2014 Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology
Building a Service-oriented Culture at UC Davis
Submitter’s Name
Anita Nichols, Client Services Manager, Information
and Educational Technology (IET)
ajnichols@ucdavis.edu / (530) 752 4386
Project Name
IT Service Management Program
Sponsor
Morna Mellor, Senior Director, IET
Contributing Organizations
College of Engineering (CoE)
Information and Educational Technology (IET)
Office of Chancellor and Provost (OCP)
School of Education (SoE)
School of Law
Technologies Utilized
ServiceNow
Bomgar
Drupal
Logi Analytics
Project Timeframe
February 2013 – current
Relevant URLs
http://itsm.ucdavis.edu
http://itsm.ucdavis.edu/about
http://itcatalog.ucdavis.edu
http://itexpress.ucdavis.edu
http://atswp.ucdavis.edu/studenttech
http://kb.ucdavis.edu
http://ucdavisit.service-now.com/ess (launches
5/29/2014)
May 16, 2014
Key Contributors
Ahna Ligtenberg Heller (Communication Analyst, IET)
Anita Nichols (Client Services Manager, IET)
Aric Horstman (ServiceNow Admin, UC Berkeley)
Arnaud Menut (Programmer, IET)
Bill Buchanan (Senior Writer, IET)
Carson Black (Web Development, IET)
Caryn DeMoura (Student Support Supervisor, IET)
Dan Wright (IT Express Supervisor, IET)
Florencio Inzunza III (Director of Technology, OCP)
Jamie Butler (Executive Director of IT, CoE)
Jason Fearing (Knowledge Management Analyst, IET)
Jesse Avina (IT Express Analyst, IET)
Joshua Smith (Desktop Support Analyst, IET)
Student Support Group
Joshua Van Horn (Enterprise Services Manager, IET)
Justin Anonuevo (Reporting Analyst, UC Berkeley)
Kam Chand (IT Express Analyst, IET)
Ken Jones (IT Service Manager, CoE)
Kevin Loenker (IT Express Analyst, IET)
Mark Deamer (Graphic Designer, IET)
Mark Miller (Web Development, IET)
Michael Loranc (IT Express Analyst, IET)
Mike Waid (IT Express Team Lead, IET)
Minor Rojas (IT Business Process Analyst, IET)
Nancy Wallace (IT Express Analyst, IET)
Quico Gonzalez (Data Center Manager, IET)
Shawn DeArmond (Web Development, IET)
Steve Pigg (IT Director, SoE)
Steven Schwarz (Director of IT, CIO, School of Law)
Sukhjinder Gill (ServiceNow Administrator, IET)
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2014 Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology
The IT Service Management team developed and implemented a comprehensive IT Service Management
program in less than a year, concurrent to launching the service automation platform, ServiceNow. The core
project team’s long term vision, to become a premier IT service management provider, drove its short term
goals and continues to drive its achievements. Within a year, the team took the disparate pieces of an
unorganized service management offering and put them together in a way that is cohesive, recognizable,
customer-focused, and has ultimately started them on the path to improve the way that IT services are
delivered at UC Davis.
The team’s innovation in information technology is their approach to IT service management. They determined
early on that customer experience must be considered every step of the way, and consequently, they developed
an approach to guide them that focuses “outside-in” rather than the traditional “inside-out.”
How the journey began
Customer feedback identified a gap between the perceptions of IT staff who provided IT services and campus
customers who received them. IT services were requested and captured using multiple ticket management tools
and over 70 email addresses. This contributed to the customers’ perception of IT services as difficult to obtain,
complicated and confusing.
In August 2012, Morna Mellor, the Senior Director of Enterprise, Application, Infrastructure Services at UC Davis,
launched an initiative to identify and evaluate opportunities to improve service management capabilities for the
campus. Included in the improvement plan were the following:
1. Establishment of a governance model with focus on the needs of IT service management on campus
2. Development of a knowledge management capability to provide opportunities to make service support
more efficient and consistent to the campus community
3. Adopting a flexible tool (ServiceNow) to provide a balance between autonomy and independence of
individual campus colleges with the economy of scale afforded by the consolidation of processes and
tools
4. Development of a service catalog to provide a location for customers to find information regarding
available IT services and for service managers to market the features and benefits of such services
5. Implement an online reporting tool to enable service-level management
Project initiation
The project was framed with customer-centric goals that had the usual constraints of limited resources and
urgent timing. The uniqueness of our approach was that most of our achievements were not through a “top
down” edict, but rather represented the collaborative, community-based approach of departments and units at
UC Davis united through the desire to deliver more effective IT services. This was accomplished through
centralizing in a decentralized environment and embracing the concept of sharing information and a “virtual”
service desk.
