institutions worldwide, as Catherine explains: “We’ve extensively tailored UniDesk for both Higher and Further Education process flows. The service currently has 11 academic members of varying sizes. We’re now an international shared service with each institution bringing something new to improve the model.”

TOPdesk – a partner for UniDesk

The universities chose TOPdesk as a partner for the shared service management model due to the system’s simplicity, modular aspect, and compliance with ITIL – , a requirement set by the founding members.

Dawn cited UniDesk’s ability to handle the challenges of HE as a further reason the vendor was chosen: “Higher Education needs are more complex than logging calls just for an IT function. The interface needed to be able to lend itself to different groups of people within institutions, for example, Library, Student and Academic Services, School Computing Offices, and HR and Finance. It is also scalable, which is vital for our large operator base and even larger user base.”

“TOPdesk has demonstrated a great willingness to work collaboratively with the UniDesk partnership. Their honest and open approach is fundamental to our success.”

Continued collaboration

The partnership between TOPdesk and UniDesk goes far beyond offering a service. Alongside attending UniDesk community events and encouraging a close relationship with their Account Manager, TOPdesk has listened to the needs of the members and tailored the system to ensure processes are ideal for education.

“We have a strong collaborative relationship with TOPdesk. Over the years we have been able to access a high level of product support which has been delivered in a professional, efficient, and knowledgeable way by TOPdesk product and module specialists.”

“Our ethos is about sharing and collaboration, TOPdesk are supportive of the UniDesk ethos. They’re not just a supplier, they take a real interest in how our service is developing and participate in our community events,” concluded Dawn.