The University of Victoria is the latest in a long line of Australian tertiary education institutions to purchase Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk to provide help desk and technology problem resolution services to approximately 50,000 students and 3,000 staff across the institution. Many educational institutions are also adopting Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk for strategic business reasons.

"After a successful pilot, we chose Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk to replace our previous help desk solution from Remedy," said Bruce Youl, Associate Director IT (Client Services), University of Victoria. " Universities are increasingly being run as businesses, and the students are our customers. While most students are competent computer users, technical problems can mean a real loss of productivity for them. Having an efficient helpdesk for our users means we can solve their IT issues quickly and cost effectively."

Dominic Schiavello, director of field marketing, Australia and New Zealand, Computer Associates, believes this is a growing trend. "Australia has a great reputation for delivering high quality education and attracts the best students both locally and internationally. Increasingly, information technology plays an important part of all courses offered and as a result the delivery and support of IT services to both the faculty and student body is now integral to providing education services. In this environment, universities are recognising the necessity of treating students as valued clients, and providing excellent customer service," he said.

Despite being tech-savvy, students and faculty sometimes encounter computing issues that require assistance from the IT department. It is important to provide a service desk to assist students with technical problems and questions, yet it can be costly. Inefficient help desks cause delays in solving student and staff computer issues, resulting in frustration both for help desk staff and for users.

Using Computer Associates Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk, educational institutions such as Holmesglen TAFE have seen an increase in productivity as well as a marked decrease in the costs associated with running a help desk.

"The amount of time saved by the reduction in basic work for our technical staff is extremely beneficial," said Ron Gascoigne, Manager Information Technology, Holmesglen TAFE. "Rather than spending their time on data entry and solving simple issues, these staff can now fix more complex problems in a shorter time frame. This frees them up to undergo training in other areas such as data communications, network operating systems and application development. This is the kind of service level improvement we strive for as a Quality Assured organisation."

Computer Associates’ Unicenter ServicePlus ServiceDesk allows end-users to submit requests online and track the progress of these requests. It eliminates the possibility of errors being made in the data entry process, which could result in help desk staff solving the wrong problem. The built-in knowledge base allows users to solve their own issues without alerting help desk staff. This way, commonly occurring problems can be solved immediately, while technical staff members focus on more complicated issues.

The IT Support Team within the Division of Business, Law & Information Sciences at the University of Canberra prides itself on delivering a high level of service in line with the University's strategic goals. Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk helps the IT Support Team provide excellent service and support, which helps increase productivity for the Division's staff while decreasing support costs.

"We needed to be able to customise our solution so that it would be flexible enough to meet our specific needs in a dynamic support environment," said Jason Dean, user support manager, Division of Business, Law & Information Sciences, University of Canberra. "In addition, our team is implementing ITIL processes to improve efficiency, quality of service and reduce the cost of IT ownership. To date we have been delighted with the functionality, ITIL-compliance, and more that Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk has provided."

Some of the Australian educational institutions that have selected Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk as their help desk solution include:
- Australian Graduate School of Management
- Challenger TAFE
- Holmesglen Institute of TAFE
- University of Canberra
- Chisholm Institute of TAFE
- Kimberley TAFE
- University of Victoria

Ends

About Computer Associates
Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE:CA), the world's largest management software company, delivers software and services across infrastructure, security, storage and life cycle management to optimise the performance, reliability and efficiency of enterprise IT environments. Founded in 1976, CA is headquartered in Islandia, N.Y., and operates in more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit http://ca.com.

Computer Associates Pty Ltd
ABN 20 001 146 345
407 Pacific Highway
Artarmon NSW 2064
tel: (02) 9937 0500
fax: (02) 9937 0600
http://www.ca.com

For media information contact:
Samantha Lenton, Recognition PR
Ph 03 9600 4666
sam_lenton@recognition.com.au