IT Smart: New Business-to-Department service relationship model

Understanding the relationship between services and our community is the key to effectively meeting the needs of our constituents and is the primary perspective that informed the design of our models for service delivery. The Business-to-Customer (B2C) model is used to offer a generalized central service directly to customers. The Business-to-Business (B2B) model is used to offer foundational and backend type capabilities to university IT professionals. It was our expectation that they would use B2B services to deliver B2C services to their customers. We have used these two models to provide Managed Workstation services. We received feedback that, while both were useful services, neither quite fit the use case of some departmental IT professionals. They wanted to be the front line support for their customers but still have a higher level of structural support from ITS. In response, we have developed a Business-to-Department (B2D) model of our Managed Workstation service that functions much more like a franchise. ITS manages software and security updates in the background while local IT staff continue to provide day-to-day support to their customers. In order for these two parts to work effectively together, some portions of the customer consumed service are standardized, but there remains a fair degree of latitude for IT professionals to tailor activities to best meet the needs of their constituents. If you are interested or would like additional information, contact Robert Morrell and Rick Portuguez.