Ivanti Blog: Universities

Ivanti partners with University of Sharjah to transform IT Services

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 17:43:20 Z

University of Sharjah is using Ivanti Service Manager to transform IT services. The team at Sharjah University have been telling us about the positive impact this solution has had in terms of enhancing the IT services it provides for faculty, students and staff.

Omar Harara, Service Desk Manager said that in the last 18 months the University of Sharjah began implementing an overhaul of service management in their IT department. “The first decision we took was to re-establish the Service Desk. We did previously had a Service Desk tool, but it was largely ineffective and inefficient. There was no IT Service Management framework (ITIL), monitoring of IT performance, user requests or tracking. I joined the University of Sharjah 18 months ago, and I was tasked with the responsibility of both architecting and implementing IT Service Management processes and to re-establish the Service Desk and make it much more effective for the end-users.

The dynamic Service Desk Manager at University of Sharjah also highlighted how they determined that they also needed to implement ITIL processes such as (service catalogue, service agreement, incident, request, problem and change management) and that these processes showed the value of the IT department to the stakeholders. “We were providing a lot of services to the end users, but ultimately we had no classification of our services or the incidents that were flagged, so we couldn’t categorise them or evaluate the performance of our services in terms of incidents and service requests”. He added “The end-users feel that they can now communicate much better with the IT department and that there is a single point of contact for all their requests. It has enabled the end-users to build trust in the support services provided by the IT department as there is complete transparency of our IT performance”.

Anissa Bettayeb, Head of Academic Computing Service Section goes on to explain the benefits her department got from the implementation and confirmed the significant benefits gained after implementing Ivanti Service Desk. “The IT Service Management really empowered us with the capabilities to evaluate and monitor the performance of our staff and processes through the dashboards and reporting services. It also allowed us to better diagnose, categorise, prioritise and flag incident, service and changes requests. However, now we have a dashboard and system in place that monitors and records all of this automatically”.

Anissa adds, “The capacity of my instructional technologies support distance learning team was 3, which in normal circumstances was adequate. However, when lockdown restrictions came into effect and we rolled out remote learning this rather inevitably resulted in a heavy load and the demand increased exponentially. Ivanti Service Manager relayed information to us in terms of statistics and real-time data that allowed us to request an extension for additional staff and we relocated different staff from other departments to be part of my new team in an effort to cope with the new demands.”

Dr. Hussein Elmehdi, Dean of Academic Support Services at University of Sharjah said they recognized the importance of support services for various academic and administrative entities at the University. “University of Sharjah has set a clear strategic goal to establish a Service Desk that is well-equipped and well-resourced to ensure that the needs of the stakeholders are fulfilled. In addition to this, we plan to expand the Service Desk to cover non-IT departments such as admissions and registration department. Our strategy is to have unified communication and support channel for all students, faculty and administrative staff requests,”. Many commentators including Dr. Hussein believe that the way education is delivered will be fundamentally changed forever as a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis.“The smooth transition to eLearning, in a relatively short time, will definitely have a positive and immediate impact on the way we view education in the future. For example, at University of Sharjah the strategic goal was to incorporate blended learning gradually with annual KPIs that will enable us to reach 100% utilization by 2024,”. He added that this will have a great impact on education in the future where technology will be viewed as an integral tool that will not only facilitate teaching and learning - but will also serve as a possible replacement to face-to-face education. “The success witnessed in the past three months in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic came about as a result of excellent collaboration among different entities within the institution, with Service Desk playing an integral role by providing timely technical support that extended beyond working hours. Personally, I believe we’re heading to an area of ‘education without borders’ - where time and geography will not be considered as limiting factors on the decision for students to pursue their education at postsecondary level and beyond,”

Ivanti has a long history of working with universities across the globe to transform their IT services and improve the satisfaction of both staff and students. You can find out more here.

A University-Wide Service Management Platform Fit for Purpose and Student Success

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 23:17:40 Z

Mark Temple, IT Service Project Manager at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, is no stranger to keeping technology fit for purpose and expanding its uses. April 15, 2020 marks his 29^th year of employment with the university—the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world, founded in 1451. It’s a member of the prestigious Russell Group of leading UK research universities and welcomes students from more than 140 countries.

Mark spent the first 12 years of his career at the University of Glasgow working as a motor mechanic, repairing and maintaining tractors, motor boats, lawn mowers, chainsaws, and more. “We worked on anything that had an engine,” he says. While in that full-time job, he attended another university two evenings each week over six years to earn a degree. An opportunity in IT opened up at the University of Glasgow and Mark jumped on it.

As Mark explains, he worked in desktop support for a couple of years and also worked on the IT service management (ITSM) tool the IT department had used for more than a decade—an on-premise system with an installed client. However, the university needed a flexible, cloud-based, enterprise-scalable solution that could support the numerous requirements of all departments, and deliver from one point of contact a smooth, responsive service experience to 28,000 students and 8,000 staff members.

Today Mark is the Service Owner for the university’s enterprise service management platform, powered by Ivanti® Service Manager, which went live in April 2019. Mark manages the staff and student IT Help Desks as well as the IT Tutors and IT Trainers, numbering around 40 employees full-time and part-time.

Publicizing the Public-Tender Process

A solid writer in his own right, Mark has blogged for the Service Desk Institute (SDI), a global network and community of service desk professionals. Published under the SDI banner of “Service Desk Journeys,” Mark has journaled about the public tender process that resulted ultimately in the selection of Ivanti Service Manager.

Since the University of Glasgow is a public institution, the IT team was bound by public-sector procurement rules, which meant the search for a new Enterprise Service Management (ESM) solution needed to be open to public tender. Mark writes, “So, the tender process began, and we were all a bit more tender by the end of it!”

Ivanti Checked All 150 Requirements

The tender process included a 150-point “does it do this and that” checklist. Nineteen submissions were received from an array of vendors, several of which were proposing the same solution. “After much deliberation,” Mark writes, “the list was narrowed down to three vendors, each proposing a different solution. On-site demos and follow-up web clarification sessions ensued, and we were pleased to announce that Ivanti and their Service Manager product had been selected as the preferred bidder. Ivanti’s Service Manager software-as-a-service platform scored highest against our list of criteria and licensing requirements, and they were awarded preferred bidder status.”

Mark explains that this then led into the mandatory ‘stand still’ period, “where unsuccessful bidders could seek clarification or challenge the award. No challenges were forthcoming, so that closed the door on the procurement process.”

He adds, “Having moved out of the procurement phase, we then met up with Ivanti’s project team and set about the daunting task of creating the blueprint for our staging environment.”

The Grand Plan: To Underpin the Service Delivery Model for the New Campus

According to Mark, the University of Glasgow is in the midst of a huge expansion process, and Ivanti Service Manager will underpin the service delivery model of the new campus, of which the first building is the Learning and Teaching Hub.

In one blog for SDI, Mark writes: “I’ve been saying to colleagues for long enough that this isn’t just a change of platform, but an opportunity to change the way we deliver and support the services which our students and staff rely upon to achieve their objectives. We’ve been working closely with service providers and other work streams to reinforce the need to adopt ‘Shift-Left’ thinking, utilizing Ivanti Service Manager’s Knowledgebase, and where possible, empowering front-line services to ‘push the buttons’ that back-end teams and even other services were traditionally responsible for—a concept that IT has been making good ground on, but one that works just as well in other areas.”

For example, through Ivanti Service Manager, staff in the new Learning and Teaching Hub are able to provide students with the information they need for a better student experience, rather than being sent from one building to the next to find the experts that have the information.

In terms of ratings, we’re up to a 4.8 out of 5.0 on our Knowledgebase articles. People do want to help themselves where and when they can. If you lead them to the tools to do that, they appreciate it. It’s a win-win.”

Mark says, “Our students are experiencing less of ‘sorry, I can’t deal with this for you; you’ll need to go and see someone else.’ More and more often it’s colleagues that can help students, or that other students and staff can help them—and help them help themselves. That’s a real measure of success that service requests are being well used, and that people are finding answers they need when they need to through the Knowledgebase.”

He adds, in terms of ratings, we’re up to a 4.8 out of 5.0 on our Knowledgebase articles. People do want to help themselves where and when they can. If you lead them to the tools to do that, they appreciate it. It’s a win-win.”

An Enterprise Service Management Platform vs. an IT Platform

Ivanti has a powerful platform. It is not just an IT ticketing tool. It is a platform that can be used outside of IT as easily as within IT. It’s flexible, it’s powerful, and we can make the changes we want to do ourselves.

Focused on the vision of service management across the enterprise, the system will support staff and student services such as student records, accommodation, library services, student registry, exams, finance, HR, and campus security, as well as performing the traditional IT service desk role. For Mark’s IT team, the Service Manager implementation means that the university’s four colleges—Arts; Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences; Science and Engineering; and Social Sciences; as well as operational services—will be unified under one central service desk.

“We always took the view that we were looking for an Enterprise Service Management platform, not making or bending an ITSM system into a shape that was acceptable for other functions to use, but was in the end, still an ITSM system,” Mark says. “We didn’t want a system that could be made to look attractive to HR, college professional services, campus security, or our data protection office, we wanted a platform that did all of this out-of-the box anyway, but that we could configure without being beholden to the vendor every time we wanted to make a change.”

Mark says the old system was an installed client that wasn’t going to work going forward. “When you made a change,” he says, “it tended to be a global change. Other functions were being forced to use an IT system that didn’t always work for them.”

He adds, “Ivanti has a powerful platform. It is not just an IT ticketing tool. It is a platform that can be used outside of IT as easily as within IT. It’s flexible, it’s powerful, and we can make the changes we want to do ourselves.”

Dashboards Have Helped Significantly

The university’s vision of enterprise-wide service management is one that supports staff and student services such as student records, accommodation, library services, student registry, exams, finance, HR, and campus security, as well as performing the traditional IT service desk role. The focus on streamlining processes is particularly important for the busy autumn period when student registration and enrollment support requests are at their highest.

Mark speaks to the value of dashboards: “We use the system across all support teams and can surface useful data in meaningful formats—lists, pie charts of what happened over the weekend, etc. It’s very easy for the teams to drill into the data and spot trends. For example, why are we seeing an increase in demand? How quickly is that demand being fulfilled? Is the backlog going down? I would say it’s a different approach to managing volumes and spotting emerging trends. It’s been quite revolutionary for us.”

I would say it’s a different approach to managing volumes and spotting emerging trends. It’s been quite revolutionary for us.”

Taking Paper-Based Forms Out of Circulation

In one of Mark’s blogs for SDI, he acknowledges that service management isn’t about “presenting the same old services in a new skin.” He writes that many of the supporting processes “haven’t been looked at for ages,” and that many of them “rely on ‘cut out and keep’ Word docs which need to be printed out, signed, then scanned back in for authorization—a perfect opportunity to streamline and speed up these processes.”

Mark’s team is working to remove these Word docs from circulation and describes the image of a pile of paper forms rising from the floor to above his desk. “Turning those into smart forms will help symbolize the transformation we’ve been going through that’s leading to greater success for students and staff,” he concludes.

Note: A customer’s results are specific to its total environment/experience, of which Ivanti is a part. Individual results may vary based on each customer’s unique environment.

Higher Education Benchmarking 2020

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 16:27:01 Z

Introduction

This report is the third version of the UK Higher Education (HE) Benchmarking report. It will take an in-depth look at Higher Education in this respect, covering a broad range of issues from technology and metrics, through to employee development and customer engagement. Not only will this give us the opportunity to benchmark and spot trends in the HE industry, but it will also allow us to compare how universities function and perform with other industries, and where these factors may differ.

This report provides comparisons, where appropriate, with the results of the 2016 Higher Education Benchmarking report and the v.9 Benchmarking report. The Higher Education Service Desk Benchmarking survey was distributed to Higher Education IT professionals between November 2019 and January 2020. As with the v.9 Benchmarking report, some of the questions have been updated to reflect the changing nature of the service desk industry and provide an insight into current issues and trends.

1.0 Background and Demographics

1.1 Job Titles

Which of the following best describes your job role?

1.2 Services

Which of the following services do you provide support for?

When compared to the previous report, the range of services offered by service desks has remained roughly the same, with some small movement. Predictably, service desks most commonly provide IT services, followed by Audio/Visual media equipment support.