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2014 Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology
What we accomplished
ServiceNow Pilot – February 2013
Key Contributors: Jamie Butler, Quico Gonzalez, Ken Jones, Anita Nichols, Steve Pigg
Absent a multi-million dollar budget, and highly constrained by a short implementation timeframe, the initial
project team determined that a pilot launch of ServiceNow would be beneficial. The College of Engineering
served as the ServiceNow test pilot, which was launched in February 2013. Lessons learned from the pilot
included that success would be best achieved by using agile methodology to move through the development
process instead of a “big bang” deployment. An Agile Scrum team was trained and the planning, developing,
releasing, learning, and improving quickly followed. The early successes outweighed the initial risks and word
caught on that ServiceNow was working.
Established Governance – February 2013
Key Contributors: Quico Gonzalez, Florencio Inzunza III, Ken Jones, Anita Nichols, Steve Pigg, Minor Rojas, Steven Schwarz, Joshua Van
Horn
The project team developed a governance model that sought to guide how service capabilities were planned,
designed, developed, and deployed to the community of IT service providers. It was decided that the primary
service providers would form the governance committee. These stakeholders became the ITSM Technical
Committee. The core team iterated through the purpose, authority, and decision making questions that all new
committees struggle with but found that the charter to focus on the customer first helped them in the decisionmaking process.
Developed the ITSM team identity and branding – July 2013
Key Contributors: Justin Anonuevo, Bill Buchanan, Mark Deamer, Caryn DeMoura, Jason Fearing, Ahna Ligtenberg Heller, Anita Nichols,
Minor Rojas, Dan Wright
The ITSM team developed a mission and values to help guide development of the service management program.
They also developed a cohesive “look and feel” to identify all of their tools and services.
ServiceNow Launch – August 2013
Key Contributors: Jason Fearing, Quico Gonzalez, Aric Horstman, IT Express, Ken Jones, Ahna Ligtenberg Heller, Anita Nichols, Minor
Rojas,
Information and Educational Technology and School of Education joined College of Engineering in ServiceNow
on August 29, 2013. Overnight, a virtual support service desk appeared and customers only needed to know one
email address, (compared to the previous 70 email addresses) to get help.
Prior to the launch, ServiceNow training, which was developed in-house, was provided to all 125 support
analysts who were on-boarded in August. The 3-hour training included foundational knowledge of the tool,
usability assistance, tips and tricks, an interactive team-based Jeopardy-style game and a hands-on practical lab.
This customized in-person training program was delivered to multiple teams and received outstanding survey
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2014 Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology
responses. Since the August launch, another 100 people have received training. The ITSM team has also
prepared web-based video content for reinforcement.
Steve Pigg, IT Director of the School of Education said, “Once IT groups realize the benefits inherent to
ServiceNow –transparency, community and improved communication – the use of the tool will become a
campus-wide phenomena, because, ultimately, we are all serving the same customer – UC Davis.”
Launched ITSM website –itsm.ucdavis.edu– August 2013
Key Contributors: Justin Anonuevo, Carson Black, Jason Fearing, Ahna Ligtenberg Heller, Anita Nichols, Minor Rojas
The ITSM website includes a snapshot of ITSM theory and research and introduces visitors to the project team
and the technical committee. The website includes a blog, “Roundabout,” with columns by members of the ITSM
team. An e-newsletter – ITSM Cycle - is sent monthly to the ServiceNow community detailing release notes and
other helpful news, information and links to the ITSM site.
Launched Service Level Reporting – September 2013
Key Contributors: Justin Anonuevo, Arnaud Menut, Anita Nichols
Logi Analytics, a web-based business intelligence product, was implemented to address complex service
reporting requirements needed to aggregate, manage and monitor metrics from multiples sources, such as the
Automated Call Distribution system, ServiceNow, network monitoring systems, etc. Phase 2 will include
publishing the service level metrics online, allowing interested stakeholders to evaluate IET service delivery.
Launched the IT Service Catalog – itcatalog.ucdavis.edu – October 2013
Key Contributors: Armando Arbizo, Carson Black, Mark Deamer, Mark Miller, Shawn DeArmond, Ahna Ligtenberg Heller, Anita Nichols
The UC Davis IT Service Catalog, built in Drupal (an open source content management system), currently houses
150+ services, both business and technical. A considerable amount of time was spent designing the service
detail page, to ensure that fields can accurately and effectively showcase each service. The Service Catalog will
soon include a feature called “Emerging Services” which will give service owners and project managers the
ability to market services before they are in production.
Revitalized IT Express, UC Davis’ central service desk, and added new capabilities – October 2013
Key Contributors: Jesse Avina, Bill Buchanan, Kam Chand, Ahna Ligtenberg Heller, Kevin Loenker, Michael Loranc, Anita Nichols, Mike
Waid, Nancy Wallace, Dan Wright
The revitalization of IT Express began in 2013 with training the staff on excellence in technical support,
culminating in achieving HDI team certification in October 2013. The revitalization effort continued into 2014
and included IT Express changing hours to better align with campus need, adding Bomgar chat and remote
desktop control functionality, redesigning the website and adding a Facebook page to improve campus
communications. These changes help meet the goal of providing a multi-channel support model to improve the
customer experience.
