uOttawa

Maximizing cross-departmental efficiency through automation

As one of the largest English-French bilingual universities in the world, uOttawa faced numerous service obstacles. Their ability to streamline cross-departmental communications, optimize workflows, and efficiently manage service desk tickets was hindered by a massive amount of human-based oversight. Other areas of concern included users’ inability to quickly find solutions to repetitive problems, such as password resets and locked account access, among others.

The University’s IT leaders desperately needed to automate several aspects of their IT services. They needed a reliable service management platform to provide the support and solutions their users deserved. They needed something to remove themselves from long service queues to solve their issues. They needed TOPdesk.

The choice for Canadian education

uOttawa recognized that among a crowded field of technology solution providers, TOPdesk could rise to the occasion and implemented it in 2019. Today, TOPdesk has become the choice management platform that specializes in serving the education sector, with more than a quarter of Canada’s universities currently trusting TOPdesk to automate their service desk needs.

According to Jean-Rene Hotte, uOttawa’s senior system analyst, TOPdesk allowed their end users to easily find solutions to their issues. Hotte expressed, “Having one central solution to manage all these departmental requests makes it easier for the service desk because people are using the platform and know how to navigate it.”

Streamlining through automation

When help tickets are created, they are instantaneously routed to the correct service location for processing, reducing the time to resolve each issue while improving efficiency. Likewise, the automation capabilities of the solution meant resolving repetitive tasks and low-profile service requests. TOPdesk’s ease of use and effectiveness make the journey to automation possible for everyone.

Since its implementation, uOttawa has been able to clear more than 45,000 (and counting) service desk tickets without the need for help desk intervention or triage service requests. By reducing the bottlenecks caused by requiring manual intervention, their 750-plus service desk operators can focus more on innovation and less on manual intervention.

Thanks to TOPdesk, service desk team members can proactively address potential issues as they arise instead of troubleshooting them afterwards. As a result, high-traffic service periods, such as the start of the new term, have been streamlined, and the service desk experiences minimized chaos during these peak events.

Accommodating bilingual service requests

Achieving this milestone entailed more than just automation and promoting end-user engagement with TOPdesk. Being the largest English-French bilingual university globally, uOttawa faced the distinct challenge of accommodating multilingual service requests. This required the university to provide knowledge, support, and service in both English and French, effectively doubling their efforts. The service portal was no exception to this requirement, highlighting the crucial need for bilingual accessibility across all university operations.

TOPdesk required little accommodation to meet uOttawa’s unique challenge. Kais Laribi, an application manager at uOttawa says, “It was really easy to implement and customize…we manage services in groups, which makes managing the look and feel for each group easy with TOPdesk’s customization capabilities. So, it is pretty easy to manage.”

Smashing inter-departmental silos

Among streamlining the university’s service desk evolution, TOPdesk helped eliminate interdepartmental silos. It was able to meet a multitude of varying departmental needs by funneling tasks, tracking service incidents, and providing robust reporting capabilities to determine outcomes across the entirety of uOttawa. TOPdesk made it possible for them to still connect, despite their needs differing from facilities management.

Lowered costs and increased data stream

TOPdesk reduces manual management, monitoring, and maintenance, resulting in lower costs for the university’s service desk. As a result, the new service desk structure provided by TOPdesk aids the University in achieving ROI around provided services, further elevating its world-class reputation.

TOPdesk’s enhanced reporting leverages an intricate system of issue tracking and pattern identification from the service portal, enabling uOttawa’s service department to quickly analyze and interpret large amounts of user data. Analyzing and interpreting user behaviour data allows them to identify any potential issues and resolve them before they escalate into an organizational problem. By reducing the guesswork, the IT service desk at uOttawa can ensure workflows are maintained and adjusted as per the needs of each issue. uOttawa’s decision to adopt TOPdesk not only enabled them to reclaim valuable time but also propelled them to unprecedented levels of efficiency. The remarkable outcomes they achieved surpassed all expectations and set a new standard for the university.