After two great years at the Open University, I’m moving on. I was brought in to transform the IT Service Delivery function and have delivered
- Substantial jump in staff satisfaction scores
- Significant improvements in customer satisfaction scores (c95% satisfied)
- A project to standardise 7000 desktop PCs and eliminate Microsoft XP
- Significant reductions in incident and service request backlogs and high levels of service.
All this done through leadership of the in-house team with a sense of direction, fun and creating a customer centric mindset.
Along the way I have learnt loads about a new sector (Education) at the UKs biggest university. I have developed the use of blogging and other social media techniques for communication and engagement with staff and customers and my internal weekly blog was achieving 300 reads a week (5% of the OU and 50% readership by those who received the blog). The OU has also allowed me to meet some interesting and famous people including the team behind landing on Comet 67P (Rosetta mission). The OU also has some great technology, and a key part of the role has been increasing levels of awareness and exploitation of technologies that increase communication and collaboration such as Lync and VOIP.
Thanks to everyone who has made it a great and memorable part of my career. After a bit of time off, I’ll be looking for a similar opportunity to turn around an IT Service/Operations/Infrastructure team on a full time or interim basis. In the meantime anyone who wants help or advice on the topics I’ve been covering, please contact me here. I’m also available as a guest blogger or to speak at events – look out for me in this months conference in a box.
Mark Jacot 