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Creighton U Outsources IT Help Desk Support

After experiencing more than a 40-percent increase in IT help desk requests, the Omaha university chose Cosentry to supply IT service desk support.

Creighton University

The 8,000-student Creighton University now receives more than 13,000 IT support requests each year.

After experiencing more than a 40 percent increase in IT help desk requests in four years, Creighton University in Omaha, NE, has decided to outsource its IT service desk in an effort to centralize its support efforts and speed help to students and faculty who need it.

Creighton picked Cosentry, a local IT solution provider, to supply its IT Service Desk, which it believes will streamline student and staff technical help inquiries that have jumped from 9,000 per year in 2010 to 13,000 in 2014.

"Our multiple service areas were performing similar work, but not all were utilizing the same service management solution," said Creighton University IT Manager Christopher Erisson. "Customers would call our service desk, but we wouldn't have a record of previous work done or an effective way to share this history with other areas. We just didn't have the resources necessary to scale up and down to align with demand."

Cosentry will particularly help at Creighton at the beginning of the school year when higher education IT departments typically see a three-fold increase in help calls – everything from password resets and e-mail issues to installs, transcripts and in-class support.

Cosentry's service receives the initial service desk request and create a trouble ticket, routing the issue to the appropriate Creighton staff member and monitoring its progress to completion. Cosentry is also able to reset passwords and take care of about 25 percent of user issues with a single phone call, according to company officials.

"We're here to help make sure that learning continues smoothly," Erisson said. "Partnering with Cosentry has helped us do that."

About the Author

Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.

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