The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) uses HEAT, the service management application from FrontRange Solutions, to manage and maintain 9 000 networked computers across five campuses - and resolve 70% of all calls within the call centre.
Ashok Kara, user support manager for the university, says: "In the five years we've had HEAT, we've reviewed it annually, as we are required to do with all our systems, by comparing it with competitive products. And each time we've seen that it is still the best on the market.
"So, we continue to upgrade to new versions and ensure that our staff are fully trained on enhancements."
UKZN acquired HEAT to replace a manual system. "HEAT was competitively priced - and that's crucial in a university environment where funds are always tight. More importantly, it was very customisable and it could scale to our requirements.
"HEAT is also extremely user-friendly and easy to manage. We can create our own tables on the database.
"And because it tracks every call in detail, HEAT provides us with a knowledge base and trends analysis that enable us to see, for example, where users of the PCs may need additional training or how our outsourced hardware is performing."
An important factor in the choice of HEAT was the university's Information Communication and Technology Division's need to provide field assistance in the shortest possible amount of time across five different campuses.
"We wanted to resolve as many calls as possible in the call centre to ensure that technicians were only called out when absolutely necessary and that once they were out they were efficiently deployed - doing as many calls on one campus as possible before moving to the next.
"The speedometer facility in HEAT enabled us to do the latter, as does the ability HEAT gave our technicians to log closed calls from wherever they are instead of having to come back into the call centre. Also the HEAT board allows technicians to post their whereabouts and the nature of incidents to a central facility so that the rest of us know where they are and what they're working on at any given time.
"That also means that if someone phones in to tell us the network is down on one of the campuses, we can say that we know about it and someone is working on it. That, along with HEAT ensuring that we meet our service level agreements, has improved our relationship with our customers immeasurably.
"What helps us resolve within the call centre such a high percentage of 5 000 calls a month is the fact that HEAT automatically populates our call centre screens with all the data about a particular caller, the technology allocated to him or her, and the history of calls made to the centre by that person. Support can then be offered on a much relevant and immediate basis."
FrontRange Solutions (SA) product manager for Africa, Paul Bornhutter, says HEAT's affordability along with its flexibility are the reasons for so many South African universities - including the universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town - using it to manage their information technology.
"It's one of those solutions that truly does allow you to do more with less - and keep doing so no matter how demand on your services increases, either because more devices are added or because your customer starts to rely on you progressively more."
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