2.0 Headcount

2.1 Average Headcount

Please provide the average number of staff employed for the following sections:

Number of staff on the service desk	12
Number of staff in a customer facing role (e.g. first line with direct contact with customers)	16
Number of support staff (e.g. second and third line)	50
Number of management/ supervisory staff	9

In comparison to the v.9 Benchmarking report, higher education support team headcounts are generally slightly lower than average. However, in comparison to the 2016 Higher Education report, staffing levels show a slight increase, signifying growth within the industry.

2.2 Projection

Do you expect your staffing levels to:

One important reason to ask this question is due to the perception that technological advances could lead to job losses, particularly for lower level staff. Generally, the majority of higher education service desk customers will be younger generations and digital natives, therefore they may be more inclined to use alternative support channels than service desk customers in a different industry. This presents some questions in terms of whether the number of service desk staff, particularly first line, is needed. As technology continues to develop, the need for a human first line may need to be justified more frequently, therefore it is important to understand how service desk professionals expect to see their staffing levels change in the future.

The largest proportion of respondents indicate that they expect their staffing levels to remain the same, which is lower than in 2016. As a result, the proportion of respondents in the remaining three segments is higher: 30% believe their staffing level will increase, 16% expect a decrease, and 10% are not sure. This is more in line with the v.9 Benchmarking report, with some slight movement.

3.0 Staff

3.1 Incentives

Which of the following incentives do you offer to your service desk team (over and above the university policy on reward and recognition)?

Generally, the types of incentives offered to staff have remained roughly the same as they were in 2016, though this is quite different to the v.9 Benchmarking report. In particular, public recognition plays a much more important role in higher education staff incentives than in the wider service desk industry.

3.2 Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Do you carry out employee morale surveys that are specific to the service desk?

In comparison to the 2016 report, the proportion of higher education service desks which carry out employee morale surveys has halved. This follows the trend we saw in the v.9 Benchmarking report, which also saw a fall in the proportion of service desks carrying out staff morale surveys, though the above statistic is lower than its wider industry counterpart.

This is certainly a surprising development, as the 2016 report showed much higher numbers. Employee satisfaction can have a direct impact on service desk performance, among other factors, and failing to monitor your employee satisfaction could lead to a number of issues for the service desk and the wider university.

3.3 Induction Training

How many hours of formal induction training do new service desk analysts receive?

The v.9 Benchmarking survey showed an increase in the average number of hours of training service desk analysts receive. The above statistic shows a similar outcome; in fact, the higher education industry seems to provide their analysts with more hours of training on average, with the largest proportion of respondents specifying they provide 26 to 40 hours of induction training. The largest proportion in the wider industry report indicated they provide 10 to 25 hours.

3.4 Composition of Training

What type of formal induction training, if any, is given to new service desk analysts?

Since 2016, there has been little movement in the types of training service desk analysts receive. This could be considered slightly worrisome, as it could signify that the higher education industry has not developed over time to account for changes in the industry surrounding people, process, or technology. There are some differences in comparison to the wider industry report, though “service desk processes” is the most popular type of training among both cohorts.

In the wider industry report, we mentioned the need to fill the digital skills gaps and to ensure staff’s skills are able to support the growing digital needs of the business. We have previously mentioned that a significant proportion of higher education service desk customers are of a younger generation, therefore their digital needs may change faster than a traditional organisation’s staff would. Therefore, if service desk analysts’ training does not change to suit the growing needs of the customer base, this may have a negative impact on things like resolution times, escalation rates, and customer experience.

3.5 Staff Retention

What is the average time, in role, of your service desk analysts?

Here we can see that 42% of respondents highlighted that their analysts spend over three years on the service desk. Again, this is a similar statistic to the v.9 Benchmarking report, suggesting an overall trend rather than a shift within the higher education industry. It is difficult to ascertain the reason for this shift without analysing where analysts go when they leave the service desk, which we will see in the next question.

3.6 Service Desk Leavers

When people on permanent contracts leave the service desk where do they go?

We can see that the majority of respondents specified that analysts move on to other IT roles within the university, with 80% remaining in the university in some capacity. This shows a significant difference from the v.9 Benchmarking report, where only 60% of respondents highlighted that analysts remain within the organisation, with 44% moving to other IT roles.

In the v.9 Benchmarking report, we theorised that a combination of evolving technologies requiring organisations to upskill their staff and offer them promotions could explain the increased longevity of service desk staff. However, given that the type of training offered has not changed much since 2016, and promotion opportunities and pay increases in terms of incentives are not as common in the higher education industry, perhaps there are different motivations for service desk staff to stay within the university.

3.7 Student Internships

Do you recruit students to work on the service desk or offer an internship scheme?

Since 2016, the proportion of higher education service desks which recruit students or offer internships has increased by nearly 20%. Introducing what are essentially service desk customers into the support team can have incredible benefits, especially in terms of service improvement initiatives, as students or interns may have a good insight into the service and understand what could be done to improve it. Therefore, it is promising to see a significant proportion of respondents recognising the value of this resource.

4.0 Salaries

4.1 Starting Salaries and Pay Rises

What are the average starting salaries of:

	Higher Ed	v.9 Benchmarking
Service Desk Analysts	£22,630	£20,900
Service Desk Team Leaders/Supervisors	£29,536	£27,080
Service Desk Managers	£37,681	£38,265

Will staff receive a pay rise within two years?

Interestingly, salaries within the higher education service desk industry are higher than the wider industry average for analysts and team leaders. However, on average, higher education service desk managers will earn less than they might in a different industry, though the difference is minimal.

Similar to the v.9 Benchmarking report, the majority of respondents identified that service desk staff will receive a pay rise after two years in line with inflation. However, the next largest proportion stated that higher education service desk staff will receive a pay rise regardless of performance, whereas the wider industry staff can only expect a pay rise if they meet their targets.

Perhaps the longevity of service desk staff is linked to the higher-than-average remuneration, though there may be other factors linked to this which are not surveyed in the report.

5.0 Qualifications

5.1 Training Plans

What qualifications are you, or your staff, due to take over the next 12 months?

ITIL remains the most popular qualification for service desk professionals working in higher education; a similar trend can be seen in the wider industry report. However, both this report and the wider industry report show that a smaller proportion of service desks plan to take the newer ITIL4 qualification than had previously planned to take ITIL v3 training, despite the latter being several years old. As ITIL 4 will be updated regularly, perhaps some professionals are waiting for further iterations before looking to gain the qualification.

Other notable changes can be seen in the fact that over half of the amount of service desk professionals plan to undertake a technical qualification, which is interesting. Perhaps this is due to the idea that as an industry, we are moving towards having a more customer-focused service which requires “soft skills” over technical skills. This could be supported by the similar proportions of respondents planning to undertake soft skills qualifications vs. technical qualifications. Alternatively, as we have offered more options this year and the proportion of respondents is spread out, the number of professionals who are due to take technical qualifications has not necessarily been affected, but the relative proportion in this question has.

A surprisingly large proportion of respondents identified that they do not plan to undertake any professional qualifications over the next year. We have already mentioned that upskilling is an important consideration for service desk staff, as developing alongside technology can help improve IT services whilst also reducing the risk of redundancy and low employee morale. Therefore, this statistic is rather worrisome. Not only has it increased since 2016, but also because this could have negative impacts on headcount in the near future.

5.2 Frameworks and Standards

Which of the following best practice standards or frameworks have you adopted?

As with the previous question, several options were added to this question to reflect the changes in the industry. Again, we can see that ITIL best practice adoption remains the highest, which is consistent with the 2016 report and the v.9 Benchmarking report. SDI certification has increased in adoption by 10% since 2016, and this is also a higher proportion than in the v.9 Benchmarking report, which is certainly a positive sign. Generally, adoption of other frameworks is lower than the wider industry, suggesting that the higher education industry is less likely to adopt newer ways of working than perhaps some other industries.

6.0 Customers Satisfaction

6.1 Measuring Customer Satisfaction

How do you measure customer satisfaction?

What do you do with this information once it is collected?

Gathering customer feedback is an important step in understanding your customers’ satisfaction and experience with your service. It appears that since 2016, we can see an increased use of email or web survey, call monitoring, and mystery shoppers, as well as a decrease in the proportion of respondents who do not measure customer satisfaction. This is lower than the wider industry average, which is a positive finding.

We can see that once the information is collected, the majority of respondents feed it into a service improvement plan, 29% go through informal escalation, and 2% adhere to ISO/IEC 9000 procedures. Unfortunately, 4% specified they do nothing. These service desks may be missing out on potentially valuable service improvement feedback from their customers.

6.2 Measuring Success

What is the main indicator of success for your service desk?

We can see that over half of respondents highlighted that the volume of tickets resolved is the main indicator of success for their higher education service desk, with a smaller but still sizable proportion stating their success measure is customer satisfaction. In comparison to the wider industry report, it appears that the higher education industry favours ticket resolution as an indicator of success than perhaps some other industries which favour customer satisfaction measures

The remaining factors, similar to the wider industry report, are considered main success indicators by much smaller proportions of respondents in favour of ticket resolution and customer satisfaction.

7.0 Service Desk Tools and Technologies

7.1 Tools and Technologies

Which of the following technologies do you currently have access to?

Immediately, we can see that the proportion of higher education service desks offering self-service has risen. Many tool vendors will have a product specifically for higher education service desks, which could potentially make the implementation and development of a self-service portal easier and can contribute to channel adoption.

There has also been an increased use of knowledge bases and self-help among higher education service desks. A well-structured and thorough knowledge base can be a good basis for AI-enabled technologies. For example, integrating a knowledge base with alternative support channels, such as chatbots and automation, can create seamless workflows to facilitate a zero-touch service, better customer experiences, and a more self-service customer base.

Interestingly, the proportion of higher education service desks providing live chat has fallen slightly, though the proportion which offer chatbots and virtual agents is higher than the wider industry average. Perhaps service desks which had previously used live chat were able to easily migrate the channel to a chatbot as a proportion of customers would have been familiar with using this communication platform.

7.2 Contact Methods

What methods do your customers employ to contact your service desk?

As expected, telephony is still the most popular communication method for higher education service desk customers, and this is in keeping with the wider industry report. Interestingly, however, since 2016 we can see that self-service adoption has risen by nearly 40%. This, again, is similar to the jump we saw in the v.9 Benchmarking report. This development is somewhat expected, as self-service has matured significantly since 2016, and has become much more accessible for organisations of all industries and sizes. Furthermore, we have previously mentioned that a significant proportion of higher education customers are students, are generally younger, and grew up with newer technology and may feel more comfortable using a self-service portal. Along with society being generally more technologically adept, the growing culture of Shift Left, and technologies like self-service being used more frequently in the consumer space, these factors could be contributing to the increase in self-service adoption.

Having said this, we can also see that in-person contacts have increased by about 10% since 2016, which is contrary to the wider industry report. Furthermore, according to the data, in person is a much more popular contact method for higher education service desks than perhaps some other industries. Perhaps the potentially lower wait times and faster resolution is more appealing for certain issues, such as issues with connecting a device to the internet, or perhaps students may not be aware of the alternative options.

As we saw in the previous graph, a greater number of higher education service desks offer a chatbot communication channel, while fewer offer live chat, and this correlates with the proportions of higher education customers using chatbots and those not using live chat.

What percentage of your calls are received through the following channels?

	2020	2016
Telephone	38%	35%
Email	37%	43%
Self-Service	19%	16%
In person	15%	14%
Social Media	8%	1%
Live Chat	6%	1%
Other	6%	0%

Despite self-service being offered by a higher proportion of service desks and a larger proportion of service desk customers using the channel, the usage rate has not dramatically increased. However, social media and live chat usage rate has increased despite fewer respondents identifying that their customers use these channels. There could be several factors that play into this: firstly, it depends on the channels that each individual service desk offers, the capabilities of the different channels, the experience of the channels, etc.

Telephony has increased slightly in usage in comparison to 2016; however, this percentage is lower than the wider industry report, whereas email uptake in the higher education industry has fallen but is still higher than in the wider industry.

7.3 Bring Your Own Device

Which best describes your Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) support?

Compared to the v.9 Benchmarking report, a much larger proportion of higher education service desks provide BYOD, though this is a slightly smaller proportion than the 2016 report. BYOD is an important offering within a university, as a large new batch of “customers”, or students, arrive every year with different technology requirements. For example, if a student uses their own laptop to work and study, they may need to be able to connect to the campus WiFi or other university systems. It appears that 71% of respondents offer this type of support. However, a much smaller percentage would offer technical support for an individual’s personal device if, for example, there was an issue preventing the device from functioning properly.

