City of Glasgow College and SCC

Overview

City of Glasgow College is Scotland’s largest technological and professional skills college. They have two campuses right in the heart of Glasgow and cater to around 32,500 students from 135 countries, offering opportunities for students to gain essential skills for their future careers. The college has been working with SCC for about 4 years, initially on network and infrastructure projects.

Challenge

The City of Glasgow College’s IT desk solution was homegrown, using a post-it note style internal system for tracking service requests. When the COVID pandemic hit, the lockdown exposed some of the weaknesses of this solution and that the college needed to invest in a mature ITSM platform.

The college had previously tried to implement a mature ITSM framework for service management including elements of both ITIL and COBIT, however these didn’t resonate with their user base and it became clear they needed something with more flexibility that was better suited to their users and business requirements.

Solution

Working closely with the City College of Glasgow and our delivery partner Xcession, SCC proposed to implement the Xurrent ITSM platform. Kemp Anderson, Head of Digital Services at City of Glasgow College, said: “The thing that really impressed me about the approach from SCC at the start of the project was about making sure our needs were at the top of the list. It wasn’t a case of “here’s the product: change your processes to fit”. It was a case of looking at us as an organisation, seeing what we needed, and making sure that we built the product and the solution to deliver that.”

The Xurrent platform allows the college IT team to record and track progress against customer tickets and have discussions with the customers within the ticket. The data produced by Xurrent allows the team to pull statistics about the health of the IT estate, spot common issue trends and prioritise jobs more effectively. In addition, Xurrent has allowed the college to consolidate their license information, using it as the beginnings of an asset management platform to document all their computers and peripherals in one place.

It also provides a better customer experience with many self-service features including a comprehensive knowledge base and a self-service portal. The knowledge base is a benefit not just for end users, who can find solutions to common problems with access to FAQs and guides, but also for the college’s technical staff who can share their expertise across different disciplines. On the Xurrent platform, Kemp said: “From the IT support side of things, things have improved vastly using the Xurrent solution with the service portfolio and the service centric design methodology. It makes it really clear to understand how the services work together, who’s responsible for the service delivery, what the points of escalation are. It’s just a really well designed, joined up solution.”

Benefit

The Xurrent platform has provided the City of Glasgow College with a flexible tool, which allows them to be more effective in their service delivery by utilising the automation and workflow features of the platform. To build on the success of the project, the college is working with SCC to expand the utilisation of Xurrent into other areas of the college, including the library, learning and teaching academy, health and safety, front of house and reception.

The Xurrent platform has enabled the City of Glasgow College IT team to measure customer satisfaction, which they couldn’t previously do. On customer satisfaction, Kemp said: “Staff and students at the college have been really impressed with the solution that we’ve been able to provide. Customer satisfaction is through the roof. It’s currently running about 97%.”

The City of Glasgow College and SCC will continue to work together to deliver enhanced student and staff experiences across the college. When asked why he chooses to work with SCC, Kemp said: “When we go to market for a supplier, we’re not looking for just a supplier. We’re looking for a strategic partner that’s going to help us make the most of the solutions that are available. What we look for is trust, expertise and flexibility, and SCC deliver that.”