Cultivating a dynamic, tech-savvy workforce
According to the 2023 IMD Smart City Index, Singapore is one of the smartest cities in the world, with 99% of government services now completely digitally enabled. A key factor in this global achievement is its dynamic and versatile education system, as exemplified by Temasek Polytechnic (TP).
Located in a purpose-built, 30-hectare campus, TP helps to deliver the talented, motivated and skilled workforce required to bring Singapore's Smart Nation strategy to fruition, and with it, economic prosperity and security.
Each year, more than 13,000 full-time students and many more part-time adult learners access TP's further education courses, equipping them with the skills needed for a rapidly evolving global landscape.
Fulfilling the demands of a dynamic economy
"Our objective is for students to be ready for the workforce immediately after they leave", explains Ming Fai TANG, Director of IT Services and Digitalisation Planning at TP. "Our courses focus on the needs of our industries and economy, providing graduates with the relevant skills they need to be productive and make an immediate and valuable contribution to their employers".
To be ready for today's challenges and those of the future, TP's faculty and students need up-to-date IT infrastructure, tools and services, and a great user experience—not just for the teaching and learning process, but also to ensure that they have the right IT skills for the workplace.
To meet this imperative, Ming Fai and his colleagues are constantly looking for the latest technology products and services to incorporate into the teaching and learning process, and to ensure that students are trained and confident using them.
"Preparing our students for future roles means integrating the latest technological tools and services into our pedagogical approaches. We are always dealing with the future; students we train now are working or will be joining the workforce. Whatever we use to teach must be cutting-edge or it will be less valuable in the future".
Unlocking the benefits of moving to the cloud
One of TP's core strategies is to move as many of its IT infrastructures and services as possible into the cloud, to unlock substantial cost and efficiency advantages, and ensure that users are always using the latest tools and technologies.
TP's previous IT service management system was on-premise and required considerable resources to maintain, upgrade and update. NCS, a ServiceNow strategic partner in Singapore that provides services to the government, healthcare sector, and the business community, recommended the cloud-based ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) solution because it offers a unified platform for an IT, Staff and Student Portal with streamlined processes to boost TP's IT productivity.
The solution will also provide a better user experience, enhancing the integration of ticket flow right from the start to the relevant support teams subsequently, with future implementation of chatbots, virtual agents and walk-up experiences.
Supported by NCS, TP deployed ServiceNow ITSM for all its 1,400 employees in two phases starting from late 2021 till 2022, beginning with incident management and service request management modules. Later, it added change management, knowledge management, problem management, and finally in 2023, Queue Manager, which automates the distribution of incidents to those colleagues best placed to resolve them.
"It's been a huge benefit to greatly reduce our need for on-premise infrastructure", says Ming Fai. "We can locate our IT agents in different places and even consolidate our call centre somewhere else now".
Chye Aik SOH, ITSM Senior Manager at TP, appreciates the support provided by NCS and ServiceNow during the rollout of ITSM.
"There was close collaboration, firstly with NCS to ensure the initial deployment was successful, and then with ServiceNow as we added additional modules like Queue Manager", he notes. "In particular, the familiarisation and training sessions ensured that colleagues in our organisation could transition smoothly to ServiceNow".
Self-service becomes the channel of choice
Now, employees can choose IT support in a variety of ways, including in person at helpdesks, by telephone, email or portal. Increasingly, however, the ServiceNow ITSM self-service portal is the method of choice for TP staff.
They can raise tickets, access services and information, and reach out for IT support on everything from devices, networks, Wi-Fi connectivity, and, perhaps most importantly, the wide range of teaching and learning applications used by faculty and students alike.
Students also have access to IT support by visiting a helpdesk, by phone or email, and can use the ServiceNow portal to access knowledge articles. In the longer term, TP plans to extend the full set of features and functionality of the ITSM portal to meet the needs of all employees and students.
"From using ServiceNow ITSM for a year, what has been really noticeable is that, by moving to the cloud, we have had no outages at all", says Ming Fai. "Even in periods of very heavy demand and load, there has not even been any slowing down, access is very consistent and reliable—this is an important advantage because users are very sensitive about system speed and accessibility".
"The experience for users is so much better. It's faster and more efficient to access IT support, thanks to ServiceNow's clear, easy-to-use interface. In a recent employee survey, the improvement on the ITSM overall satisfaction score clearly demonstrates its value for money".
Dashboards deliver performance transparency
"The transition to ServiceNow has been very smooth", adds Chye Aik. "With the support of NCS and ServiceNow, we can generate a broad range of reports and dashboards, providing visibility for all of us in the team, for example, on the volume of tickets".
With this day-to-day visibility, the IT team no longer needs to wait for a report to be generated. With real-time data enabling proactive solving of issues, this ensures that TP meets its internal service-level agreements. The faster real-time metrics have enhanced dashboards for immediate data insights, boosting staff and student satisfaction with ITSM service above 85%.
"We see ServiceNow as a medium between our users and our support, which helps to streamline and speed up the flow of messaging to and from the user", explains Way Wong, Deputy Director, IT Infrastructure at TP.
"ServiceNow Queue Manager is a very good example. Previously there were lots of touchpoints in different systems that could cause a time lag in our response, but with Queue Manager, everything is integrated and automated, which dramatically reduces the time the user waits to get a message back from the IT support team".
A platform for future expansion
TP plans to extend its use of ServiceNow, to encompass other on-campus operations, for example, incorporating configuration management database, asset management modules and providing additional support for students over and above their IT requirements, including other student services.
"There is clear potential for our use of the ServiceNow platform to elevate the services we deliver", concludes Ming Fai. "It enables us to provide user-centric services that they value".