8.0 Productivity

8.1 SLAs and XLAs

Do you have any of the following formal written agreements with your customers?

In 2016, 70% of higher education service desks did not have an SLA, 26% had an SLA for staff, and 4% had them for students. While a significant proportion of respondents still do not have an SLA, this is almost half the 2016 statistic. In comparison to the wider industry, 16% of service desks have neither SLAs nor XLAs, showing that a higher proportion of higher education service desks do not have service agreements with their customers.

Often, setting service level expectations can help to manage and improve the customer experience; therefore, it is positive to see a higher proportion of higher education service desks adopting either SLAs or XLAs for their customers. However, according to the data, a higher proportion of respondents have SLAs for staff rather than students.

8.2 Measuring Productivity

It should be stressed that these figures should not be considered to equate to any kind of industry standard and are for interest only. Such standards can be misleading as they do not reflect variations in the industry and differences in types of support. Also, calculations are not always based upon equivalent criteria, which can make comparative analysis misleading.

As with the wider industry report, we have changed how we collect this data from exact figures to grouped options. This is for several reasons. Firstly, it is to accurately portray the service desk industry in terms of their performance and how diverse industry “averages” can be. Secondly, different service desks may measure their metrics in different ways, and this method regulated the unit of measurement, making analysis and presenting the data easier and more accurate. The percentages against the numerical options are relative to the proportion of respondents who identified that they measure the performance metric, whereas the “Don’t measure” or “Don’t use...” options are a proportion of all respondents. For the purpose of comparison, we will only compare the following statistics with their counterparts in the wider industry report. The questions and options differ from the 2016 report and therefore do not lend themselves to direct comparison.

If you measure it, what is the average speed to answer?

	2020	Wider Industry
<10 seconds	21%	20%
10-30 seconds	31%	41%
31-60 seconds	41%	17%
>60 seconds	7%	22%
Don't measure	28%	30%

It appears that on average, higher education service desks take longer to answer a call. The proportion of higher education service desks has also risen from 19% in 2016 to 28%.

If you measure it, what is the average abandon rate?

	2020	Wider Industry
<5%	41%	58%
5-10%	38%	37%
>10%	21%	5%
Don't measure	28%	36%

Interestingly, the average abandon rate for higher education service desks is higher than the wider industry, though a larger proportion measure it.

If you measure it, what is the average first-contact resolution rate?

	2020	Wider Industry
<20%	7%	4%
20-40%	24%	8%
41-60%	28%	35%
61-80%	34%	33%
>80%	7%	29%
Don't measure	26%	17%

The data shows that on average, the higher education industry’s first-contact resolution rate is lower than that of the wider industry, and fewer respondents identified that they measure it.

If you measure it, what is the average number of incidents logged on a monthly basis?

	2020	Wider Industry
<500	7%	19%
500-1000	10%	19%
1001-2500	34%	23%
2501-4000	17%	11%
4001-5500	15%	6%
5501-7000	2%	6%
>7000	12%	17%
Do not measure	5%	10%

It would appear that on average, higher education service desks log more incidents per month than the wider industry, and fewer higher education service desks do not measure this metric.

If you measure it, what is the average percentage of incidents escalated to second-line on your service desk?

	2020	Wider Industry
<5%	3%	0%
5-10%	21%	26%
11-20%	38%	46%
>20%	38%	28%
Don't measure	26%	21%

The data shows that the higher education industry is somewhat similar to the wider industry average in terms of escalation rates, if not slightly higher. Roughly the same proportion measure this metric.

If you measure it, what is the average number of service requests logged on a monthly basis?

	2020	Wider Industry
<500	6%	18%
500-1000	26%	18%
1001-2500	37%	37%
2501-5000	20%	24%
>5000	11%	12%
Don't measure	13%	16%

We can see that the higher education industry receives on average more service requests per month than the wider industry, though this is not a huge difference.

If you measure it, what is the average percentage of tickets that are deflected by self-service on a monthly basis?

	2020	Wider Industry
<5%	50%	26%
5-10%	11%	26%
11-20%	28%	22%
>20%	11%	26%
Don't measure	45%	47%
Don't use self-service	8%	12%

Whereas within the wider industry, self-service deflection is relatively evenly spread. The higher education industry averages a lower deflection rate. A similar proportion do not measure this metric.

If you measure it, what is your average CSAT score?

	2020
<40%	0%
40-60%	9%
61-80%	9%
81-95%	59%
>95%	23%
Don't Measure	42%

This metric was not surveyed in the v.9 Benchmarking report. However, we can see that the higher education industry seems to perform well in terms of customer satisfaction, with 82% of the respondents who measure this metric averaging over 81%. However, over 40% of respondents specified they do not measure this metric, which is much larger than the statistic we saw earlier. This could be due to the fact that a number of respondents measure their CSAT in a different method, such as Net Promoter Score.

9.0 The Future

9.1 Industry Thoughts

In the future we will use more self-help and self-service facilities.

We can see that the vast majority of higher education service desk professionals believe that they will continue to use more self-service and self-help facilities in the future. AI-enabled technologies are enabling IT organisations to mature their self-service capabilities; therefore, it is promising to see respondents identifying that the future service desk could facilitate a more self-serving customer base.

No respondents disagreed with this statement, however 7% did strongly disagree. There could be a number of reasons for this: perhaps their higher education service desk is not succeeding with self-service, and therefore they are pursuing other support channels, or perhaps they believe self-service will be superseded by a more advanced channel, such as a chatbot or virtual agent.

In the future, we will use more Chatbot and Virtual Agent.

While a significant proportion of respondents agree that they will use more chatbot and virtual agent technologies in the future, they are less certain than they were responding to the previous statement, with only 13% strongly agreeing. Further analysis of the data showed that around 60% of respondents who strongly disagreed with the previous statement agreed with this one, support the argument that a proportion of professionals believe that self-service will be superseded.

In comparison to the wider industry, higher education service desk professionals seem generally more accepting towards chatbots and virtual agents, with only 65% of the wider industry agreeing with this statement.

We use less than half of all the functions of our service desk system software

Respondents appear to be fairly evenly split between agreeing and disagreeing with this statement, which mirrors the sentiments of the wider industry. ITSM tools may offer functionalities which are not relevant to your organisation’s needs, therefore reducing the ROI of the tool. In order to unlock the full ROI potential of your ITSM tool, you should discuss your needs with potential vendors during the procurement phase and work closely with your chosen vendor’s implementation team to ensure you are fully utilising your tool’s capabilities.

Knowledge base systems are too difficult to implement and maintain on our service desk

Again, higher education service desks mirror the sentiments of the wider industry in relation to this statement. We have previously seen that knowledge bases have become more popular among higher education service desks; therefore, it is promising to see the majority of respondents disagreeing with this statement.

Conclusion

This report provides valuable insight into the health and maturity of the higher education service desk industry. For the most part, there has been a level of stability and consistency since 2016, as well as consistencies with the wider industry report. However, there are some notable changes. It is important to understand the nuances of different industries and the factors which makes them unique. The higher education industry, for example, will need different tool capabilities than a service desk in the finance sector.

Traditional communication methods are still popular among higher education industry, with in-person support actually increasing in uptake. However, the proportion of higher education service desks offering self-service and self-help has also risen, suggesting that they are providing support channels which suit numerous customer profiles, ensuring a better, more convenient customer experience.

Furthermore, a larger proportion of the higher education industry offer chatbots or virtual agents as a communication channel in comparison to the wider industry, and a larger proportion expect usage of these technologies to increase in the future. This suggests that higher education service desk professionals have a good grasp on the needs and preferences of their customers.

Having said this, customer experience is arguably not the most important consideration for a proportion of higher education service desks, as a larger number of respondents identified the volume of ticket resolutions as a more significant indicator of success. On the other hand, soft skills training, such as customer service, is as popular as technical qualifications, according to our data.

Another important note is that in comparison to 2016 and the wider industry, higher education service desk analysts stay in their role on average for a much longer period of time, and a higher proportion remain within the university when they leave. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the average salaries for analysts and team leaders are slightly higher, and generally they can expect an unconditional pay rise after two years.

Technology has clearly had an impact on the higher education industry, and it will undeniably continue to be a defining factor in the industry’s development. It is important that higher education service desks are able to keep up with the needs of university staff as well as their students’, and service desk leaders will also need to ensure their staff’s skill sets evolve alongside technology.

Exercise Your Right to Solid Cybersecurity

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 21:02:04 Z

Universities notoriously have a complex network to manage and secure. IT professionals have to deal with an intricate combination of staff and student users, who can access the network both on and off-campus, a multitude of devices that are university and student-owned – and which frequently connect to foreign networks – and a high turnover of users each year. This situation lends itself to a high-risk cyber-environment, so IT professionals must be extra-vigilant when working to secure a university network from malicious actors.

It is for this reason exactly that Jisc, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing digital technologies for UK education and research institutions, created Exercise Mercury – an activity that universities can participate in to expose weak spots and vulnerabilities in their network that could grant access to cybercriminals.

During Exercise Mercury, two universities are paired off and spend a week attacking the other to discover vulnerabilities in their processes, policies, procedures, infrastructure and digital footprint. Each institution can use their full range of skills, resources and personnel – this isn’t an activity solely reserved for IT. After what is essentially a simulation of a cyberattack, the winner is the one who would have caused the most damage – after which, each university can go away and resolve the vulnerabilities discovered.

A Lesson from Exercise Mercury

Exercise Mercury is now in its third year, having been launched at the 2018 Jisc Security Conference. During this time, it has been noted that the main areas of vulnerability discovered are often the same.

The biggest of these areas of vulnerability stem from IT teams not accurately knowing what assets they have, how many, and who owns them. This is a pain point that particularly affects higher-education organisations due to their large, distributed networks with staff and students often working in non-typical ways. Exercise Mercury found that the main cause of this vulnerability was legacy IT, which includes technology that was used for one project that is now long forgotten about, and technology that has been moved to the cloud but not yet upgraded.

So, if IT professionals don’t have a hold on all of their assets, how can they hope to respond if they are compromised? This dilemma is magnified in a university setting where IT teams are having to deal with countless requests from students and staff with already limited resources. Add the monumental task of migrating to the cloud, or to a new OS (such as we saw recently with Windows 7 EOL), and it can seem impossible to keep on top of everything.

What’s the next step?

Whilst digital transformation is the buzzword of the moment, what this shows is that higher-education organisations may need to get their house in order before investing in the next big thing. According to a recent Ivanti survey, over 60% of IT professionals are currently missing key information in their ITAM programme. So, IT teams must start from the ground up and complete a proper audit and discovery of all the technology that is being used on the network, and from there they can work out how to keep it secure.

This period of discovery will also enable security teams to make their policies and processes more cohesive with the technology at play. The findings from Exercise Mercury highlighted that the communication of these policies needs to be “more push than pull” – they should be made as easy to find and digestible as possible.

Currently, 43% of IT professionals still track IT assets in spreadsheets – a shocking figure when we assess that discovery and data is at the heart of everything. Universities should look to invest in an IT Asset Management tool to better understand what hardware and software is in use across the estate and by whom, as well as detailed information such as whether it is supported by the vendor, whether hardware is still under warranty, and what the relationship is between these technologies. It is only then that they can effectively secure their complex networks.

Find out more about how Ivanti can help protect your university IT environment here.

Protecting Universities in Today’s Cyber Threatscape

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 21:45:04 Z

At a time when organisations across all industries are on high alert for the risk of cyberattacks, it’s no surprise that digital security is a key priority for educational institutions worldwide. The intricate mix of on- and off- campus students and staff, university and user-owned devices means these organisations have one of the most complex IT environments around, which is extremely difficult to protect from security threats.

Therefore, it isn’t surprising to see that a recent Jisc report reveals a 10% increase, since 2017, in universities with dedicated cybersecurity leaders, showing their desire for improvement in this area.

That being said, these institutions can still implement additional measures to ensure their cybersecurity strategy is robust enough to mitigate the ever-evolving risks brought about by the digital era.

