The bad news: Sometimes, large Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) struggle with shadow IT and lack of governance. Smaller institutions oftentimes struggle to support faculty, staff, and students due to limited resources.
The good news: Digital transformation is at hand in higher education. And with it comes an immense opportunity for improvement across your IHE.
Beyond20 serves as an independent voice and understands how unified IT and standardized processes can benefit IHEs.
This public research university, located in South Carolina, was on a mission to enhance and innovate its IT service delivery capabilities through a multi-tiered approach that included process automation through technology implementation and tactical and strategic planning with leadership. The university’s IT department sought to become a strategic partner to the university as a whole and helping it achieve its mission to remain one of the most respected public universities in the country.
IT leadership at the university partnered with Beyond20 Solutions Consultants to customize and implement the new Cherwell platform. Our architects worked with stakeholders to design a system tailored to the university’s needs and accelerate its processes both in and outside of IT. Automation on this scale is a game-changer in terms of how teams work – so to ensure buy-in from staff of all levels, the university once again engaged us, this time for strategic planning and an immersive ITSM simulation event, designed to communicate and build enthusiasm for the new initiative. The strategic planning workshop not only allowed leadership to set actionable goals for the department, but also to understand how best to communicate these changes to staff and ensure they would be prepared to execute. Part of this execution required staff training – so the university once again brought us in, this time our Cherwell and ITSM trainers, to provide Cherwell User Admin Training and ITIL Foundation training for IT staff to ensure the value of the mission was shared, as was the vocabulary. This comprehensive approach to the initiative has set the university up for success – complete with a game plan to guide them along the way.
Since its founding in 1965, this state university has been growing, with 28,000 students enrolled in 2016 and 35,000 expected by 2020. To match the needs of its expanding student body and infrastructure, the university sought to centralize IT services across the campus community including creating a Unified Service Catalog. The service catalog would serve as the main contact point for all students, faculty, staff, and affiliates to obtain IT services. University administration wanted a catalog that would be comprehensive, easy to use, and transparent. Eventually, the catalog would define a process for maintenance and upkeep, and decrease the potential for duplication of services.
Beyond20 consultants took a phased approach to creating and delivering a Unified Service Catalog, focusing on gathering data, collecting feedback, and providing final recommendations. First, our consultants reviewed the scope and functionality of the existing IT service catalog. After conducting coaching, interviews, and workshops with university stakeholders, Beyond20 consultants gave recommendations on the challenges they faced and proposed solutions based on ITSM best practices. We then drafted a service catalog based on the data collected and updated the draft based on stakeholder feedback. The final version of the service catalog included a roadmap of goals, guiding the university through achieving its IT Master Plan.
One of the largest school districts in the country required additional professional services for enhancements to their existing Cherwell Service Management System, including design and configuration of custom workflows, dashboards, integration, and advising and consulting, as part of their IT improvement initiatives. The school system required a focused assessment of their ITIL processes, including Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, and Request Fulfillment.
Beyond20 performed a high-level ITSM assessment of requested processes and provided an operational model for long-term implementation and management of these processes in their ITSM solution and in their IT organization. Consultants outlined issues and recommendations for each of the ITIL processes with a priority ranking and recommended resolution timeline. Beyond20 collected data to provide a holistic view into current operations within the school system, along with valuable insight into organizational culture and challenges the organization faced.
