Transcript Slide 1

The Hub
Student Support Centre at the
University of Bradford
Simon Croll
Head of Student Support Centre (The Hub)
7 April 2009 – SROC 2009
INTRODUCTION
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The Hub opened to its first customers 12
March 2007
A major undertaking bringing together in
one location 60+ staff from a number of
student support departments in varying
locations across the University
THE PROJECT
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In the University’s Corporate Plan 20042009, the Vice Chancellor’s introduction
stated that “we are planning a real step
change in student support that includes
significant investment in our Estate
incorporating new buildings and the
development of a state-of-the-art web
enabled campus”
THE PROJECT
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The “Student Centre” (working title) will deliver practical
aspects of this vision. It will combine a bright modern
physical space within the Richmond Foyer front
entrance to the University, for student transactions
relating to administration and appropriate learning
support. It will also deliver a web-enabled virtual
service for students to access a range of information
off-campus and out of hours to meet the needs of
today’s flexible learners and all our students whether
current or prospective students.
THE PROJECT
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A Project Board established to oversee the
creation of the Hub.
Included in the membership:
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Pro-Vice –Chancellor (Chair)
Deputy Vice-Chancellor
Director of Management Information Services (Project
Manager)
Head of Student Registry
Director of Estates
Students’ Union Representation
and other senior staff from
Corporate Services
THE PROJECT
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In the preparatory stages a number of
information sessions (Town Hall Meetings)
were held to which all staff joining the Hub
were invited in addition to two ‘Away Mornings’
in December 2006 and February 2007
Many of the staff involved worked in different
areas of the campus and had never actually
met each other
THE PROJECT
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On the whole, staff were very supportive
of the project
A major factor was the new physical
working environment The Hub would
bring
Another being the frustration of services
being ‘dotted’ all over campus
TEAMS WITHIN THE HUB
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Teams within the Hub include the following:
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Front of House Team
Accommodation Office for University-managed
accommodation
Admissions including Undergraduate and Postgraduate
Course and Research Admissions, Course Enquiries and
Educational Liaison
International Office (primarily recruitment but also student
welfare)
TEAMS WITHIN THE HUB
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Teams within the Hub include the
following:
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Student Administration and Support
incorporating the former Student Registry,
Graduate Registry, Cashiers (now the ‘Payzone’),
Student Financial Information Service, Student
Bursaries Officer, Debtors’ Team from Finance
Not included are the Disability Office or
Counselling Service
FRONT OF HOUSE SERVICE
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7 Reception Desks – 3 or 4 of these staffed on
a regular basis during term time, capacity for
additional usage at peak periods
4 Meeting Rooms for individual discussion with
students – some set up for more business-like
discussions, table and chairs, others more
relaxed mode.
FRONT OF HOUSE SERVICE
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One Meeting Room used on a regular
basis by Chaplains and others at
lunchtimes including a monthly visit from
the local Police.
Telephone points with free calls to SLC,
local LEAs etc
FRONT OF HOUSE STAFFING
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No new appointments other than the Front of
House Team Leader
4 Front of House Team members appointed
from staff joining the Hub – 2 from the Cashiers
Office, 1 from Credit Control (based in former
Student Registry) and 1 from the
Accommodation Office
FRONT OF HOUSE STAFFING
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Front of House Team supplemented by
support from staff in the Back Offices
either in relation to individual enquiries or
providing assistance in manning the
desk.
Payzone also located in the Front of
House area
FRONT OF HOUSE STAFFING
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A concentrated period of training for the Front
of House Team in the weeks prior to opening spending time with each of the Departments
moving into the Hub
From the outset a comprehensive service
covering the work of all the Teams located in
the Hub has been offered at the Front Desks
FRONT OF HOUSE STAFFING
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Originally envisaged that approx 50% of
enquiries might be processed by the Front of
House Team without referral to the Back Office
increasing to 75% after 12 months
In practice well over 75% of business has been
dealt with by the Front of House Team. Since
November 2007 this has averaged 85%
FRONT OF HOUSE OPENING HOURS
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Originally from 08.30 – 18.00
The amount of business at the beginning and
end of the day did not justify these hours and
they have now been amended to 09.00 – 17.00
During vacations the hours reduced to 10.00 –
16.00 although staff are on call until 17.00 if
required.
