Success Story -

About Henrico County Public Schools

Henrico County Public Schools (HCPS) expresses a division wide commitment to every student by communicating a vision of inclusiveness: "The right to achieve. The support to succeed." The school system serves the families of Henrico County, VA which is a diverse community of more than 320,000 people.

Henrico is Virginia's fifth-most populous county. HCPS is the sixth largest public-school division in Virginia and is comprised of over 80 schools and program centers. The division's schools reflect the geographic diversity of Henrico County and lie in bustling near-urban and suburban settings; small towns; and quiet rural areas. Henrico County Public Schools earned 23 Achievement Awards for 2021 from the National Association of Counties for developing innovative programs to serve Henrico citizens. Technology plays an important role in enabling the vision of inclusiveness, as well as a history of academic excellence across the Richmond area.

Industry

Education

Software

ChangeGear Modules: Service Request, Project Management, SQL Server Reporting Service, Incident (for ticketing), CMDB

Benefits

• Improved service desk efficiency
• Faster reaction time
• Better tracking of performance indicators and reporting

The Challenge

The Henrico County school district was using a simple, service desk solution with basic ticketing. The search function was outdated, and it was slow to log information into the program. There were also redundant and non-removable fields in ticket classification leading to issues with reporting. As the district expanded and grew in complexity, the existing solution no longer met their needs.

The Henrico County school district is a complex and matrixed environment. Service management is primarily used to support IT and select staff. For example, teachers have access to report issues, request new software and hardware. Currently power users (teachers and administrators) are supported with plans to roll out more broadly across the district. IT supports over 50K students and staff. HR systems are managed independently but IT integrates with them as well as various third-party applications leveraged across the district. Inventory management is sizable with over 50K laptops, Chromebooks and iPads. The IT department is lean, staffed by 80 internal analysts. That represents a 1:750 ratio of support and does not include support of external partners and vendors. Averaging 700 to 1000 tickets per month.

The Solution

"The IT service team is foundational to the operations of the Henrico school district. We are expected to maintain the technology infrastructure and service levels across the broad ecosystem to provide important business continuity to the school district and to meet the needs of the teachers and students of Henrico County. Our students represent the future, and we are proud to work in such a committed and successful school district." — Service Desk Administrator for Henrico County Public School District

The buying team reviewed several ITSM solutions and decided on ChangeGear due to the extensive functionality, advanced automation, ITIL based processes and business friendly interface. ChangeGear's suite of Project Management, Service Requests and Incident Management are leveraged to manage and track tickets across the broad ecosystem.

The Project Management module is used to track internal IT work and third-party vendor requests as tickets are submitted in that module. This is particularly important given the matrixed environment, number of third-party vendors and distributed IT staff. IT staffing differs across the K-12 schools. Elementary schools are less likely to have dedicated IT staff in the building meaning central support is critical to ensure continuity.

Asset Management (with the CMDB module) will be implemented in the Fall to manage the diverse set of hardware that is distributed across teachers and students. CMDB is Configuration Management and works for many types of items such as contracts, assets, and business processes. The ability to have an enhanced CMDB provides significant benefits and is a core strength of ChangeGear.

Reporting was another area where significant enhancements were desired. Measurement and reporting as a practice is critical to identify troublesome processes, additional training requirements, levels of satisfaction and more. As data is pulled from various service modules, and systems, comprehensive dashboards now deliver timely reports across different business areas. The easy access to historical data removed all service level ambiguity allowing for productive workforce collaboration. By leveraging SSRS, high-end reporting is available, allowing multi-level and multi-medium (i.e. a table with a bar chart) to produce easy to read and actionable reports.

The investment in technology, both from software and hardware, allowed HCPS to quickly move to an automated and virtual learning environment. This was critical when faced with COVID and in-person restrictions. Unlike larger school districts, Henrico County had the technology in place to allow administrators and teachers to focus on their students and curriculum. HCPS was the first school district in Virginia to go "one to one" meaning every student was equipped with a mobile laptop or tablet.

The Results

"ChangeGear changed the nature of support, allowing IT to scale dramatically to manage and respond to service requests regardless of organization, or ticket type. When COVID hit, we were ready to support a virtual and hybrid educational structure. If we had not already invested in a robust service solution, virtual learning would have been extremely difficult." — Service Desk Administrator for Henrico County Public School District

Henrico County Public Schools has been a ChangeGear customer since 2017. Since that time, they have continued to upgrade and expand functionality. With a lean team in place, service and support oversees a complex ecosystem of schools, programs, applications, and people. The ChangeGear platform has enabled the service organization to expand their support and impact without adding headcount.

The volume and workload were overwhelming with the prior solution. ChangeGear processes automated ticket and incident reporting and workflow, allowing for a small team to effectively manage the high volume of requests and approvals across the County. With improved visibility into issues and the impact of service problems, the service desk can respond more quickly, as well as scale solutions as necessary.

The improved reporting drives service desk efficiency by identifying bottlenecks and keeping track of key performance indicators (KPIs) with predefined reports for incidents, changes, and assets. Providing visibility to the business managers is an important aspect of the service level agreement.

About Serviceaide

Serviceaide is a leader in modern service management. Serviceaide's vision is to transform service management, across ITSM, ESM, and Customer Service. Serving customers around the world, Serviceaide applies breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing to deliver better experiences, provide enhanced self-service and empower service owners. Serviceaide transforms service through digital labor conversations, automation, and knowledge.