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With support from the university’s Digital Transformation Programme, MSD IT Services have now secured funding for a pilot of FreshService to replace the Request Tracker (RT) ITSM system.

ESM Pilot 

Following the MSD Service Desk Replacement investigative (SDR2024) at the end of 2023, and with support from the university’s Digital Transformation Programme, MSD IT Services have now secured funding for a pilot of FreshService to replace the Request Tracker (RT) ITSM system. 

We’re also pleased to share that Vince Evans-Gutierrez (vincent.evansgutierrez@tss.ox.ac.uk) has once again joined the team on a short-term contract to assist with stakeholder engagement and implementation planning. 

We will be able to offer seat-for-seat replacement to all MSD IT Associates teams currently using RT at no cost to departments during the pilot. 

Additionally, we will also be including a smaller pilot group of Professional Services teams who currently using shared-mailboxes to manage incoming enquiries and workload as a proof-of-value for non-IT teams. 

Work is underway to establish clear timelines with the supplier, we are broadly aiming to go live with new system within the next 4 to 6 weeks. The pilot will run until December 2025.

Ahead of the launch we will be carrying out further investigative work which we would value your help with… 

Monitoring and Evaluation

We’ll soon be sending out a short survey to MSD IT to establish a baseline of current experience of RT and how this impacts your work. 

A follow-up survey will then be sent out after Freshworks has been launched and bedded in across IT service teams in the division. 

These surveys are designed to evaluate how effective the new system has been in addressing the key issues that came up during your initial conversations with Vince. 

In parallel to the IT Associate focussed surveys, we also hope to gather information from customers about their experience interacting with the IT services in their departments. 

Again, is geared towards establishing a baseline from which the new system will be evaluated, but from a customer perspective. This will be done with guidance and input from IT Leads across the department.

Defining the ‘Day 1’ requirements

It would be great to get your input and suggestions on the minimum requirements for day 1 - Go live day. 

With idea of making the transition as smooth as possible, what we are currently aiming for in the new system on Go live Day:

  • Like-for-like replacement of all key RT features
    • Defined service teams (queues)
    • Ticket management functionality
    • Initial workflows and automations
  • Self-service ticket tracking for customers
  • KPI dashboard and reporting 

Following this, we welcome input on mapping out the expansion of existing features and introduction of new features to the new system. 

Please contact vincent.evansgutierrez@tss.ox.ac.uk with your suggestions and recommendations.

Training and onboarding

It is expected that onboarding overhead will be low owing to FreshServices’ intuitive and user-friendly design and features. 

That said, a series of demonstrations will be made available for MSD IT Associates ahead of the launch, with supplementary training and support where needed. 

More details to follow. 

Once again please contact vincent.evansgutierrez@tss.ox.ac.uk if you would like to discuss the needs of your team.

I hope you all share our excitement with what will be a significant improvement to the tools available to IT service providers across the Medical Sciences Division.

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