BACK OFFICE SUPPORT TEAMS
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Teams located on 2 floors immediately
adjacent to the Front of House
Upper floor
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Student Administration and Support including the
Head of Student Support Centre (34 staff)
Lower floor
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Admissions (14 staff)
International Office (14 staff)
Accommodation (3 staff)
Co-ordinating the work of the Hub
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Making efforts to avoid Teams in the Hub
becoming compartmentalised
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Fortnightly meetings of representatives from the
various Teams to discuss matters of common
interest
Regular Hub training sessions, Teams giving
presentations of their work, sharing information
Working together more closely than hitherto on
events such as Enrolment or Award Ceremonies
STATISTICS
Total number of customers Apr 07 to & inc May 08 =
45,122, split by month
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
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32
33
27
38
34
48
40
56
30
70
44
52
56
76
56
90
21
82
18
78
16
79
24
64
21
STATISTICS
Comparison of customer numbers
2007-V-2008
3500
3232
3000
2733
2500
2479 2424
2164
2000
Year 2008
1500
1000
500
Year 2007
0
0
Mar
April
May
STATISTICS
Total number enquiries Apr 07 to & inc May 08 =
45,122, split by query type
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
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Review of Hub operation held in November 2007
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Positive points emerging
– Immediate benefits for students with a large
number of services now provided in one
location. Wasted journeys from one office to
another a thing of the past
– ‘Joined up’ approach beneficial in terms of
staff working together, more familiar with
each other’s work, greater efficiencies
Review of Hub operation held in November 2007
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Positive points emerging
– A sense of ‘togetherness’ for staff involved in
organising large events such as enrolment
and award ceremonies
– A more co-ordinated approach and decisions
taken more promptly than might previously
have been the case
Review of Hub operation held in November 2007
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Further developments in progress
include:
– Development of the virtual Hub web site
– RMS Job Logging/tracking system for the
Hub
– FAQs web-based system
IT Support within the OSS
environment
INTRODUCTION
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Prior to the opening of the Hub, we held
very little information about amount of
queries, nature of queries, type of call
(email, walk-up, telephone, etc) in the
various areas joining the hub
Also, there was little information about
the questions being asked, ie Frequently
Asked Questions
INTRODUCTION
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In order to ensure this information would be available
with the new Hub and until an IT solution was sought,
we introduced a simple tally-mark system on our FOH
service to track walk-up queries, to record the time-slot,
type of query and who dealt with the query (FoH staff or
referral to Back Office)
This information could then be used to improve the
service and be more responsive to customer needs,
etc.
INTRODUCTION
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Due to the numbers of staff working in the Hub
and the volume of queries being dealt with, it
was agreed very early on that an IT solution
would be required in order to track queries,
pass queries between teams and ensure that
Service Level Agreements were adhered to,
etc. thus ensuring good customer service
INTRODUCTION
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Therefore, along side the Hub Project, a ‘Virtual Hub’
project with budget of £272,000 was also agreed, which
would look at CRM/help desk system along with many
other aspects of IT and technology within the Hub
Due to the scale of the ‘Virtual Hub’ project (and subprojects), it was envisaged that this would be a much
longer term project than the physical Hub and therefore
some interim measures such as the tally-mark system
would need to be deployed
The Virtual Hub
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The Virtual Hub contains 5 different subprojects:
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Sun Ray 2 – Thin Client Technology
Helpdesk/Call Logging
FAQs
Instant Messenger for Staff
The Hub Website
Extension of Self-Service Options
Sun Ray 2 – Thin Client Technology
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In order easy the movement of staff
between the BO and FOH – Also
movement of staff between FOH desks
and confidential meeting spaces, we
wanted to introduce thin-client technology
Sun Ray 2 – Thin Client Technology
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Phase I – Using Windows Terminal Services went live
to all FOH Desks and some pilot stations in the BO
Staff carry a card which is inserted into the SunRay
client, they enter their password and their desktop pops
up on screen as it was when they removed their card
This means that staff who frequently move between
desks do not need to re-load programs or re-retrieve
records, etc.
