One front door for Europe’s universities
Across the U.K. and the continent, IT teams are overcoming centuries of institutional autonomy to create a single experience for students and staff
As IT teams struggle with silos across their organizations, few have had to battle structures entrenched for centuries. Not so for those in higher education across Europe.
An instinct toward decentralization runs deep across European universities, tracing its roots to the Middle Ages. That instinct persists, and when education reforms and funding pressures hit in the 1980s, many individual university departments responded by operating like hyper-competitive business units, each competing for funding and resources. Today, this approach is more inefficient than ever, but some university leaders are fighting back.
"Teams operating differently isn’t the problem. Expecting students, faculty, staff, and alumni to navigate those differences is," says Jason Aloia, VP of product management at Freshworks. "IT can provide one front door for a consistent service experience, regardless of which team is doing the work behind the scenes."
That universities have succeeded in setting up that one “front door” is almost remarkable given the history.
When the org chart is the obstacle
What autonomy looks like is different everywhere, and Manchester Metropolitan University may have had it worse than others: 90 teams across seven departments, each with its own operations and rules. For students, faculty, and staff, this meant getting help required successfully navigating the org chart. Get it wrong, and a student with a question about enrollment might email one team, get redirected to another, and start over. Across 45,000 students and staff, that friction wasn't an inconvenience. It was the org chart working exactly as designed.
Manchester Met's fix wasn't a new tool bolted onto old habits. The university rolled out Freshservice across nearly all of those teams spanning seven departments, each of which had run its own systems, its own workflows, and its own rules. Now there's one portal, no matter who handles the request on the other side.
"Freshservice gave us one front door for the entire university," says Jack Christopher, assistant director for service management. "Students and staff don't need to know which team handles their request."
Read more: Manchester Metropolitan University unifies service delivery across 90 teams
IT can provide one front door for a consistent service experience, regardless of which team is doing the work behind the scenes.
Jason Aloia
VP of Product Management
Consistency across borders
Over on the continent, Istituto Marangoni, an international fashion and design school, operates campuses across multiple countries. Inquiries arrived through whatever channel a given region happened to prefer, with no consistent way to track, prioritize, or compare them.
Centralizing support on Freshservice cut first response time by 88% and improved ticket resolution by 95%. Students in Milan and staff in Paris now move through the same system, even if they never interact with the same office.
"Freshworks has transformed our support operations," says Francesca Pellegrini, project manager. "It enhances both the student and staff experience."
What automation frees up
Seemingly miles ahead of universities with federated and distributed teams, the University of Aberdeen had successfully transitioned to a single ITSM system, but it had calcified over the years, growing too rigid to serve 14,000 students and too murky for a 180-person IT team to see what was actually going wrong. Tickets languished for days. Recurring issues went unaddressed, not for lack of effort, but for lack of data.
Routine requests caused much of the friction that could eat up entire shifts. By automating these requests with AI-powered Freshservice, ticket resolution time was reduced by 81%, and more than 10,000 tickets were deflected. The real gain was visibility into a system that had been a black box.
"Moving to Freshworks Analytics was a real game-changer for us," says Iain Cameron, user services manager. "Not only did we have the data, we could do things with it."
Read more: AI improves ITSM for University of Aberdeen
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Hanging up the phone
The divide isn't always between departments or across borders. Sometimes it's simply a gap in awareness. Vocational training school Eckert Schulen in Germany implemented Freshservice, but old habits die hard, and 60% of service requests arrived by phone or through walk-in visits to the IT department. Staff spent their time fielding calls instead of resolving the problems behind them.
Self-service and clearer routing moved 80% of tickets onto Freshservice. The shift freed IT from playing switchboard and let them get back to the actual work.
"The streamlined process is user-friendly and ensures all necessary information is captured, enabling IT teams to address cases immediately," says Jäger Sven, head of client services and support.
