Progressing service excellence via Service Central

A message from the Chief Operating Officer Dr Stephen Weller:

Dear Colleagues,

The University aspires to deliver an excellent service experience for students and staff, with a number of initiatives being implemented to ensure that your experience is at the heart of the service improvements.   These include a revision of our service strategy, and the development of a new service management model for Corporate Services, called Service Central.  This is especially crucial in the context of reduced government funding to universities, which necessitates that we deliver some services differently this year and into the future.

Service Excellence Framework

The University’s service improvement endeavours have been guided by a service strategy launched in 2014 as the Service Matters Framework. Since then, it has become clearer the Framework needed to be refreshed to focus on the experience of service users as we pursue service excellence.  Consequently, it has been retitled the Service Excellence Framework and now includes an updated Service Delivery Model reflecting ACU’s holistic approach to continuous improvement. I encourage you to view the revised Framework on the website, and read the stories of ACU initiatives demonstrating service excellence in action.

Service Central – a service excellence initiative

A key initiative that will operationalise the Framework’s revised approach will be the introduction of Service Central.  This will provide a single location for staff to access a range of services and information provided by Corporate Services.  Service Central will address the current organisational challenges by supporting our staff in accessing, requesting and delivering services and information in a simpler, streamlined and consistent way.

Watch the video to learn more about Service Central, which will be coming to ACU in the second half of 2018.

You may have experienced the new IT Service Portal launched in February, which provides several service improvements that will also feature within Service Central, including a single location for staff to access and request IT services 24/7.  It enables staff to track the progress of their requests in real-time and access a searchable knowledgebase of answers to common IT questions.

Building upon these improvements, Service Central will provide these features and also encompass the services from IT, HR, Properties & Facilities, Finance, Marketing & External Relations, Student Administration, General Counsel, Governance and Planning & Strategic Management.

How Service Central was developed

Service Central is the product of the Integrated Service Management project, which has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of service delivery to inform this new model. My thanks to many staff across ACU who have provided their input and feedback during this assessment stage.  I encourage you to read the assessment results to gain an understanding of what has guided the design of Service Central.  Further information about Service Central will be progressively shared over the coming months.