London School of EconomicsITSM Transformation

Download the full case study
London School of EconomicsITSM Transformation Download the full case study

University Service Desk

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is one of the foremost social science universities in the world, boasting 23 academic departments and 22 research centres that cater to nearly 12,000 students.

 

The Approach

LSE identified that a number of core ITSM processes needed to be refreshed – in line with current best practices – and improvements to services made to give a new toolset the best chance of success.

“Pink Elephant gave us an objective view of our ITIL™ maturity level, with clear objectives”

The university enlisted the services of Pink Elephant in 2017 to carry out a maturity assessment of the core ITSM processes, and to assist with the selection of the new toolset. Chris Andrews, LSE Service Management Consultant:

“Pink Elephant gave us an objective view of our ITIL™ maturity level, with clear objectives on how to improve our ITIL™ processes. Pink also assisted in the process of selecting a new ITSM tool, which meant there was someone on our side which proved invaluable. Working with Pink has been an eye-opening experience and we look forward to implementing their recommendations.”

The scope of the engagement was to review processes such as Incident Management, Request Fulfillment, Problem Management and Change Management. Pink Elephant was also charged with investigating how surveys could be used to gauge customer satisfaction and how the self-help portal could be reinvigorated.

Peter Hubbard, Pink Elephant EMEA’s Principal Consultant: “An engagement such as this should always start with understanding the client’s current and desired working practices, otherwise they can find themselves picking a toolset that does not do what they want, or even worse, prevents them from working the way they need to in order to serve their users.”

Our Solution

LSE’s core ITSM processes underwent a PinkScan™ – an independent, objective assessment of ITSM process maturity (as compared to ITIL™ best practices) that provides a baseline to enable future improvements. The PinkScan™ involved interviews and workshops with all relevant personnel and senior management to obtain an overall view of the IT structure and service roadmap. This then
identified potential issues or ideas for improvement that may otherwise have been missed. PinkScan™ uses a maturity scale of 1–5, based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) developed by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute. Pink Elephant was the first to specifically use CMM to assess ITSM, and it has since become the definitive reference in the industry.

Pink Elephant worked with LSE to create the toolset RFP and helped with a shortlist of vendors that responded. The Cherwell tool was selected on the basis that it had industry-leading functionality combined with a user-friendly customer portal.

An important consideration was ensuring that the tool selected was scalable and could be used to support key business needs.

With the PinkScan™ and PinkSELECT™ services, Pink Elephant delivered a costed business case with a supporting high-level roadmap to achieve the university’s desired vision. Following the selection of the Cherwell product, the project the team was tasked with deploying the solution across the LSE live environment effectively and with as little disruption to end-users as possible.

The implementation was completed in Q1 2018, with all core ITSM processes refreshed and optimised. The result is a new ITSM tool that best meets LSE’s needs, with optimised processes and successful installation. Not only has this hugely improved the workflow of the technical support teams (and so has boosted their morale), but it has enabled an excellent IT customer service fit for a world-class university.

Customer Benefits

 

  • A clear and concise roadmap
  • Workshops to optimise buy-in
  • SWOT-analysis
  • ITSM toolset selection support
  • Process improvement support
  • Asset Management introduction
  • Improvement of service quality
  • Increase in staff engagement and morale
  • Improved customer experience and satisfaction

 

Download the full case study

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Gijs-Jan Huisman

Managing Director EMEA +44 (0)7850 776 090

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