6 TOPDESK MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2016

GAINING NEW INSIGHTS

WITH TOPDESK
Zadkine, a Dutch institute for vocational education has worked with TOPdesk for years,
starting out with TOPdesk 3. This year, the school decided it was time to evaluate their
processes and add new services such as property management, facility management,
HR and general support. The goal: providing internal customers in education with a
single digital portal where they can go with all their questions, requests and calls.
Text: Acacia Kooij Photography: Aad Hoogendoorn

8 TOPDESK MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2016

Zadkine is a regional educational centre

better coordinated and communication

that provides intermediate vocational

with local service points runs much more

training in all sorts of areas: from business

smoothly. Weve made a lot of progress

administration, mechanics and logistics,

thanks to TOPdesk, says Zeelenberg. Bringing

to healthcare, hospitality, tourism, fashion

departments together through processes is

and security. Zadkine has around seventeen

what I think TOPdesk does best.

thousand students who are taught at ten

main locations. Ronald Zeelenberg works
as a team leader in IT management and

The right flow

maintenance at Zadkine, focusing primarily

In addition to the new set-up, Zeelenberg

on the back end of IT services. His team

thinks a lot of progress can be made with a

consists, among others, of database, network

more process-based workflow. In order to

and service managers, all working from a

achieve this, Zadkine has started new ITIL

single location to provide input for local

training courses that align with the new

support staff.

set-up. Now weve started working with the

new TOPdesk version. Were certainly reaping

Improving to perfection

the benefits of having so much support for

process-based working methods from all

Weve always been satisfied with TOPdesk,

departments within the organization. The

says Ronald Zeelenberg. But we began to

results will become even better once weve

notice that not everything was organized

implemented the renewed ITIL certification.

the right way, so we wanted to improve that.

What were seeing now is that everybody

Our employees preferred to have a single

is getting into the right flow. We also find

portal for all their requests. This makes sense,

evidence of this improved workflow in how

because when youre teaching a class you

people use TOPdesk. TOPdesk is the cement

dont have time to figure out who to call

between the bricks of the organization,

when the computer doesnt work or a light

according to Zeelenberg. He continues: Now

is broken. We also wanted to create better

that TOPdesks structure is in place, we get

reports to show the quality of our services.

clear reports that provide the insights we

Another important improvement was the

need. For example, we can now have CAB

optimization of our service catalogue. With

meetings based on overviews.

the TOPdesk set-up we had back then, this

couldnt be fully supported, so we decided
that a new set-up was the best solution.

Progress
For about six months now Zadkine has been

Collaboration between
departments

able to gain more insight into how incidents

are related in different areas. Some examples
are property management, teaching locations

Several TOPdesk consultants came to work on

and regions. We wanted to create an

our new set-up. It was not only implemented

overview of this, which wasnt possible yet in

at IT, but also at other departments, such

the TOPdesk version we had. We also wanted

as Facilities and Property management

to differentiate between main buildings

and General support. Now, when there are

and branch locations, so that we could

relocations or renovations, things are much

create reports at a local level. The TOPdesk

TOPDESK MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2016 9

THE SYNERGY BETWEEN ALL

DEPARTMENTS IS VALUABLE

consultants have helped us achieve this. Now

The future

that we can zoom in on our local branches

In the future, we want to define exactly

more, we can see at a glance what each one

which services are provided by IT, Property

needs, which means we can use our resources

management, Support, HR and Marketing &

more effectively.

Communications. Were working hard to set

up a service catalogue and are exploring a

Delftware

number of methods. By dividing all products

and services into categories and subcategories

Delftware has been very helpful, because we

we can quickly get an overview of how each

have little in-house expertise on TOPdesk,

of them scores in terms of service delivery.

explains Zeelenberg. This meant that within

One of our current priorities is creating links.

our organization we didnt have the capacity

Our printers are already linked to TOPdesk, but

to improve processes by ourselves. Thanks

we want to achieve this for our workstations

to my supervisor it was decided that experts

as well. Wed like them to appear in TOPdesk

would be brought in to prevent process

automatically from our own SCCM. These

improvement from grinding to a halt. But

links are not just there to improve work

process improvement alone isnt enough. Its

processes, but also to ensure transparency.

just as important to get everybody on the

We want to show what happens on our

same page. Delftwares Danil Huijbens paid

systems and TOPdesk will be an essential

attention to both processes and the human

part of this project.

side of things, providing us with a solid

foundation to work with. He also took on the
job of incident and change manager until we
could find somebody within the organization
to fill the position. He ensured that proper
training procedures were set up. Zeelenberg
continues: The TOPdesk consultants and
Delftware have contributed significantly to
the recent improvements at Zadkine. And
we worked hard on the project as well. This
synergy has been very valuable.