Queensland University of Technology (QUT) introduced a tiered service delivery model for its staff and student services. The model aims to encourage Tier 0, or self-service, wherever possible. This presentation looks at how QUT enhanced it's intranet to better meet this increased focus on self-service. The presentation was given at the Digital Employee Experience conference in Sydney on 18 September 2019.

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Incorporating an intranet into a
tiered service model
Kenny Helyer, Project Manager, QUT

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About QUT
50,000 students
12,000 staff
2 Brisbane campuses
6 central divisions
6 faculties
2 institutes

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Student access
and support
Research
services
Student admin
Data
Business process
improvement
IT Learning and
teaching
Human
resources
Faculty
services
Finance

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Tiered service approach
Tier
3
Tier
2
Tier
2
Tier
1
Tier
1
Tier
1
Tier
0
Tier
0
Tier
3
Tier
3
Tier
2
Tier
1
Tier
1
Tier
0
Tier
0
Tier
0
Tier
0
Service
Delivery

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QUT’s intranet recent history
2014 – staff information on 20+ sites with over 17,000 pages
2015 – Digital Workplace launched, consolidating the above into 2,000 pages
2018 (May) – HiQ student website launched
2018 (July) – Digital Workplace Refresh project begins

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HiQ website and Digital Workplace usage stats 2018
24 829 312
unique page views
9.93% increase over 2017
6 866 396
LaunchPad items opened
1 031 200
clicks from
enterprise search
64 203
Homepage news stories
opened
205 573
service
points
105 825
contact
centre
37 094
email
21 127
live chat
4 780
self service
requests
= 380 399
total HiQ enquiries

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Refresh project challenges
• Staff content hadn’t been well maintained since 2015 launch
• Transformation changes weren’t being reflected in content
• Strategic focus on self-service but less capacity to work on content
• Areas were looking for “quick win” self-service options
• Lack of understanding about usage and value of intranet
• No formal governance model

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Project approach four key streams
• Build on existing successes
• Iterative approach to content, development and user experience improvements
• Development of a formalised governance model
Content Development UX Design Governance

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We don’t have a search problem…
…we have a content problem.
Hello, Google?
People can’t find my website. Can you fix
your search tool to sort this out? Thanks

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Content approach service focus
Meet Analysis Share data Agree plan

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As well as the Digital Workplace
site QUT has...
• Two FAQ repositories (indexed by enterprise search)
• SharePoint (ungoverned and not indexed by search)
• Wiki (ungoverned and not indexed by search)
• Some remaining stand-alone sites
• People looking for other solutions…
Content areas were seeking the path of least
resistance to get content up quickly

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Case study
lecture recording
• Lecture recording compulsory for academics
• Content hard to follow; unclear page headings
• Focussed on policy rather than “How-to”
• “How-to” content buried in FAQ repository
• Content replaced with step-by-step process
• Promoted via homepage news banner
• 150%+ increase in page hits

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Case study new staff
• Onboarding process identified as an issue in
staff survey
• Page for new staff offered minimal information
• HR and IT contact centres regularly receive
calls from new staff

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Case study new staff
• Expanded with new content and signposts to
other pages
• Conducted user testing with new staff to
finalise content
• Introduced a permanent news story only
shown to new staff
• 65% increase in traffic

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Enterprise search… a simplified diagram
Public
search
Staff
search
Student
search
Advanced
search
Directory searches (e.g.
applications, services)
QUT app
search
Web / mobile web search Mobile search
Jeeves
API
Apache
Solr
Intranet CMS
content
QUT public
websites (200+)
People
directories
FAQ
repositories
Dynamic
portlets
QUT
glossary
Study
databases
Other
directories
Units
Key dates
Scholarships
Courses
Staff
Visitors
Students
Applications
Facilities
Services
Rooms
AskQUT
HEAT
Search
views
Search
technology
Search
content
sources

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User improvements buzz boxes and request forms

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Advanced search
helping the supersearchers (the people helping people)

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Redesigning the contact box to
support tiered service delivery
Original design Next iteration Latest design
Future plans
• use search analytics data and call
data to regularly update phrases.
• use contact box data as a basis for
user research
• add call wait time data for busy
periods
Usage data
(June-Aug 2019)
Clicks on canned searches 624

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Dynamic portlets
Static link portlets
Customisable portlet
6
9
1
Room for anything else!0
Changing the homepage
what we had before

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New custom dashboard
• Staff can choose dashboard widgets
• Allowed more portlets to be made available
• Removed legacy static link portlets
• Introduced new dynamic portlets
• Solves homepage real estate challenge
• But… 6 months of change management!

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Governance what we had
• Distributed model – 500+ authors
• Two roles – editors and coordinators
• Central support team – largely fixed term
• Lots existed but there were key things missing:
• overall vision and strategy
• a decision making process
• a community of practice for authors
• A lack of clarity around roles, responsibilities
and ownership existed
How would you rate the
current intranet
governance model?
What percentage of your
role involves managing
intranet content?
Less than
20%
20-40%
40-60%
80-100%

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New accountability
model
© 2019 Step Two (www.steptwo.com.au),
all rights reserved
New elements
Existing
elements
• Built on existing elements
• Added new elements
• Formalised the
connections between each
part of the model
• Ownership and
accountability key for
strategic approach to
tiered services

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Engagement
8 workshops
4 interviews
53 participants
workshop to test the draft model
15 people
10 December 2018 – 23 Jan 2019
feedback and sign off
40+ people
December 2018 – March 2019
+
+

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Next steps
• Embed governance model and apply to ungoverned systems
• Use data strategically to address content issues which lead to increased calls
• Establish an ongoing intranet team
• Transition content to service (content maintenance)
• Develop intranet strategy

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Lessons learned
• If you want more people to self-serve… tell them how to self-serve!
Promotion of priority service content is key.
• Phrase the problem well – “Self-service works, but we want more people using it
– how do we enhance it to meet this need?”
• Authors/owners and end-users have very different needs
• Engagement with content owners will take much more time than you think

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Contact details
Email kenneth.helyer@qut.edu.au
LinkedIn https://au.linkedin.com/in/kennyhelyer