Below are three key areas of cybersecurity universities should focus on:

Patching the Weak Spots

It’s no secret that cybercriminals are becoming more and more skilled – for example, the average time it takes them to exploit vulnerabilities is decreasing, making it challenging for organisations to remediate in such tight timeframes. Interestingly, Gartner has predicted that, by 2022, 90% of vulnerabilities exploited will be those known to the business. This may be because, although staff are aware of these system weaknesses, they aren’t always around to promptly react to attacks: 67% of IT university workers aren’t available 27/4 to respond to security incidents.

The situation is made more critical by the absence of suitable technology to ensure around-the-clock protection – in fact, only 28% of universities implemented a Security Information and Event Management System (SIEM). So, while HE organisations are more likely to report security incidents than those in further education, whether they actually respond to these incidents is up to the good will and dedication of security staff – of which there is a shortage.

To ensure an effective and constant defence against cyberattacks, universities need to up the ante on the patching front. Modern patching solutions not only provide protection from malware and other threats, they also help garner valuable insights. For example, Ivanti Patching Intelligence provides metrics that help staff understand risks, creating a simple view of what patches are required, driving more informed patching decisions.

Controlling Access and Applications

Within any organisation, ensuring users are able to access the necessary resources to do their work is vital. This is particularly true in universities, where technical difficulties can hinder students’ ability to complete coursework, meet deadlines, and make full use of services they pay significant fees for.

For security reasons, some universities require students to go through long and tedious processes to gain crucial access privileges – sometimes having to wait days before their request is fulfilled. Furthermore, some institutions forget to revoke access rights from student or staff members who have left the organisation, meaning they can still view sensitive information and utilise private servers.

Modern identity management solutions, such as Ivanti’s Service Manager, are able to automate the entire access provision process, empowering students to request and obtain privileges within 40 seconds. The access is then automatically revoked after a set period of time. It’s clear how this approach not only allows users to be work efficiently, but also enhances the organisation’s security.

Keeping on top of trusted and untrusted applications is also vital – though it’s easier said than done. Disabling potentially dangerous applications may be possible for businesses, where employees are expected to only use company resources to do their job. But staff and students, who are largely based on campus, also use university networks for non-work-related matters. Thankfully, this aspect, too, can be regulated with technology. Ivanti Application Manager can independently identify unsecure applications and prevent them from running. In this regard, inventory is key. Universities must have clear visibility of what devices and softwares are utilised within their network, in order to effectively manage and protect them.

Preventing Social Engineering Attacks

To protect universities from cyberattacks, relying solely on latest-generation security technology is not enough. Educating staff and students to identify threats and handle them appropriately is just as important.

Cybercriminals often employ social engineering attacks, disguised as innocuous emails, for example, inviting unwitting users to click through fraudulent links and download viruses. The Jisc report mentioned above indicates phishing as one of the top threats experienced within higher education. Therefore, educational institutions should work to keep students, teachers and all other employees up to date on new cyberattack trends – so that they are constantly alert and avoid exposing the organisation to risks of this kind. Interestingly, 48% of universities leverage phishing simulations to train users to detect and correctly respond to suspicious emails.

University networks are navigated by a multitude of users across all ages, some more tech-savvy than others. That’s why phishing awareness and defence should be a core aspect of a sound security strategy.

Institutions in higher education have incredibly complex IT infrastructures and defending them from today’s digital threats is no easy feat. However, with the right technology and the right mindset, these organisations can navigate today’s cyber minefield and ensure effective protection.

Find out more about how Ivanti can help protect your university IT environment here.

Protecting the Gateway to Knowledge – Inside and Out

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 21:54:28 Z

September marked the start of a new academic year and with it I noticed the increasing mass of students navigating their way to school, college or university. For students, this brings the chance to catch-up with friends and settle in to their new environment. For educational institutions, it can bring apprehension and anticipation–rooted in the pressure of managing IT infrastructure and security.

While it may seem logical for organisations to dedicate enormous funds to in-bound cyber-threats, only 60 percent of breaches involve external actors. We’ve all heard stories of threats from within, such as the colleague who unwittingly circulated malicious data, bringing the network to a halt. But, if you think that this is as big as the issue gets, think again.

The very nature of a university means that implementing a successful cybersecurity strategy can be a tall order. There is no one size fits all approach as there are dramatic differences between the needs of each department, student and staff member. For an office, devices and their respective patch status can be effectively managed with the right strategy, but this is not the case for educational institutions. It’s impossible to force students to use a particular operating system, device manufacturer or version on their countless personal devices.

Time of year is also a factor when considering cybersecurity. A report identified that there is a spike in activity during term-time with staff or students often as the culprits, rather than external hackers. One university was subject to a four-day cyberattack, caused by a student who was targeted whilst gaming online in university accommodation.

Beyond this, there is also the threat from disgruntled staff and students who may wish to disrupt the server by overloading it with requests – often using distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which don’t require much technical knowhow and can be purchased quite cheaply online. The aim is not to steal data or infect a network with malware, but may be used more maliciously. For example, to make it impossible to submit coursework on deadline day.

In the battle against insider threats, institutions may be inclined to adopt a policy of monitoring and regulating network activity or a zero-trust network architecture. However, this approach is more suited to a business than a university. After all, students pay for digital liberties through tuition fees and so restriction would be unfair. Instead, a system should be considered that is secure enough to protect the network while also catering to the diversity of devices and activities.

One solution that is proving successful across universities is the unification of various IT support divisions into one centralised service. This unified University Information Services (UIS) department provides cohesive IT support to tens of thousands of students and staff. With a singular IT entity, universities will have a complete overview of their network activity, making securing the system from within more manageable.

As technology advances, cyber threats continue to cause havoc and hackers become increasingly sophisticated. It’s easy for IT to snowball into a mammoth headache although, by consolidating various departments into one, this issue can be overcome. For educational institutions, this means they can control questionable activity and improve efficiencies without restricting access for staff and students who rely on the network for their work and entertainment.

Cape Peninsula University of Technology Achieves Business Service Management Success With Ivanti

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 18:13:40 Z

Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) hosts 34,000 students, employs close to 2,000 staff members, spans 11 campuses, and supports more than 80 undergraduate and postgraduate courses in programs including applied sciences, business and management, education, engineering, health and wellness, and informatics and design.

Ivanti Service Manager

This solution, deployed in the cloud or on-premise, helps IT departments modernize the service desk and deliver more value to the business.

Organizations can:

1) reduce service desk call volume by up to 80%, maximizing operational efficiencies;

2) reduce downtime due to unplanned or unapproved changes by up to 75%, cutting IT costs; and

3) reduce the number of status calls received by up to 80%, improving service quality and compliance.

Leveraging its ITIL investment cost-effectively

CPUT had invested heavily in ITIL as a discipline. It had worked to develop strong skills in the framework, familiarity with the terminology, and a keen focus on functional requirements and capacity management for defining, managing, and delivering IT services in a cost-effective and timely way. It knew exactly what it needed when it came time to acquire a solution to support ITSM best practices according to ITIL.

Benfits to Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Meeting mobile requirements and audit demands

Students and staff are roaming more. Even if a manager isn’t on campus, they can approve a request for change or look at calls on their phone. Work gets done and it still gets recorded.

The automation benefits of self service

CPUT has created many self-service applications that users can log on to. Among those users are students and academics who request services or help, as well as support staff who fulfill those requests, such as activating new laptops or resolving incidents. Whether users prefer to request service or report an issue via self service, or call the service desk, the requests are routed swiftly to the right support team.

Eliminating manual tasks reduces risk

“The value of process automation can’t be underestimated,” says Hennie Pretorius, strategic services manager at CPUT. “Eliminating manual tasks lessens the risk that important business processes like change management will fail. Even better is automating that process as simply as possible, which CPUT has done for change management using the strength of Ivanti.”

Reporting delivers real statistics

IT staff members access genuine stats into the relationship between an incident, problem, or change, and provide evidence of change governance to both external and internal auditors. The focus on audit is strong, especially in change management. Analysis of logged calls enables IT to understand and convey the impact of one configuration item change on another, reducing the chances of unintended service outages.

Additional uses for powerful workflow engine

For a large contracts-management project, CPUT will leverage Ivanti to follow the lifecycle of 16 to 20 contract types—from payments, to memos of understanding, to legal contracts and software maintenance contracts.

Sharing expertise with the community

CPUT is supporting Ivanti’s efforts to expand service management and Ivanti expertise in South Africa’s Western Cape, including making labs available and potentially a short course. “We’d like to make Ivanti more accessible to the local market, and share skills and competencies with one another,” says Hennie Pretorius, CPUT strategic services manager.

Increased adoption within the university

CPUT had no idea how positively users would react to the SaaS-based service management platform. The dramatic increase in client performance was well-received, and the fact that users could access the solution from any network-linked device translated into an increase in adoption.

Q&A with Sally Bogg, Head of Service Management at Leeds Beckett University

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 22:19:44 Z

At Ivanti, we work with many universities across the world and so, in this series, we are getting to know some of our customers in the higher education sector.

First up is Sally Bogg, Head of Service Management at Leeds Beckett University. I have had the pleasure of working with Sally for many years as part of our fantastic Women In Technology community where Sally is a role model for many women in the space and I think by reading this interview, you’ll see exactly why!

Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?

SB: A motivated and adaptable ITSM professional, I have worked in Higher Education IT for over 12 years and have experience of developing and delivering high quality sector leading support services and creating respected and high performing teams. Winner of the FDM Everywoman, Team Leader of the Year Award 2019 and Women in IT Business Role Model of the Year 2018, I am a passionate supporter of the enhancement and empowerment of women in tech and I’m well known across the ITSM, Higher Education and Service Desk Industry. Having dropped out of school after becoming pregnant at the age of 17, I returned to education as a mature student and graduated from Leeds Beckett in 2006 with a degree in computing. Since then I have gone on to forge a successful career in ITSM and I am currently working as Head of Service Management at Leeds Beckett University, where I am responsible for the delivery of front line support services, business and customer relationship management and the IT Training function.

Why did you choose a career in technology, specifically in higher education?

SB: Following the birth of my children back in the late nineties I decided that I wanted to return to work and take a change in career direction. I was hearing a lot about this thing called the internet but I could barely turn on a computer – when I was at school you had to be in the top maths group to take IT and I just wasn’t familiar with technology at all. I enrolled on a part time IT course at the local college and this sparked my passion for IT – not for the technology itself but for what it could do for me! Having completed my degree I was keen to work in the education sector and so I focused on securing a role within the IT Dept at the University of Leeds. This led me working in the area of IT Service Management, which really suited my skill set – my career has been less focused on the technology and is more about the service and people.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by Universities today?

SB: I think one of the biggest challenges currently being faced by Universities is understanding the impact that new technologies such as AI, robotics and machine learning are going to have on the sector and the need to potentially change the way in which we deliver, support and manager effective technology services. Educational technology (EdTech) is becoming increasingly more advanced and sophisticated but we need to ensure that it is being implemented to enhance the learning experience and enrich student experience rather than technology for technologies sake.

We know generation Z expect seamless digital engagement and student experience - does that change how you provide IT services to them?

SB: I’m not sure I entirely agree with this statement. I think it is dangerous to label our students and assume that they all come with the same level of digital skills and experiences. We have to be mindful of creating systems and services that meet as broad a range of the population as possible, after all universities are extremely diverse communities. And this is the real challenge for us, creating technology for everyone that can be used by everyone!

Do you think students are becoming more tech savvy and does that help or hinder you?

SB: I don’t think we can assume that just because students are more familiar with using technology that they are more tech savvy and actually some of the applications and software they will use for their studies will be very different to what they are used to using in their school and personal life. Many of our students (and staff) will require lots of help and guidance to enable them to make the most of technology we provide which is why the role support services are so crucial within the University context. I do think expectations around technology within Higher Education have changed drastically in the last 10 years – the ubiquitous nature of IT means that many people now expect systems and services that are available anywhere at anytime, 365 days a year!

Do you think the mix of end users and the different locations etc makes IT in Universities more complex than other areas?

SB: I think Universities certainly have some differences and challenges that are specific to the sector, with many systems and services that are unique to us. This can make IT support more complex but it does mean that there is a lot of variety in what we get to do, my work is never boring.

I am always struck by the great IT community across universities, does that help you stay innovative?

SB: I think it does help us stay ahead of the game and it is one of the things I love most about working in the higher education sector. There is such a strong sense of community and a willingness to share experiences and best practise which I don’t think you see in other industries.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about a technology career in higher education?

