University Information Services is committed to the success of its customers, from frontline student administrators to the president’s office. To help customers to meet their goals, UIS has formed a Customer Success Team to assist with strategic technology decisions and connect them with the services and products they need.

What is a Customer Success Team?

The UIS Customer Success Team (CST) aims to help customers realize the greatest value from the information technology solutions that support their business needs and objectives.

By proactively connecting with customers throughout their business cycles and understanding their processes, the UIS Customer Success Team can meet customers where they are, coordinate the intake of their technology priorities and craft technology solutions that increase efficiency, collaboration and innovation.

“The Customer Success Team is focused on building meaningful relationships with our partners and ensuring that CU is receiving maximum value from UIS offerings.  We are champions and advocates for our customers and are here to help navigate finding the best solutions that meet their complex needs.”
   
​Aaron Mansfield, Assistant Vice President of IT Service Strategy

The UIS Customer Success Team and their Customer Segments

Art Figel Student and Academic Services	Aaron Mansfield Campus and System Leadership	Jenn Millikan Schools and Departments Campus IT Units and CU Foundation	Jen Mortensen Advancement Online and Marketing Services
Scott Munson Office of the President CU Board of Regents	Jennifer Silverthorne Research Administration	Bob Sudo HR Services	Jaya Vaidyanathan Finance, Procurement and Admin Services Grant Management

What are customers saying?

The UIS Customer Success Team was first piloted within CU System Administration. A recent example of their work is the successful implementation of ServiceCloud, a Salesforce product, for the Procurement Services Center (PSC), to manage its high-volume call center. The UIS Customer Success Team connected the PSC need with the right services within UIS and advocated for this work throughout the initiative and into operations, ensuring a timely and successful implementation. 

“Implementing Salesforce was the biggest highlight of 2022,” said Jennifer Martin, director of Customer Success and Organizational Excellence at the PSC. “We struck gold having our customer success manger, Jaya Vaidyanathan, connect us with the right teams within UIS and advocate for us.”

What’s next?

Within UIS, Jaya Vaidyanathan, senior director of Research and Grant Services, is leading the Customer Success Team and eager to roll out these services to all UIS customers.

“Having seen the effectiveness of the Customer Success Team in the pilot rollout within System Administration, we’re excited to scale this model,” said Vaidyanathan. “The team has already been essential in negotiating agreements for the CU Foundation and serving as bidirectional advocates between UIS and other departments, such as Advancement and Treasury. The CST also initiated a new project currently in development to build a workflow process for the Office of the University Controller that will use the enterprise content management tool, OnBase.”

As UIS begins its annual planning and two-year roadmap effort, the CST will be engaging with customers to align UIS efforts with customer strategic priorities. Art Figel, director of Student IT Services and member of the CST, representing Student and Academic Service needs, is excited about the new team and the UIS transition to forecasting for a two-year period.

“The Customer Success Team is an evolution of UIS's existing campus connections,” said Figel. “For some time now, we've had people dedicated to engaging with our customers system wide. CST is formally recognizing those relationships and developing additional tools and processes to enhance the support we provide. One promising effort is our two-year roadmap discussions which may result in better collaboration, resourcing, scheduling of upgrades and new technology implementations.”

With real-time customer support still in place through the UIS Service Desk, the Customer Success Team is able to proactively focus on customer needs, working in tandem with UIS customers to advance the University of Colorado’s mission.