Loyola University Grants User Access 80% Faster with Ivanti Service Manager

Driving greater service desk efficiency

Loyola University Chicago needed to simplify and optimize service desk support processes for its large population of faculty, staff, students and alumni. The university relies heavily on a student workforce to provide IT support for all its end-user computing needs – including help desk ticket management and resolution. Since student labor changes every 15 weeks, Loyola required an IT service desk system that was not only easy to use, but that could also enable student workers to get up to speed quickly.

Familiar with earlier IT service management (ITSM) solutions from Ivanti, the Loyola University IT team decided to evaluate Ivanti Service Manager and quickly discovered it made their ITSM workflow much simpler to use for all personnel. This, in turn, resulted in faster ticket resolution and more efficient helpdesk response, thus encouraging greater adoption across the university without burdening IT for additional staff support.

“Using Ivanti Service Manager in the cloud makes it easy to get things done because we can do it ourselves, without needing more internal or technical resources,” says Alison Stillwell, IT service desk manager, Loyola University. “We’re getting so much acceptance that we now have to prioritize all the requests for new IT service applications. It’s a nice challenge to have.”

Increasing service desk value through self-service

Ivanti Service Manager delivers powerful knowledge management, secure access controls and self-service capabilities for Loyola University. In particular, the new self-service catalog has given end users an easy access portal for quick incident and service request response. This feature has inspired interest in new applications across university departments and encouraged the expanded use of ITSM through more recognized value.

“We have a lot of new faculty and staff that are onboarding with the university and need to get multiple things hooked up,” says Will Schultze, senior application administrator, Loyola IT service desk. “Once they realize that they can simply log into a portal, fill out one form and be done, we started to see great traction. It’s a one-stop shop to get everything they need ready. It’s been awesome.”

Automating service response with Ivanti

Once Loyola University transformed its ITSM processes with Ivanti, it quickly realized the significant benefits of streamlined ticketing and automated workflows.

These benefits became of particular value when Loyola University made the March Madness Final Four in 2018. This sports milestone and heightened university pride meant that there was a significant influx of requests from alumni to reactivate their university email accounts.

“When we went to the Final Four we had an alumni explosion with alumni coming back from many, many years to reactivate their accounts,” says Stillwell. “Using Ivanti we were able to automate the process that used to take us seven to 10 days to perform manually. As a result, we were able to reactivate alumni accounts in as little as 24 hours.”

Additional benefits of Ivanti Service Manager for Loyola University include:

• Accelerated incident request resolution. Automated quick action responses and templates have made resolution possible with a simple one- to two-click procedure.

• More efficient service request process. New faculty, for example, can now onboard and request all applications via an easy-to-use portal, starting with just one form.

• Faster student training. Knowledge management in the form of articles and templates provide tools students can use to get up to speed quicker for more rapid service request and ticket response.

• Simple workflow customization. IT service automation drag and drop workflows makes it easy to customize policies for specific groups of users.

“Working with the Ivanti platform enables me to make small tweaks that have an impact on a particular user group,” says Schultze. “I really appreciate the platform’s flexibility. I can do things very nimbly. It’s that one small piece that makes a group’s job a little bit easier.”

Delivering IT services with ease

Since implementing the cloud-enabled Ivanti Service Manager, Loyola University has not only simplified ticketing processes with streamlined workflow and templates, it’s realized more IT value.

Results seen by Loyola University include:

• Time spent granting access control rights for users has been reduced by 80%.

• Students are more effective and respond faster to service requests by using knowledge base tools and templates.

• Security has been improved by automating access rules and securing user approval even before addressing technical incidents.

• Separating incident and service requests has enabled more personnel to make use of the ITSM portal for new services.

• The use of rogue applications across the university that were previously undetected and controlled has been greatly minimized.

Following the successful adoption of Ivanti Service Manager, Loyola University is now integrating it with its medical center campus faculty and staff. This will further improve IT productivity as well as reporting and user response.

“Now our senior management sees the opportunity for using Ivanti in other applications,” says Stilwell. “They ask, ‘Can Ivanti do this?’ They’re very excited when we tell them, ‘Yes it can!’ It’s a major win for us.”

_{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.}