SB: The tech sector is fast-moving and dynamic, there are many smaller companies and tech start-ups that are worth seeking out for job opportunities. There are skills shortages across many of key areas within the digital economy, this means there are many different IT careers available and organisations aren’t just looking for computer science graduates anymore – the sector needs a much more diverse work force, we want people from not just science and STEM backgrounds but also arts and humanities, we need creative problem solvers! To have a successful career in tech I think you need to have a really broad range of skills, a strong drive and passion to make a difference. Tech companies are looking for skilled communicators that are good at collaboration and team work, and are able to plan and organise themselves and others around them, who are able to think critically and who can develop a good understanding of the business they are working in. Many companies are willing to take on trainees with limited practical technical experience as long as they have the right attitude and core skills.

You can find out more about Leeds Beckett Universities go-live with Ivanti Service Manager here

Kingston University: Delivering IT Services Across Campus and Around the Globe

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 21:55:28 Z

Partnering with Ivanti to make its Vision of “A University Without Walls” a reality

As information technology has advanced, so too has Kingston University. At the forefront of IT higher education, it’s critical that the London university be able to get services to its students and staff wherever they are: on campus or the other side of the globe.

They dubbed the concept “a University without walls.”

Simon Harrison, Chief Information Officer for Kingston University, started at the institution five years ago. He quickly recognised that the IT Directorate had hundreds of vendors. In an effort to simplify those agreements, and to save money and increase capabilities, he turned to Ivanti.

“One of the great relationships that we’ve formed over time is that with Ivanti,” Harrison said. During the past five years, Kingston has increasingly relied on Ivanti’s suite of applications to stay on the cutting edge.”

Harrison noted how Ivanti’s powerful workspace management capabilities aligned with Kingston’s goals. Now, students and Faculty staff can access services anywhere they can access the internet. It allows them to stay productive while on vacation, studying abroad, attending out-of-town work meetings or enjoying the comfort of home.

And on campus, the University uses Ivanti’s automation capabilities to stream software to computer labs across all campuses, never having to stop to download programs to individual computers.

“When the students attend lectures, the software just works on those machines,” Harrison said.

When technology challenges arise at the University, other Ivanti solutions kick in to help track and quickly resolve the issue. David Rimmer, Head of Service Delivery, reflects on the impact the Ivanti service management solutions have had, “The University’s IT Service Desk customers — our students and staff — have evolving requirements, and the Ivanti solution enables the service team to handle them quickly and efficiently.”

Rimmer continued, “The beauty of Ivanti service management is its configurability. It allows you to configure your Service Desk the way you want it to run, connecting things in different ways as needs change, rather than just relying on how a consultant may have originally set it up.”

Over the years, Kingston has also expanded to using cloud-based servers in addition to its physical ones. This allows the University to use the best functions of each, but it also increases security risk. Once again, Simon Harrison turned to Ivanti, this time leveraging Ivanti’s patch capabilities to help ensure Kingston is safe and up-to-date, and freeing up IT staff in the process.

“Now we can devote the skills of our experienced staff to more value-added activities — supporting education or research,” Harrison said.

During the past few years, Kingston has increasingly severed ties with other vendors as Ivanti emerged as a goto partner. That relationship continues to build today with increased automation and security.

“Many other universities are now contacting us to ask how we are providing these services and delivering these strategic advantages back to our community as a whole,” Harrison said. “I’m happy to tell them.”

6 Tips to Help Curb University Cyber Attacks

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 20:43:00 Z

Universities have become popular hacking targets, joining the ranks of other top targets like finance (Capital One, Equifax), retail (Target), manufacturing and transportation.

Hackers are demanding ransomware payments, crippling entire education computer operations and capturing extensive personal data, violating the privacy of students and staff.

The issue of education sector cyberattacks moved further up in the international consciousness recently when Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency in response to three school districts crippled by malware attacks, which shut down phone systems and locked data.

The motivation for these attacks range from ransoming the normal workflow of a university to selling hijacked student identities. Regardless of the motivation, like other public sectors, education is now, more than ever, on cybercriminals’ radar and will continue to be one of the popular targets.

Stepping Up Cyber Attack Defences

Just keeping up with the myriad attack versions and new threats coming every day burdens universities who are already struggling to keep pace with rapidly changing technology advancements, let alone cybercriminals. In crafting a more effective defence, educational institutions have a dual challenge: executing all the risk mitigation defences that any organisation must-have in today’s cyber environment and then layering the unique aspect of student populations with their own set of user expectations.

Here are practices that can help reduce risk yet maintain a productive user experience for students and staff alike.

1. Tighten up on administrative privileges.

Cybercriminals love penetrating networks in which administrator privileges are used everywhere. Effective malware and ransomware defence demand privileges are granted only to staff that truly require them to do their job.

A university, for example, can remove full admin rights and then selectively elevate just the privileges a user needs to do their job. Ideally, an educational institution would implement technology that not only centrally manages credentials and grants granular rights, but enables staff to self-serve access as needed, based on their work function.

2. Educate employees on constant vigilance.

Some of the most costly ransomware attacks are caused by simple acts of opening email or clicking on a website. Cybercriminals are adept at employing social engineering tools that look non-threatening and encourage students and/or staff to click through links in fraudulent emails. Even tech-savvy users can fall prey, no one is exempt from too quickly opening a potentially dangerous email.

Unfortunately, basic education will not suffice to fight cybercriminals. IT staff needs to put a continuing education program in place that accomplishes two objectives: keep staff and students up to date on new cyber attack trends and introduce new employees to the universities approach to fighting cyber attacks. In addition to education, all staff and students can take phishing tests, or drills in which they click on links and receive feedback as to whether they just clicked through to a potential malware occurrence.

3. Engage students to become part of the cyber defence team.

The current generation of students is the most mobile-device friendly ever. Whether using a phone, iPad or traditional laptop, worrying about the university’s security is rarely top of mind for them. Just as IT can help train and encourage staff to be more cyber-diligent, IT can work with teachers and administrators to help students understand data breaches can affect them personally and can cause great harm to their peers and their university.

Secondly, administrators are already using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to regularly communicate about university news and events. Reminders about tactics like pop-ups linking to dangerous websites, or opening texts that are not from recognised senders, can be posted for students. This gives universities two key communication channels for furthering threat prevention.

4. Stay current on all application updates.

Executing critical patches and updates is essential to prevent new attacks. It should be a top priority of IT staff and cover third party applications as well as operating systems. Microsoft regularly publishes patch updates. IT needs to flag the ones of critical nature and ensure they are accomplished.

5. Be diligent about third-party vendor risk.

If your vendors and sub-contractors have less than optimum security protocols in place, they expose the university itself, and the student population to considerable risk. Third-party risk assessments must be done for suppliers that have access to university and student data to make certain their operations meet the standards of good threat prevention.

6. Consider specific cyber insurance.

Educational organisations are increasingly adding cyber-attack coverage to their insurance policies, driven by the trend toward ransomware. Administrators and finance staff need to examine the costs of this type of coverage, weighing it against the cost of restoring operations from a system lockdown and/or privacy breach, and determine what is the appropriate level.

Keeping the issue of cyber-attacks in front of all parties – admin, IT, staff and students – is an essential step in helping to prevent costly disruption to university operations and strengthen defences against a data privacy breach.

Combining better engagement with improved security practices will help to minimise a universities threat landscape. Being aware of third-party suppliers’ approach to data security is an important part of a complete data protection strategy. Within the university’s infrastructure, consistent, up-to-date patching and tighter access controls are a relatively economical means of adding more layers of data protection, compared to the millions of dollars of potential recovery costs after an attack.

Virtual Event Recap: IT in Higher Education

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 18:19:42 Z

In early October, Ivanti hosted its first ever virtual event: The IT Leadership Summit. There were a total of 30 presenters, including Forrester analysts, product marketing managers, director-level IT professionals, and executives.

Below is the video and transcript from the session IT in Higher Education, featuring:

Ian Aitchison: Senior Director, Product Management, Ivanti
Carla Thornley: Service Desk Manager, University of Oxford
Steve Hoensch: Head of Frontline Services, University of Cambridge
Sally Bogg: Head of End User Services, Leeds Beckett University

Ian Aitchison: Hi. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome along to this next session in the IT Leadership Summit. This is the higher education IT panel debate. I'm joined for this panel discussion by three fascinating experts, leaders in IT in the higher education space. We can see their names listed on there. We'll do introductions actually as we go into the following slide. And we're gonna be spending the next 30 to 40 minutes talking our way through some of the big challenges and successes and understanding top tips on the future around, what our panel member see around IT in higher education.

So this should be fun, it should be interesting. I'll say again my thanks to Carla, Steve and Sally who've joined us today. Let's meet the panel. We thought the way we'd do this, little introduction from the four of us, so you know who you're listening to, and possible seeing on the recording, before we get into digging into a few particular topics and discussions.

So to get things started off, and panel members be prepared, I need something interesting about you as well as your name and what you do and what your organization does. So I'll give you an example, so my name's Ian Aitchison and I'm the lead on this panel debate, the coordinator. I'm the Senior Director of Product Management here at Ivanti. And when I'm not at work, I wrestle with my two children and small puppy and I like sailing boats and I play the ukulele very badly. So that's a little bit about me. First on the panel then is Sally. Could you give us a little intro, Sally?

Sally Bogg: So hello everyone, my name's Sally Bogg. I'm Head of End user Services at Leeds Beckett University where I have responsibility for the first and second-line support teams including the IT service desk. I also look after the IT training unit and have overall ownership of IT service management at Leeds Beckett University. I've worked in higher education IT for just over 12 years now in various IT service management roles, and my job at Leeds Beckett is really about developing high-quality, sector-leading support services and I'm really passionate about creating sort of highly respected and award winning teams. I really like to focus on the people element of leadership. I don't know if it's an unusual or interesting fact about me, but things I like doing in my spare time, I'm really passionate about supporting the advancement and empowerment of women, particularly women in technology. And I spend a lot of my free time going around and giving talks and presentations, setting up various networks and contributing to different women in technology initiatives. I am also a mom of three almost grown-up children, which gives me a lot more free time these days. So I think that's enough from me.

Ian Aitchison: That's excellent, thank you Sally. Great introduction. Thanks for making time to join us today. Sitting to your right, or to your left depending on where you're sitting, is Carla. Hello, Carla.

Carla Thornley: Hi there. So yeah, my name is Carla Thornley, I currently lead the service desk and Advanced Service Management teams here within IT services at the University of Oxford. I've only actually been working back in higher education for just under a year, well just over a year actually now. Before that I did spend quite a portion of my career with higher education, but I've also worked in the corporate sector in various roles. And I came from the SDI, so I was head of certification training at the SDI. So I did have the pleasure of experiencing the international element of service desk and how similar they are, actually, no matter where in the world they are and helping people especially in that role. So I'm excited to be here to see what we can do with what we've got, and make sure that these services here are actually world-class and sector-leading, just as they should be for an organization of this standing. Interesting things about me. Well it's a bit unusual maybe, I don't actually like chocolate, believe it or not. My mother remains unconvinced, at the age of 47 she still occasionally gives me, I don't know, just some cake or whatever and says, "I'm sure you'll like this one," but no, I really don't like chocolate. I don't have much spare time, I've got four children, although they are now much older, much like Sally, you do get a bit of extra time when they're older, but you don't stop worrying about them. And I've also got a horse, so yes, my free time, any minute that I can, I like to spend outside in our broad countryside.

Ian Aitchison: Excellent. Thank you, Carla. And that's a complete shocker, doesn't like chocolate. Wow.

Ian Aitchison: I suppose it's possible there is one out there, and we have one on our panel today, so that's fantastic. Very good, thanks for joining, Carla. And sitting to your left, or right, is Steve. Hello, Steve. Good morning.

Steve Hoensch: Hello. Hello everyone. So my name's Steve Hoensch, so I'm Head of Frontline Services at the University of Cambridge. So Head of Frontline Services is any service that hits the customer on an IT service. So it's basically the same as Sally, front, first and second-line support. So I manage a division of around 60 people, and from there we've even got things like the University has agreement, first, second-line support at the service desk, desktop support. And part of my job in my new role is to try and unify the IT department that has formed from two separate divisions that have merged together to form what we call the University Information Services. And that's the idea of delivering core IT out to the University so researchers can get on with the more exciting part of their day, and they don't have to worry about re-inventing the wheel every time. So things that I enjoy outside the work, I'm really passionate about snowboarding, it's something that I love to do and sort of get to travel the world a little bit, but since having a child, who's now four, that's sort of stopped a little bit and I'm looking forward to next year when he's old enough that I can actually take him skiing for the first time.

