How Power Users Drove a New ITSM Implementation at UNC-Chapel Hill

Institutional Profile

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Chartered in 1789, it was the first public university in the United States to award degrees and is now one of sixteen universities in the University of North Carolina System. It currently offers eighty-two bachelor's degree programs, 112 master's degree programs, sixty-six doctoral programs, and seven professional degree programs. UNC-Chapel Hill enrolls 20,681 undergraduate students and 11,553 graduate and professional students.

The Challenge/Opportunity

In 2019, a leadership change in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Information Technology Services (ITS) set in motion two separate transitions to new ticketing systems, the second of which occurred in 2024. The university had contracted with ServiceNow, a platform for managing IT workflows, to replace its twenty-year-old ticketing system. However, two people instrumental in that purchase had left the university, so the implementation was put on hold until their positions were filled.

When ITS began the implementation, it became clear that ServiceNow wasn't the right information technology service management (ITSM) solution for the institution. "We were making all of our processes fit to a tool," said Jackie Treschl, ITS change manager, project portfolio and change management.

While ITS staff felt that ServiceNow wasn't the best fit for UNC-Chapel Hill, they didn't know whether their users agreed. So, in 2022, the ITS team embarked on a listening tour of both front-end and back-end users to learn which functions they needed, which ones they wanted, and what aspects of the current system did—and didn't—work.

The listening tour revealed that front-end users—employees and students submitting tickets for problems or service requests—were largely indifferent to the platform. However, for back-end users—the staff processing tickets—efficient workflow management mattered a lot.

Having gathered that perspective, Treschl and her colleagues—including Kate Hash, then-assistant vice chancellor, customer experience and engagement, and Brenda Carpen, executive director, project portfolio and change management—began planning how ITS would select and implement a new platform when the ServiceNow contract ended in 2024.

The Selection Process

At UNC-Chapel Hill, those back-end users are a large and complex group. The university operates under a hybrid IT services model: ITS, with more than 350 employees, delivers institution-wide services, while individual schools, colleges, and departments maintain their own IT units that provide specialized computing services. Meanwhile, other administrative staff in human resources and finance also use the platform. All told, more than 1,200 agents use the ticketing system on the back end.

The listening tour had confirmed what the ITS team suspected: the current ITSM was simply too big; its features weren't being fully utilized, the platform required a lot of maintenance, and back-end users felt the system didn't help them do their jobs efficiently. A university campus with 30,000 students and over a thousand IT staff may sound large, but other ServiceNow customers are among the largest companies in the world, with some employing more than 200,000 people and generating hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue.

"ServiceNow was like driving a Ferrari when you need a Honda," Hash said. "To do a great job with ServiceNow, you need a big team to administer it, and that was not a reality on our campus."

The RFP and selection process led to TeamDynamix, a no-code ITSM, as the best fit for the campus, both financially and in terms of product design. The solution was less costly for the university, in part because the vendor charges a single license fee rather than a per-seat fee.

"TeamDynamix for us just felt like the right-sized product for how our university operates, while leaving space for innovation," Hash said. "We saw a brand-spanking-new Honda we were going to be able to drive for 200,000 miles and rely on, and it was going to get the job done."

The Implementation Process

The selection team also appreciated that TeamDynamix doesn't subcontract to external partners for implementation support. While many IT vendors are more familiar with their Fortune 500 private-sector customers than with higher education, quite a few TeamDynamix subject matter experts had previously worked in higher education.

The new ITSM implementation took about six months, starting in February of 2024 and going live in July. This timeline mirrored the ServiceNow implementation five years earlier but felt less rushed thanks to clear expectations and a small, well-defined team. The effort was led by Calvin Groves, director of customer support and outreach at UNC-Chapel Hill, who had the authority to make decisions without extensive stakeholder consultation.

The prior implementation had "a lot of cooks in the kitchen," Treschl said. "A lot of people were making decisions, and it slowed down the work. This time, the project team was empowered to make the decisions because we set guiding principles at the beginning."

The team simplified the implementation by paring back features in TeamDynamix that UNC-Chapel Hill didn't need and postponing other features until later. The goal was to implement the platform out of the box as much as possible and resist customization for its own sake.

"We were not doing process improvement," said Treschl. "We were taking a hard look at things that existed, and we were not migrating problems that wouldn't exist in TeamDynamix."

The university did not migrate data—including more than 25,000 tickets—from ServiceNow to TeamDynamix, as doing so would have slowed the implementation and unnecessarily cluttered the new system.

"When you move to a different house, you want a shiny new house," Hash said. "You don't just bring everything from your old attic into your new attic, right? You want a clean start."

During the phased launch, service desk agents got early access to the new platform so they could migrate their own data, if needed. They also had access to ServiceNow data for about a month before it was sunset. During this time, a public webpage kept stakeholders up to date about timelines and progress.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

IT change managers in large colleges and universities are used to hearing complaints, but following the rollout of the new ticketing system in 2024, users were eerily quiet. Few of the 1,200 service-desk agents participated in the office hours and webinars hosted by ITS, and user surveys had low response rates. This appeared to be a "no news is good news" situation.

Since the implementation, ticketing has run smoothly for the many IT service desks at UNC Chapel Hill. During that time, ITS has gradually implemented additional features. "We've pretty much wiped everything off our to-do list," said Hash. "Our commitment is that we will test things in a timely manner and roll them out if they make sense to our campus."

Right now, the new ITSM is primarily used for ticketing, but the ITS team is open to other use cases, such as project management, asset management, and form submissions. Because there's no need to worry about additional licensing, anyone on campus can use it. A few departments have already expressed interest in potentially using the platform for other workflow management processes, said Carpen.

"We're working with those groups to figure out how they can digitize their manual processes using this platform because it's stable and we know it works, and they use it, perhaps, as an end user," she explained. "I see a lot of potential now that it is in place."

Focus on the Power Users

As noted earlier, the students and employees who submitted tickets told ITS they did not have strong opinions about which platform to use. As long as their ticket was submitted and handled successfully, end users didn't notice much about the change.

The platform mattered much more to power users—the agents who handle ticketing all day—and they provided a goldmine of information. By spending time before the RFP talking to personnel and listening to their concerns, the ITS team was able to account for their needs during the selection and implementation processes.

Embrace Transparency

Carpen said previous implementations had taught them "not to keep information close to the chest." In addition to sharing updates broadly with the campus, the team made sure to communicate in focused ways with the people most affected by the change.

Treschl added, "A crucial part of change management is letting people know what they can and what they cannot expect and giving them a place to go where they can see your progress."

Transparency was important when it came to potentially unpopular decisions, such as not migrating old tickets to TeamDynamix. That was communicated clearly and early in the process, and agents were offered the opportunity to migrate their own data.

"I was really clear on the things I would not budge on," Hash said. "But then we also had a list of things we were willing to negotiate and compromise on. I think if people understand that, and there's lots of flexibility, it makes it easier to make hard decisions."

Change Tools That Don't Serve Institutional Needs

Transitioning to a new ITSM is daunting for any campus, but after implementing two in five years, the ITS team said that prioritizing the needs of the institution made the path forward clear.

"This project demonstrates that you don't have to be scared of letting go of software that is broadly used across the university," Carpen said.

The experience has given the ITS team the confidence to walk away from software that doesn't serve the needs of the institution, and the team is able to draw on that when negotiating with vendors—even if they're already mid-contract.

"It's the same advice you would give to a friend in a sticky relationship," Hash said. "If it's not serving you, leave."

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A.J. O'Connell is a Writer at McGuire Editorial & Consulting.