Enable Professional Services deploys ServiceNow to the University of Adelaide

The University of Adelaide has tapped Melbourne-based Enable Professional Services to deploy ServiceNow’s IT service management (ITSM) platform.

The university had a legacy on-premises platform that had reached its end of life in terms of capacity, and sought to upgrade the systems to meet its growing needs.

Enable was initially engaged in March 2020 to conduct discovery workshops to build out a roadmap to uplift its service management, later collaborating to further define the structure of services they wanted until the implementation got the go-ahead to start in November that year.

“The work allowed us to collaborate with the University to further define the structure of services they wanted to deliver and the structure of their server management office,” Enable general manager of innovation George Skordos said.

“[The university] also worked with us on the areas of the ServiceNow platform that we would also be able to assist in delivering the scope of work.”

Skordos said restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic presented the biggest challenge for both parties, especially as the university shifted more online than before. The internal IT team was heavily involved in delivering the IT capability to accommodate the shirt, adding more demand on the team.

Enable also had the sponsorship of the university executives, with support from University of Adelaide CIO Bev Wright and IT director of operations Simon Howard.

“We were able to stay the course and adapt to changing conditions while still delivering on the priorities and outcome and everyone having visibility on the progress,” Skordos added.

The implementation went live in June 2021, which has since received some 5000 requests through the new ServiceNow self-service portal. The university reported reduced request processing time by up to 80 percent thanks to streamlined workflows, automated data validation and increased self-service access.

University of Adelaide CIO Bev Wright said, “ServiceNow’s platform has helped change the way our IT operations work and how staff and students access our IT services. The university is a large, complex organisation and by digitising our workflows we’ve been able to move away from paper based and legacy systems with manual data entry to an integrated system with more effective services, and a great user experience.”

“Since implementation, 100 percent of our IT support teams have logged into the system and our Connect Chat live chat has been especially popular with students, with hundreds of live-chats and self-service portal usage in its first week. We’ve also moved more than 1,500 knowledge base articles onto our self-service portal, making it easier for staff and students to access key information.”

In addition to ITSM, Enable also deployed ServiceNow Discovery and ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to create a complete and accurate record of the university’s IT infrastructure. The system has since added some 300,000 assets in the University’s database.

Looking ahead, Enable will continue working on the implementation, specifically increasing automation capabilities, increasing visibility on software and exploring the use of enterprise service management across other corporate functions.

The company is also aiming to continue its collaboration with University of Adelaide through a new offering based on ServiceNow’s App Engine, which aims to solve some specific education problems.