Learn more about the great individuals within Arts ISIT and the wide range of services we support.
Details
Name
Indira Gerards
Job title
Manager, Service Portfolio and Continuous Improvement
Pronouns
She, Her, Hers
Team
Service Strategy and Design
Interview
What year did you begin to work at Arts ISIT?
2023
Describe what you do at Arts ISIT
As the Service Portfolio and Continual Improvement Manager, I work on strategically aligning our services to our user’s evolving needs. Looking after the service portfolio entails the service lifecycle from defining, analyzing, and reviewing services to retiring discontinued ones. Collaborating with our teams, I collect input for new opportunities to improve our users’ experiences with our services.
We continuously develop the services and tools we offer and how we deliver them. These enhancements can be based on requests from our Arts audience, but also from opportunities and ideas that come from internal feedback.
What is the best thing about the work you do at Arts ISIT?
Arts ISIT is a unit filled with dedicated people who care about bringing as much value as possible to the unit and the faculty and staff we support.
What’s great in my role is I get to listen to their experiences and gather data to understand how I can help improve processes to make it easier for my colleagues to deliver their services. I enjoy working behind the scenes to ensure people on the front stage can do their thing. I love how my work here allows me to do that!
What are your areas of expertise?
My expertise is coordinating and managing processes, policies, and projects, particularly in the university context. I also have a background in web design, which comes in quite handy here!
Which services does your work relate to?
My portfolio touches on all services provided by Arts ISIT.
Please list some related projects/tools/resources you work on
I’ve been working with Sami and Saul George from the Learning Centre to further develop our Exam Services. Using service design techniques, we’ve mapped the journeys of different types of faculty as they prepare for exams, deliver exams, and ultimately submit grades in Workday. This work is helping us design resources that empower instructors to confidently deliver digital exams, including step-by-step overviews, clear guidelines, and training.
I’m also currently working on practices related to our Service Strategy. A key focus is gaining deeper insights into the experiences of our Arts users—both in how you use our tools and in how you interact with our services and support teams. For example, I’m exploring new ways to enhance the input we receive from faculty and staff, so we can better understand your technology needs and ensure our services are more closely aligned with them.
In our bi-weekly continual service improvement sprints, our team comes together to review, prioritize, and work on enhancements to our tools, such as Arts CMS, Arts Digital Collections (ADC) and Arts Internal Resources (AIR). If you use any of our tools and have any feedback for us, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Can you share some of your personal interests or hobbies?
I grew up with lots of music around me. From my brother’s piano to my mom’s karaoke parties (which I didn’t always appreciate) and from the cds my uncle used to give me whenever something new came out to the 200+ vinyl (very old) collection I got from my dad… I love how music nestles itself in the brain—or at least in mine! Now, I pop into record shops every now and then to add to the collection with music from my own era.
Apart from that, I grab every chance I get to go to a live music show. I love a good pop sensation but also enjoy smaller shows of many genres. Being surrounded by screaming fans at a Shawn Mendes arena show or by bobbing grey heads at a Louis Armstrong tribute, both fill me with joy! If you’re reading this and want to share, please do find me on Teams and tell me about the song you’ve had in your head lately.