Ian Aitchison: Excellent. That's great. Thank you, Steve. And obviously the question we're all dying to know as well is do you like chocolate?

Steve Hoensch: Yes, yeah. I have no problem with chocolate, yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Good, good. Excellent. And we'll just check in, Sally, are you okay with chocolate?

Sally Bogg: Yeah. It's not my favorite, but I don't mind it.

Ian Aitchison: Good, okay. All right, well this discussion isn't actually talking about our favorite food products, much as I'd love to. But with all three of you, you're all doing, I'd say, a similar function managing the delivery of valuable IT service to a higher education customer/user departmental base. And Higher education is unique in many ways, it has some unique challenges around the expectations, around the culture, around the profile of those that you deliver IT service and support to. So I know we're gonna pull out some very interesting points around that as we work our way through. The way we thought we'd structure this is let's take one question at a time. And we'll start by asking you a little bit, I guess, around your journey so far, building and delivering the service structure and organization that you have done. I'm really interested in looking back, what you have found to be tough, what have you found to be a real challenge that maybe you have overcome, or maybe you're still wrestling with it? But what is something that you've found has been really something difficult to overcome? And we'll change the order as we go around, we'll check in with everybody as we go through this. So I'm gonna start actually this time around with Steve, who was the last to speak. Steve, could you, just kind of from your perspective looking back, what's been hard, what's been tough?

Steve Hoensch: So, like I said in the introduction, we formed this new department of two completely separate, different organizations with a completely separate culture, and that's been a real challenge to bring those two divisions together, and get them working together. The amount of technical depth that that created for the central IT department to deal with has been huge, and it's something that we're still dealing with at the moment. So the way we're getting around that is to empower people with bringing them together on new projects, and that means they're working together on something new. We're developing new services, for instance we're developing the next generation desktop, we're looking at new exciting ways of delivering that across the University. And because people are now working together, we're actually seeing a culture start to form and start to develop. So I'd say the biggest challenge for us has just been the merger.

It's the right way for the University to go, because we've had, if you take the University, there are 31 separate, unique colleges that work together, and there's got to be over another 200 departments. And all of those individuals may have had their own IT representative or their own computer officer working in there. You know, they should be developing their own service, and it adds a complexity and adds extra expense to the University. So the University's decision to create this new central IT department is the right way forward, but it's a big challenge for us to change the culture of the University and accept that there should be a central IT department delivering core IT is something we're working on in the moment. But when we get there, I think it will be a big improvement for students and staff and researchers working here and getting access to world-class leading services.

Ian Aitchison: And it sounds a little bit like that culture is not just within the IT organization, but it's across the whole University, if you've got departments building their own IT:

Steve Hoensch: I'm sorry, yeah. If you take the university of Cambridge, I mean it's an 809-year-old institution.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah.

Steve Hoensch: And obviously there are things that have happened over the years, you know.

Ian Aitchison: Yes.

Steve Hoensch: It's a challenge, but everybody is starting to see it. We're seeing sort HE start to be more run as a business, and we're starting to see more corporate decisions be made, and I think that's starting to make people look and see what's happening out in the rest of the world and see what large organizations, like banks and other divisions, are doing of these sizes, that we should be copying. We're not re-inventing the wheel here, we're just using things that people have done in industry for many years, but the University seems to be a little bit far behind on those sort of adoptions. And the University just moves a lot slower than other organizations at the moment. But it is improving and it is the way forward.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, that's great. So it sounds like culture, University culture, higher education culture, is a big challenge for you. Let's find out at Leeds Beckett University what sort of challenges are being faced there. Sally, what have you been challenged with?

Sally Bogg: So looking at, so I joined the University and the department just after a merging of two departments in 2015, where media services and IT were brought together. So again, it was looking at cultural change. And we were trying to focus on becoming more service-focused, really, rather than technology and deliverers of technology, and that's been really difficult. Trying to get IT staff to focus on cultural change is really hard, they often just want to be very focused on the actual technology. And then our other one is around supporting and developing staff, really. Attracting and retaining high-quality IT staff in any sector's becoming really challenging, but it's particularly difficult for us in higher education, where maybe the wages are not as competitive as they could be. Now there are lots of other benefits of working at university, but they don't necessarily appeal to what your new graduates and your up-and-coming sort of people. And we also struggle to provide job opportunities and career development, in terms of progression, particularly for our service desk staff. Our university turnover, within IT, turnover is really low, and therefore there's limited progression routes for many of the staff that come in at entry-level. So what we're having to do is actually focus on providing career development opportunities and work on the premise that some of them, in fact most of them, will need to leave the organization in order to get career progression.

Also the lack of staff turnover, it does result in stagnation and resistance to change, and that can make implementing service management, and any cultural change program actually, really challenging. Trying to get people to focus on the adoption, the engagement rather than systems and tools is not easy with IT staff. But we are working really hard on that and I think I've got a couple of successes around that that I could maybe talk about a little bit later. But yeah, the two biggest ones are attracting and retaining high-quality staff, certainly on service desk and within first and second line, now we're looking for staff that have got fantastic business awareness, really good customer service and communication skills and technical ability. And actually those three things together are in high demand within the IT sector, and so actually recruiting and retaining those staff. And recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce as well is really difficult. Certainly within the HE sector in IT gender equality's a bit of an issue, but diversity in general as well.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah. So people is a big subject, all the way through your description there.

Sally Bogg: Absolutely.

Ian Aitchison: It's about the people...

Sally Bogg: I'm all about the people.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, getting them to focus on the right work, be service-focused rather than just excited by technology.

Sally Bogg: Yeah, that's been my mantra the past 18 months is the right people doing the right job at the right time, and that's not always as straight-forward as it sounds.

Ian Aitchison: No, no, absolutely. I mean ultimately the jobs we all do are about people, right? So success is encouraging people to work in the right way, as you described.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: And that's an interesting point, in higher education particularly, about, I guess, you get people that may be with you for many, many, many years and you get other people who maybe won't stay with you for long because they can see a different sector that might reward them in different ways.

Sally Bogg: Yeah, definitely.

Ian Aitchison: And I guess there's been challenges there.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, yeah, okay. Well that's great.

Sally Bogg: We did an Itil cast a few months ago, and we did a quick round the room, in terms of experience and it added up to well over 250 years.

Ian Aitchison: Wow.

Sally Bogg: Because we had sort of 20 years, 15 years, 12 years.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: That's amazing, just three people in the room. No I'm kidding. No, that shows exactly the sort of thing special to the higher education space. Okay, thank you, Sally. That's great. So we had a bit of unification of culture, we had the challenge of getting the right people to do the right thing at the right time, Carla, what's been the big challenge in the University of Oxford?

Carla Thornley: Yeah, it's interesting listening to both Steve and Sally. So I think Oxford is a slightly different place, but certainly I do acknowledge what both are saying, and it is probably...we're a little bit further along the line, maybe. So yes, we had cultural issues, I think, when the team was formed, but that was well before my time. The thing that struck me when I joined was actually what Steve also faces, which is the complexity of service delivery that you're actually required to get your head around here at the University of Oxford. So similar to Cambridge, we've got a college system steeped in such fantastic history and experts in every field that you could ever wish to imagine. And all of that is a challenge for IT. It's a challenge to deliver what people want in the way that they want it, which is what the university very much does want us to do. And it's a challenge to understand what people are trying to achieve, and make sure that we are providing value. So I think the first thing, what struck me the most was just how very complex this place is, and how something that might seem quite straight-forward in a corporate environment is far from straight-forward here, just in terms of the number of people you need to involve, and the complexity of what you're trying to deliver.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, yeah. Complexity, I totally get that point. When you've got many people, many systems, many ways of working, I can see how that's really gonna be a challenge. And there's an interesting connection there, maybe, with as we reference people and focusing on doing the right things. If your teams are doing repetitive work that is going across multiple systems and technologies, working in, as I say, a very inefficient way, they're gonna become demotivated and they're frustrated in the work they do.

Carla Thornley: I think that's a fair point. I think at the moment that isn't the biggest issue that's challenging service first and second-line support. It is understanding what they need to know in order to provide good, high-quality support services.

Ian Aitchison: Okay.

Carla Thornley: So big challenges around knowledge while making sure that we have access to the right tools, persuading people to allow us to shift left, so that we can actually do more at the point of contact, and making good relationships with our customers. So that's really been my focus in the past year is empower your first and second-line support staff to actually just take ownership of things and see things through to completion, because ultimately they are the customer's voice.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, excellent. Okay, thank you. So merging and unifying, focusing on doing the right thing at the right time with the people and empowering and addressing complexity of knowledge needed to cover such a huge range of topics and subjects. That's a load of challenges. Great, thank you.

Carla Thornley: It is. And, I mean, just pretty much what Sally was saying. I mean, it certainly is a challenge to recruit here at the University. We are too near to London to actually be a particularly attractive place to work, other than the fact that we are the University of Oxford. So yeah, our talent pool is sometimes limited. But that said, we've had some great opportunities this year to actually allow our first-line staff to move on into more interesting roles in other teams. That will reap dividends later on, because they had been making good links for us, but they keep that service culture. And we've got a whole lot of new people who I'm very excited about who have got some real talent. So I'm looking forward to developing that talent and seeing where we go with it.

Ian Aitchison: Ah, now it sounds like you may be introducing one of the top tips that we might give to others on this call a little later, around how to energize and keep your staff focused. But that's two questions away, so let's hold that one back. But that's excellent. Okay, thank you. So challenges, we now understand it's challenging, right? I mean, there's no IT service management role that isn't challenging, but you've got some unique ones yourselves, both to your unique universities, but also to that sector generally. So I'd like to now turn that into the next question which is what have you been really successful at? What can you look back on and say, "I nailed it, I really made a big change here. We've done something great?" It may be connected to that challenge, it may be something else that you've introduced, initiated, made a big difference that you can point at and say, "That was a success." Let's change the order around a little bit. Let's start with Sally. Sally, could you give us some thoughts on what you would say have been some of the big successes you can see looking back?

Sally Bogg: Yeah, I think we've got a few things I can talk about. But what I really try to do in my role is focus on people and getting the most out of our valuable staff resource. So a great service needs great people, and to be able to do that you've got to empower them, you've got to support them, and you've got to make them feel valued. And that's what we've tried really hard to do. We've also really been focusing on developing our IT service management capabilities and kind of using that to move us from a technology, deliverer of technology to a deliverer of service, and then this has also started to pay off. It's been quite long and quite slow, but in May this year, we implemented Advanced Service Manager. And we took quite a bit of time doing that, because we really wanted to focus on the adoption and engagement to make sure the new tool became fully embedded. I'm very aware that quite often in our sector, people just go buy and buy a new shiny ITSM tool and get six months down the line, they're really frustrated that it hasn't had the impact. And actually it's because it won't, it's just a tool. You've got to really focus on the process and the cultural aspect, and that's what we've really done. We've sort of change champions within the departments help with that adoption and engagement, and that really paid off. It meant the new system and the new processes were really well received, and it meant that during the whole implementation go live period we didn't actually have any detrimental impacts on our customers, no dropping service levels, and we actually have, within a couple of weeks, people saying it was making a difference and it was benefiting them. So I think that was quite, to have that within two or three weeks of getting the new tool in felt like a significant achievement to me.

And then the other thing we've been doing is, as part of our focus on service delivery, was re-inventing and re-investing in the service desk. When I arrived in 2015, it was a new service that had just been put together, and there was a perception in the University that the service desk offering was quite poor, and it had been because it had be really underfunded and under-resourced. So we've really focused on that kind of first-level excellent customer service and service desk. We've used a service desk certification frame-work as our program for that CSI, and it's kind of hot-off-the-press following a lot of hard work and a very intensive audit process. We're delighted that last week, we were provisionally awarded our two star, so it's not official yet, but I'm really proud of the team and the effort they've put into turning the service around, it's not insignificant, the kind of impact that that's had. And we're already getting that positive feedback, and praise and recognition from our customers. And that service is now becoming kind of a trusted partner, it's the service that people want to use, that they want to go to. And that feels like a massive, massive hurdle because changing perception is really difficult. And I'm really delighted that that's what we've been able to achieve.