Phase II – Using VMWare rolled out to all Hub staff in
the Hub from September 2008
Sun Ray 2 – Thin Client Technology
Java Enabled
Smart Card
Helpdesk/Call Logging
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Phase I – March 2009 will see the deployment of RMS
Customer Service Desk and RMS Client/Server to all
65 staff in the Hub
Comprises
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23,000 student/alumni ‘clients’
65 staff
25 teams
5 types of calls (email, tel, fax, walk-up, IM)
9 Categories of Calls
66 sub-categories
‘Instant Calls’ for recording very quick queries eg
directions to the library
Helpdesk/Call Logging
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Phase II – Academic Year 2009/10 will see the
roll out of:
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No click call logging when letters have been
generated from the SITS Vision product
Students access to view ‘My Help Calls’
Students being able to raise help calls with a single
click from the student portal (Tribal eVision)
Helpdesk/Call Logging
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Phase III – Academic Year 2009/10 and 2010/11 will
see the roll out of:
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Email logging – RMS will read emails in certain inboxes and
raise them as helpcalls
Link to RMS from the Universal Knowledge FAQs/Knowledge
database
Deployment of Ericsson Solidus and TAPI II technology to
allow student records to ‘pop-up’ on screen before answering
the ‘phone – also allow multi-types of calls (IM, email, voice) to
be ‘queued’ in strict rotation
FAQs
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Phase I – August 2009 roll out of ‘Universal Knowledge’. This
system will allow customers to ask a question in ‘human’ format,
warts and all, which the knowledge base will offer an answer
The knowledge base must be fed information and can also ‘spider’
websites
Customers are asked to rate the reply and refer on to a human for
an answer if they believe the response does not answer their
question
Phase II –2009/10/11 will see a link between the RMS system and
the ‘Universal Knowledge’ system in that referral will automatically
raise a help call that can be tracked by the client
Instant Messenger for Staff
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Just started to deploy Wimba Pronto (via Blackboard)
for use by staff in The Hub
This allows staff to instantly communicate with
individuals or groups of staff within The Hub
Useful for communications between the Front of House
and Back Offices
Also useful to get instant communications about system
issues (eg, HUB Printer 5 has suffered a failure, please
use HUB Printer 4 instead until further notice)
The Hub Website
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Until now, updating web-pages at the
University of Bradford required either html skills
or use of a web authorising tool such as MS
Front Page or Dreamweaver
However, the University recently went to tender
on a Content Management System and the
successful bidder was a company called
Terminal Four http://www.terminalfour.com/
The Hub Website
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The Terminal Four product allows staff
members to update web content by
simply using their web browsers
The Hub website will be re-built and using
terminal four and will be information
based rather than structurally based ie
who are you?, what do you want?
The Hub Website
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November 2008 will see the launch of the
launch of this new information based
website
This will also develop over time to tie-in
the other new technology such as RMS,
FAQs, Universal Knowledge, eVision
Extension of Self-Service Options
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Along side this will be the continual development of
self-service options using eVision
These currently include:
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Enrolment/Re-enrolment
Award Ceremony Reply Service
Alumni Information/Updates
DLHE return
Updates to Personal Details
Module/Stage Results including component marks
On-line transcripts/European Diploma
Extension of Self-Service Options
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Will/Could soon include:
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Pre-enrolment Portal (Tracking and tasking from
enquirer through to student)
Self-serve letters
Paper/Coursework ‘turn-in’
On-line document/photo submission
Fees Interactive (on-line interactive service for fee
assessment/questionnaire)
Other Current and Future IT technologies
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Plasma screens – Using Terminal Four
for content management
Deployment of non-staffed Hub-nano
stations
Self-service terminals
Web kiosks
In Summary
System
Company/Solution
Student Administration System
Tribal SITS Vision (Uniface/Oracle)
Helpdesk/CRM
RMS
FAQs/Knowledge Base
Universal Knowledge
Finance System
Powersolve (Ingress) – replaced in Aug 2010
Telephony/IM
Ericsson MD110/Solidus
Student Portal
Tribal eVision (Oracle)
Web Authoring
Terminal Four
Secure (tamper-evident) e-doc delivery
Digitary
Electronic Document Management
Oracle/Stellent and Kofax from Ether Solns
Instant Messenger for Staff
Wimba Pronto via Blackboard
Any Questions?
7 April 2009