Millfield School

Providing new possibilities for schools

Having created a basic, bespoke IT service management system in SharePoint, Millfield decided it was time to upgrade to TOPdesk to give them more scope in their service delivery. The enhancement meant they could better manage tickets, report on specific data, and support multiple departments in one place.

We spoke to Helen Jones, IT Services, to find out how they’re using TOPdesk to deliver service excellence at Millfield School.

Battling with budgets

In the education sector, cost-efficiency is always a priority, so when it came to searching for a helpdesk system, budget was top of mind for Helen and the team: “The decision was money-oriented to an extent, but TOPdesk does exactly what we want. For the price, we recognized that the software would provide the opportunity for development in the future.”

It is Millfield’s ambition to be able to onboard new departments, and as TOPdesk allows this easily and for little extra cost, the team were able to show value-for-money to senior figures in the institution.

Schools and service management: the benefits of self-service

The primary uses of TOPdesk at Millfield School are call management, the self-service portal, and contract management. Each of these aspects have helped to professionalize their service delivery: “The self-service portal has improved communication across our sites. Previously we were unable to advise users on the status of their request, whereas now updates are sent automatically via email.”

The school has seen a cultural shift since implementing TOPdesk. Before, users would call Helen directly to log an incident. Whereas now the self-service portal means they can raise a ticket directly with the service desk – sharing the workload between operators.

Growth: New departments, more possibilities

Encouraging people to embrace cultural change is never an easy task, as Millfield have discovered. However, onboarding estates (who don’t accept phone calls) to TOPdesk has helped to smoothen the transition: “Having to log estates calls via the self-service portal has led to users noticing the IT tile, resulting in an increase in the overall number of tickets logged via the portal, which is fantastic!”

TOPdesk has opened up many new possibilities for those working at the school. For example, the operations team use the system to deal with cleaning and recycling requests. And grounds and gardens are among many departments who see promise in TOPdesk.
Not only are they onboarding new teams, but the school have plans to utilize more TOPdesk features. Reservations management is top of their list, allowing them to record asset type equipment to keep a record of what’s been loaned out, as well as enabling staff to reserve mini-buses, meeting rooms, and classrooms.

“The more we get on TOPdesk the better for everyone. To have everything in one place will make it easier for both ourselves and our users.”

More than just a ticketing tool

TOPdesk has simplified Millfield School’s service delivery, but Helen says that it’s done much more than just provide a place for tickets: “The knowledge base is an outlet to store guides for our users. Contract management sends us automatic reminders, for example when a software license is due for renewal.”

“It’s those little things that sometimes we take for granted.”

With TOPdesk, Millfield have been able to professionalize their service delivery and add many new features to their offering for users (self-service, reservations, knowledge sharing). And all of this has been possible while balancing a tight budget.