Ian Aitchison: That's great. Well, congratulations on achieving that certification.

Sally Bogg: Thank you.

Ian Aitchison: That's fabulous. I know there's a lot of hard work involved in that, it's not an insignificant exercise. So that is a great success. You also referenced there, of course, using technology to improve the level of service and the advantages of investing time and thought and effort into using tools in a way that really pays off. So that's great. Good stuff. Well, well done, Sally.

Sally Bogg: Thank you.

Ian Aitchison: I know Carla, with your background in the SDI, of course Carla you'd be familiar with the whole service desk certification side of things.

Carla Thornley: Yes.

Ian Aitchison: What would you look back at?

Carla Thornley: I wasn't Sally's auditor, so just to be very clear…

Sally Bogg: She has been my auditor.

Carla Thornley: I did train your auditor, that is true to say.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Okay, so Carla, what's been some big successes in University of Oxford?

Carla Thornley: Well, I think in the last year, again similar to Sally, you're always, with service technology, your people are always your key asset, and I'm proud of what we've done to empower the team and make them feel good about the job they do. So that's an ongoing challenge in any organization, to actually just take the people that are closest to the customers and make them realize how important they are. So giving them voices is very important to me, and I think we've started down that journey. And allowing them to make connections, real personal connections, with our customers. So the value of that can't be underestimated I don't think, those conversations that they have are gold to an IT department, because they are really at the front end of knowing why people use technology, what they are using it for and what their challenges are. So I'm proud that we've started down that journey. And using metrics, I think. Using our data in a little bit of a better way. So I don't think we've really focused too much on using data to inform your strategic vision. And I think we absolutely must know how to do that. We've got rich sources of data in IT, we collect an awful lot, but what we don't do is analyze it and make sure that we're actually delivering things in a sensible way, necessarily, all the time.

So from a service desk perspective, I keep telling me staff that everything they do is recorded and very visible, and it's a mark of quality that they do everything right the first time, and they do make every effort to make sure that the quality of that incident management process is good from the very first connection with a customer. And now we're started to look at, you know, the big thing here is predictable service delivery, and matching our resource to what we know is going to happen. So we're gonna make use of our Advanced Service Management data to do that, and start to shift things left, as I mentioned before. So I'm proud that we've started down that journey. The bigger one I think is our support channels. So much like most organizations, the primary communication channels that people seem to love dearly and which we can't pry it out of their dying hands, is email. From the service desk perspective that is a real killer, because it's the slowest communication channel that you can think of.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah.

Carla Thornley: So I've been making every effort to focus people's attention not away from email, but to make sure that if it's something is urgent, you contact us by phone or by some other mechanism, hopefully chat one day too. And then actually that is the quickest and most pleasurable experience from a customer's perspective and gets the best service. So we have focused most of our attention on delivering fantastic telephone service. Our abandon rate has gone down from 40% in a very stark month last year, right down to less than 5%. And that's with a backdrop of where we've actually seen over 44% increase in the number of telephone calls to our service desk. So the team is very much now focused on being responsive and actually jumping on things quickly to make the connection with people, but then also to look at the efficiency of what we're doing. So I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of the team because they're working in a different way, and they're working very hard. The other thing we've done is integrate in our support solution into our service manager, Advanced Service Manager, which has been fantastic, and I think we will reap the dividends of that for quite some time in terms of providing remote support at people's desktop without actually physically being there. So I'm glad we've got that one over with as well. So it's a good position for us to be in.

Ian Aitchison: Well, that's great.

Carla Thornley: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, that's really good. It's interesting you started with personal connections, you came back to the importance of that and the difficulty I think everybody faces with email as a support channel. It's needed and in many cases it's impossible to turn it off, but it's one of the most inefficient ways of providing support. And an interesting point you made around metrics. And let me ask you a questions here. When you're guiding your teams on the value of personal connection and spending time with real people and understanding that connection, if you put metrics in that are very volume-based, that can sometimes build barriers. Have you found that to being a challenge, managing performance metrics that are data-driven versus the softer side of personal connections?

Carla Thornley: I think it is, yeah, definitely challenging. So in our previous roles it's been quite obvious that people either do one thing or the other, so some people focus very much on customer experience and the softer side. So if somebody has a fantastic experience and it takes two years, then fair enough. And other organizations are very much volumetric, volume-driven, so it is about introducing metrics about how long a call should take, or what the abandon rate is, and it's very kind of dry, numerical-based statistics which don't actually just engage with people. So I think we've tried hard here to find ways to make the numbers mean something. So, for example, when we're very, very busy, so one key metric is how long things are taking to be picked up by a person? So we automate our email coming in and obviously then it sits there until somebody does something with it. So I think that key metric of how old is the oldest thing that we need to next do? That's real to people, people understand that. But you're right, I think you've got to make every effort to make the numbers not just numbers when it comes to actually empowering people and motivating them, because it can be very off-putting to just have a number attached to you as a person.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, and you know we could talk for hours about that whole topic of what are the right things to measure to drive the right behavior, but we don't have time to do that, frustratingly. Let's find out from Steve his view of great successes in University of Cambridge. What do you say, Steve?

Steve Hoensch: Yeah, so I'd just say that, hearing what Beckett and Oxford are going through, it sounds exactly the same as what's happening in Cambridge. You know, there's so many similarities between the two that we've just heard. One of the great successes that we've started to invest in is automation. So allowing the customer to self-serve. So that's saving us a huge amounts of time, the number of tickets hitting the actual service desk. Changing requests into, sorry, incidents into service requests means that people can self-service, they can get access to the services quicker, and they don't even have to speak to an analyst for the simple tasks that are just repeatable over and over again. And that's something where we're really investing in now. And by doing that that takes away the pressure off the service desk so that they can concentrate on better training, more time to spend with the more complicated issues, and things like user creation or simple things with email along... I need to add myself to a distribution list, or something that can be done really quickly, the user can self-service. And because of the time we're getting back on that, we're now training staff. They're all, have just completed their foundation courses and we're looking at how we can invest in people in the future and get new people in.

So some of the challenges Sally was saying earlier about recruitment, we've now started to invest in getting younger people into the organization and giving apprenticeship schemes. That's because we've got the same challenges with Amazon. We've got Microsoft, we've got, even Apple have just set up in Cambridge, and we've got large pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca. So they pay a lot more, so us being able to invest in our staff, train them up, and if it's something they want to do and change jobs in the future, that's good for us as well because we can bring in new, fresh ideas into the organization. So it's working well for us.

Ian Aitchison: Oh, that's great. And again, that comes back to that point of you need fresh ideas coming in, you need fresh energy, as well as working with those that you have, to inspire them and insure that they're getting rewarded in the work they do.

Steve Hoensch: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: I'm glad you mentioned automation there, Steve. I think that's...Obviously I speak as a software vendor, but in all our conversations with our customers in all verticals, people are increasingly seeing that automation is the key to freeing people up from drudgery and letting them focus on the quality stuff. So it's good to hear that one being reflected back also in this space. Great. Okay, so looking at time, we're getting a little tight on time, so let's jump quickly into the next one. Obviously lots of viewers and listeners attending this, thank you for coming along, I hope it's great. What tips would you give them? Imagine they were stepping into your role in a leadership IT position in higher education. What tips would you give them, maybe most important three things, or one thing more than anything else, or be really clever, do this? Let's start with Carla this time around. Some top tips, Carla?

Carla Thornley: Top tips for somebody coming into a role like this one?

Ian Aitchison: Yes.

Carla Thornley: Yeah, I would say find out who does what. That's a really obvious thing, isn't it? But certainly this department is vast, and there are pockets of IT that do such special things. It takes a while to do that, so don't assume that things work in the way that you may have found out in another organization. In my experience, every IT department in the world, in every organization, is slightly different. It has a different nuance, it has a different culture, I guess. People do different things, basically. So make sure that you know who's doing what so that you can, not reinvent the wheel. So there's probably an awful lot of stuff going on that you weren't probably aware of, make sure that you make an effort to find out where the responsibilities lie and where people's pinch points are so that you can actually tap into that and provide good value. And find out about your people. So as I've said before, I'm really excited about the talent within my team. I started here by looking at people's job descriptions and what people were actually doing and tried to match that to what the customers needed, what we needed to deliver. And I think that was the right place to start. So I started with my analysts and rewrote their job descriptions and made sure that that was embedded fully. And then we looked at the seniors and we changed the focus of their roles so that they're much more about empowering and helping out their analyst colleagues. So really just make sure that you know what the challenges of the organization are, and make sure that the people understand what they're there to deliver. So that would be my top tip. Don't be afraid to revisit...

Carla Thornley: ...especially in higher education, because we've got somebody who's been sat there for 20 years, the chances are they will have pockets of knowledge that no one else is aware of, and they've been doing so for quite some time, just because it needed to be done. And if you don't known what that is, and you haven't managed to eke it out of someone, then you can find that you've got some single points of failure and more. And also it creates a more even playing field so that everybody knows what they're there to do and what the priorities for the team are.

Ian Aitchison: That's great. So take time to understand the people, understand the talent that they've got and the expertise that they've got and make sure that they're in the right place, doing something rewarding and beneficial for them.

Carla Thornley: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Excellent, that's a really strong, good message. Thank you, Carla, great advice. Let's ask Steve, what tips would you give?

Steve Hoensch: So I would say, so I've worked for the University of Cambridge for the last 17 years, and I've seen a lot of change happen. What I would say is we get a lot of corporate people start within higher education and they don't understand the culture, but they also don't understand the maturity of the department. So we see a lot of people coming in here, sort of high demands to make changes, they expect those changes to happen instantly. But the University doesn't work in that way. So coming across with ideas to improve performance or add a new tool in, but they have to understand that the higher education, we've got a lot of talented and clever people within the organization, and you've got to understand their needs and bring them along for the journey as well. An example of that was implementing the new ITMS tool that we have. It was a decision to implement that tool without bringing people along for the journey and that causes some problems because people didn't understand Itil at the time. They didn't understand the difference between and incident and a request. So what I would say is make sure that when you're going to adopt something within higher education that you've brought everyone along for the journey. If it is Itil, you need to train them all, at least get them to foundations, and then they'll understand and they'll get on board with that decision and that direction, and then you'll have much more success trying to deliver something.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, that's great. That makes sense, Steve. Yeah. So culture, recognize there is potentially a unique approach as you work in higher education. And again, the same message, work with the people, right?

Steve Hoensch: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Work with the people that do the work, that it is so important that they understand why and what and they're involved in the how.

Steve Hoensch: Yes.

Ian Aitchison: So a very strong message there, excellent. Thank you, Steve. And finally on this one, let's turn to Sally and see what Sally's top tips are.

Sally Bogg: I strive to be quite people-focused, but I think in terms of the role of a leader in IT, I think my biggest learning point was about authenticity and being real. So I came into IT in the minority as a woman in IT; and spent a lot of time thinking I needed to be just like everybody else that was around me, but quite frankly there's enough men in suits in IT, and I've actually learned to be my authentic real self. And that's where my leadership and my management comes from, and I've found that a really eye-opening, positive experience. But it was quite slow to the pasture with that one. And then really it is focusing on the people, you know? IT service management, frontline support, it really needs that magical mix of technical understanding, business and market awareness, and communication and customer service skills. And actually if we want to attract more diversity in tech, certainly within the HE sector we need a different approach to recruitment. We need to be thinking about how we can actually provide exciting opportunities for talented people rather than just recruiting against a very standard sort of job description. I think if you look at the higher education sector and our user base, it's probably one of the most diverse sectors to work in. Most universities have a fantastic international community, and we are delivering services to people of all background, ethnicities, ages, and actually IT needs to reflect that. We need to focus on diversity and having a more diverse workforce. That's just gonna increase creativity and innovation, encourage personal growth, and enable us to actually develop the talent, too, and I think that's really important. It just gets overlooked, that focus on people, which is a shame. So that would be my thing is in terms of leadership, be your authentic self and always put people first.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, great. Thank you, Sally. And again, kind of reinforcing, again, that point about people, but also bringing the leadership, personal style, authenticity. I love that phrase you use, "...exciting opportunities for talented people." And that's similar to a phrase you used earlier about "the right people doing the right job and at the right time." I think bringing those together is a message I've certainly got as we've gone through this session. Technology's important, technology saves time and does things quicker, but the people are far and away just as much in higher education as anywhere else, maybe even more in higher education, the people are so important and giving people fulfilling roles and exciting careers and getting to try new things and get rewarded in what they do is an essential part, I guess, in building an inspired team that delivers service. That's awesome. You know what? We have loads more questions and we don't have any more time, unfortunately. So we'll skip the other ones. That was really interesting. Thank you. I hope that those listening to this got some good value, I think that it's really interesting the commonality and some of the differences. I wish we had more time to dig into more of these topics, actually. So that was great fun. I'll say thank you very much to our panel. Thank you to Steve Hoensch. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Hoensch: Cheers.