Emeritus professors, who are frequent callers to IT Express, appreciate the higher level of service that Bomgar
remote control offers. In addition, analysts note calls lengths have significantly reduced due to remote support.
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2014 Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology
After an iterative and formalized approach to transitioning support, IT Express is now the single point of contact
for IET and Office of the Chancellor and Provost (OCP). Through formalizing support transitions, they have
reduced the total cost of support while simultaneously creating documented, standardized service offerings.
Launched the Student Support Program – November 2013
Key Contributors: Jesse Avina, Caryn DeMoura, Jason Fearing, Ahna Ligtenberg Heller, Anita Nichols, Mike Waid
Last fall, the ITSM team launched the Student Support Program by initially hiring eight students; four more
students were hired this spring. The students are now working on first tier support at IT Express, the central
service desk, and as knowledge and web analysts. In support of the customer-centric approach to all elements
of the service management program, students conduct focus groups to engage the UC Davis campus community
on topics such as effective web content, improving customer service and user experience.
In addition, the Program supports UC Davis students by providing practical job and project experience, from web
development, user experience design, technical support and technical writing.
Launched the Knowledge Base – knowledgebase.ucdavis.edu – February 2014
Key Contributors: Jason Fearing, Anita Nichols, Aric Horstman, Justin Anonuevo, Kevin Loenker, Joshua Smith
The campus’ legacy knowledge base, xBase, has been replaced with a new Knowledge Base that is integrated
into ServiceNow. Existing knowledge has been transitioned to the new knowledge base and content has been
refreshed. The “look and feel” of the new Knowledge Base and the Service Catalog are similar and the same
categories are used to search for both knowledge and services. There are logical cross linkages on both sites so
customers experience a unified front when visiting both sites.
Knowledge Management training was created to foster a culture of knowledge transfer among analysts by
providing an easy to follow method for communicating support steps to customers, consequently driving “Tier
0” inquiries toward our knowledge base and enabling support staff to tackle more complex customer support
needs.
Launching the Employee Self-Service (ESS) portal – May 2014
Key Contributors: Mark Deamer, Sukhjinder Gill, Mark Miller, Anita Nichols, Minor Rojas
The ESS portal introduces the campus to the concept of self-service which can expedite response to customer
needs and reduce overhead at the service desk. Customers can bookmark a portal where they access IT services,
search the IT Knowledge Base, and submit requests for help. The portal’s consistency with the “look and feel” of
other IT Service Management websites creates a recognizable service experience for customers.
How we achieved our mission
A nimble, lean project team and strong support from participating stakeholders helped move the project along
at a quick pace. The grass roots, collaborative approach coupled with utilization of the agile methodology helped
the team achieve more than they thought possible within a short amount of time.
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2014 Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology
A focus on user experience guided efforts and decision-making, ensuring that all levels and types of customer
interactions were considered. Additionally, providing customers with an effective mechanism and process for
providing feedback and suggestions for improvement – and quickly integrating the feedback into the
development process – improved the customer experience and ultimately helped the team gain new customers
on campus.
The results
To date, the initiative has resulted in the introduction of brand new, best-of-breed self-service tools,
standardized information and user-friendly resources. These include: a comprehensive, searchable knowledge
base filled with information on a variety of IET and campus services; a service catalog with 150+ entries; and
multiple ways for customers to provide feedback on their needs and experience. For the first time, users can
submit requests or incidents and then track their status through to completion – all online. On the back end, the
IT support teams, both in IET and in other departments, now have access to a service management platform that
enables them to manage and track IT incidents, problems and requests with much greater efficiency. A
customer’s experience can now be understood and supported more efficiently, wherever it might originate. Also
available for the first time are reporting tools with analytics capabilities that will give us a holistic view of
support trends across the enterprise.
After just a year since it was launched, this multi-phase initiative is still in its infancy, and yet it has already
yielded many important benefits. At UC Davis, it has resulted in greater operational efficiency and it has
enhanced customer service. It has also brought together the IT service community in the pursuit of common
goals. This is a strategy that other campuses could adapt and implement to suit their own environments so they
too can deliver services better, faster, with greater consistency, and at lower cost.
What’s next?
This isn’t the end of the journey. The foundation is in place and the team is ready for the next stage which
includes implementing change management, asset management, and continuing the development of the IT
service catalog and ESS portal.
IT service management is not just about the process and the tools; it is about engaging and delighting
customers. At UC Davis, the team took a comprehensive approach to developing and implementing their ITSM
program. Packaging the program in a cohesive and recognizable way helps customers engage with the tools and
services. The team started the project with the awareness that an important part of the customer experience is
the “look and feel” of the sites customers visit and the messages they receive. By listening to their customers
and designing tools and services with their perspective in mind, the team will continue to achieve their goal of
creating a customer experience from the “outside-in.” As Ken Jones (IT Service Manager, College of Engineering)
said, “IET is demonstrating that they are changing their method of service delivery from ‘look what we built,
want to use it?’ to ‘let’s work together to find the best solutions for our customers’.”
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