Ian Aitchison: Thank you to Sally Bogg. Thank you, Sally.

Sally Bogg: No problem, thank you.

Ian Aitchison: And than you very much to Carla Thornley. Thank you, Carla.

Carla Thornley: Thank you.

Ian Aitchison: Okay, thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for attending.

Customers of Ivanti Make Top World University Rankings

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 23:02:07 Z

What do the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have in common? Well, there are the obvious similarities. Tuition is about the same, university population is quite large for both (150,000 students at Oxford and around 124,000 at Cambridge), and they’re both based in the UK.

The similarities that catch our attention, however, are these two: They both rank in the top two of World University Rankings 2019 for the second year in a row, and they both use Ivanti. Did you catch that?

They both use Ivanti!

Request a Quote

Which begs the question: Do they rank highest among universities because they use Ivanti, or do they use Ivanti because they rank highest among universities? We’ll let you decide. But first let’s get a few more details.

What are the Times Higher Education World University Rankings?

According to the website, they are the only global university ranking system that uses 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to evaluate universities on everything from research to teaching. The results are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, and governments alike.

How many universities were ranked in the 2019 study?

More than 1,250 universities were ranked in the latest study.

What are the top 10 universities?

2019 rank	2018 rank	University	Country
1	1	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
2	2	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
3	=3	Stanford University	United States
4	5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
5	=3	California Institute of Technology	United States
6	6	Harvard University	United States
7	7	Princeton University	United States
8	12	Yale University	United States
9	8	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
10	9	University of Chicago	United States

Now, back to Ivanti. What exactly do we offer each university?

Ivanti has helped the University of Oxford deliver the functionality that they need to be able to cope with their complex environment. They have also been working with some of the product development team to provide user feedback on new functionality, and the partnership has been mutually beneficial.

Here is the official video:

Ivanti + University of Oxford

The University of Cambridge is currently using Ivanti ITSM and Cloud. Because of Ivanti, they've been able to unify multiple different service desk tools.

Here is the official video:

Ivanti + University of Cambridge

We're thrilled to have such renowned customers around the world. Thank you for choosing Ivanti!

Learn more about our customers

UK University Goes Live With Ivanti Service Manager

Wed, 23 May 2018 22:28:47 Z

Leeds Beckett University just implemented Ivanti Service Manager! We sat down with their head of end user services, Sally Bogg, to talk about the implementation.

Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Leeds Beckett University.

SB: I am a tea drinking, shoe loving, Yorkshire lass with a keen interest in service desk, customer service excellence, and higher education. As an alumni of Leeds Beckett University, I joined the university's IT services department in December 2015 as head of end user services, which is the same position I have today. My role is to lead, develop, and manage the teams responsible for end user services.

I am also leading on a programme of work called the Unified Service Delivery Model. The vision for this programme is to use standardised ITIL processes and a shared ITSM solution to provide a single point of contact for users of IT systems and services, improving communication and information, ensuring the effective turnaround of incidents and service requests, increasing customer service and satisfaction, and providing meaningful management information for effective decision making.

I have a passion for customer service and higher education which ensures that I put student experience at the heart of service improvement and am keen to support the empowerment and enhancement of women in tech.

Q: If my understanding is correct, you used to use our old ITSM product and have now moved on to ISM. Why did you make that decision?

SB: So often ITSM tools are purchased as a silver bullet and a catch all solution to implementing ITIL but the reality is that they can’t change your organizational culture or fix broken support processes. We had been Landesk customers for many years but our implementation was suffering from a lack of investment and development. Consideration was given to purchasing a new product but we felt that would be wasting the significant investment we had made in our relationship with Landesk over the years. We decided that we would start from scratch, redesigning our ITSM processes and rebuilding our system from the ground up. Just was we were in the planning phase of this the merger came about and we saw an opportunity to move to a new platform whilst keeping our strong relationship with Ivanti moving from an on premise to cloud solution at the same time.

Q: What Ivanti products do you use?

SB: We are using Ivanti Service Manager and Ivanti Protect.

Q: How has the onboarding process with Ivanti gone? How has using ISM changed (or is changing) your IT team and user experience?

SB: The IT support teams are really happy with how the launch has gone to date, particularly with the communication and information they have received both before and after the initial implementation. There was a level of apprehension related to the new tool but we have been delighted with how it has been received so far and the potential for evolution and development in the coming weeks. It already feels like a positive step forward for how we manage our services, boosted by the knowledge that with continued engagement and development it is only going to get better.

It was particularly useful to have the Ivanti consultant on site during the first couple of days.

Q: What’s the next pain point you are trying to solve in your IT department (asset management, or log in times, for example)?

SB: We are already starting to scope and plan for Phase 2 of Ivanti Service Manager. This will include further development of our IT Self Service Portal to deliver empowered self-help to our users, the introduction of server assets to provide better control and management of the IT infrastructure components and the expansion of our knowledge management process.

Q: Anything else you’d like our readers to know about ISM or Ivanti generally?

SB: We want to add a thanks to everyone involved in the implementation both at Leeds Beckett and Ivanti. This is only the start of our Unified Service Delivery Model journey and there remains much to do but the additional functionality we have gained with Ivanti Service Manager will greatly enhance our service proposition and improve customer access to our services and help demonstrate our accountability for the effective delivery of IT to the University. We look forward to further developing and building a strategic partnership with Ivanti!

Well done to everyone involved!

Get to Know Your Customers Day: Sally Bogg

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:00:20 Z

In honor of Get To Know Your Customers Day, we sat down with one of our customers, Sally Bogg of Leeds Beckett University (LBU), to get her thoughts, aspirations, and insights into her daily life as one of Ivanti's favorite women in tech.

Our Q&A session revealed some interesting facts about Sally, including her desire for more women in tech.

How long have you been working at Ivanti?

I have been directly involved with Ivanti since I joined LBU in December 2015. However, when I previously worked at the University of Leeds, HEAT was our ITSM tool for many years. So I guess you could say I have been working with Ivanti in various forms for the past 10 years.

How would you describe Ivanti?

Forward-thinking, customer-focused, sector-leading, and exciting.

How did you get into ITSM?

I graduated from Leeds Beckett University in 2006 with a degree in computing (database systems), but I knew that I wanted to work in education.

In October 2006, I successfully applied for an admin role in the IT department at the University of Leeds where I was responsible for managing the relationships with some of our third-party telecommunication companies. I got involved in service reporting and service level management, and then a number of service issues resulted in the implementation of a Continual Service Improvement Plan.

This introduction to service management really sparked my interest and I started reading up on ITIL. Eighteen months later, the department created a new job posting for an incident manager. This was the first ITIL process role within the department. I applied and was successful, taking both my ITIL V2 Foundation, and ITIL V2 Practitioner Incident and Service Desk certifications in the first two months of my new job.

Although I had gone to school for a technical degree, I found that I was much more interested in the service and support elements of IT. Having previously worked in retail, I have always been really passionate about customer service, so I found that ITIL played to my strengths.

I am so passionate about it that I completed a masters in IT Service Management in 2013. I am also excited to see where ITSM is going, and really want to see the focus move away from process to people.

Tell us about Women in Tech and how you’re involved.

I have worked in IT for the last 11 years in the higher education sector, and I have always been really struck by the lack of women in tech. My experience at University was similar. Out of a cohort of 200, there were fewer than a dozen female students—and I was probably the only one who had kids.

It often felt quite intimidating walking into a lecture theatre that was full of men. It is such a fantastic sector to work in and there are so many opportunities. I want to make sure these opportunities are open to everyone.

Diversity in the workplace is really important, and a key element to that is ensuring that women are well represented in the tech workforce. I regularly use social media to promote events and engage in lively debates around women in tech. I am currently working on creating a Women in IT networking event for UCISA, and as a conference organizer, I always ensure there is strong representation from women. I am also a supporter of Tech Mums.

Any pearls of wisdom to offer young women who want to get into tech?

Be brave, speak up, and don’t be afraid to take a few risks along the way. Find an advocate, someone that will mentor and support you. Don’t wait for opportunities to come knocking—go out and look for them. Joining organizations or committees is a great way to build a strong network and enhance your skills and experience.

Take advantage of social media (particularly Twitter and LinkedIn) to promote yourself and raise your profile. Women in tech can’t afford to be modest!

Do you have a favorite mantra/saying? Someone you look up to?

Dr. Sue Black is my absolute hero. She is such a fantastic role model for young women from under privileged backgrounds and she is so passionate about education. She was involved in saving Bletchley Park and has set up an amazing organization called Tech Mums which aims to empower mums, their families, and their communities with technology.

I am also a huge fan of Dr. Suess and often use quotes from his book in presentations, my favorite is: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not.”

Ivanti Customer Wins Inspirational Leader of the Year in Birmingham

Sat, 16 Sep 2017 05:28:43 Z

Meet Sally Bogg, winner of IT Service Desk's Inspirational Leader of the Year award, which recognizes the positive and sustainable impact Sally has had on staff at Leeds Beckett University as well as on the service desk industry at large.

Sally's non-traditional career path

With over 10 years of experience in providing IT support services, Sally has followed a surprisingly non-traditional career path. She had her first baby at the age of 17 in 1991—a time when there was very little educational support for teenage mothers. As a result, she was forced to leave school. By age 25, Sally had two more children and was a stay-at-home mom.

Determined to finish school amid the responsibilities of being a mother, Sally graduated from Leeds Beckett University with a bachelor's degree in computing, and eventually went on to complete a master's degree in IT service management. She credits her college experience for kick-starting her career in IT and fueling her love for higher education.

Higher education career achievements

Sally joined Leeds Beckett University as head of end user services in December 2015 from her previous role as IT service desk manager at the University of Leeds. Over the years, she has established herself as one of the leading voices in the higher education IT industry. Here are a few of her career highlights:

She is Chair of the UCISA Support Services Group (the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association, a body which represents most all the major UK universities and higher education colleges); a member of the UCISA Executive Team; and a member of the UCISA Support Service Conference Organizing Committee. She also hosted the 2014 and 2015 UCISA Support Service conferences.
Sally regularly presents and delivers sessions at internal and external events on topics ranging from Service Desk Certification, to Customer Experience, to improving Staff Satisfaction within IT. In November 2016, she was invited to speak at the UCISA’s Project and Change Management Conference where she delivered a session on the benefits of Service Transition.
As well as this, Sally was the lead author and contributor to the H.E. Service Desk Toolkit, published in July 2017–a resource which has had a hugely positive impact on the sector.
Sally was also chosen as the inspirational speaker for the University of Edinburgh’s UniDesk 2017 conference, which took place in mid-August.

Support for Women in IT

Sally is also a dedicated advocate for Women in IT. She uses her Twitter profile to promote events and engage in lively debates around equality in IT. She is currently working on creating a Women in IT networking event for the UCISA and, as a conference organizer, she always ensures that women are strongly represented at events.

To celebrate International Women’s Day in 2017, Sally published an article on the Leeds Beckett University website to promote the hard work of all the women working in IT Services at the University. Sally was the first female winner of the Service Desk Institute’s IT Service & Support Awards Inspirational Leader award in April 2017. Sally is also a supporter of TechMums, an initiative that aims to empower women through technology; Sally pays a monthly subscription to support their work and also actively promotes the movement on social media.

Acceptance speech

Commenting after receiving the award, Sally said: “We use the words customer service, student experience, student voice and customer journey frequently and easily, but sometimes it’s important to reflect on what that actually means. Universities are full of remarkable people with remarkable stories and I know as a graduate of Leeds Beckett University that for every single one of our students, the opportunity for a university education can be a life changing experience. I am thrilled to have received this award and proud that I have been able to play a part in driving forward professionalism and customer excellence here at Leeds Beckett and within the higher education sector."