Heriot-Watt University is a global university with campuses in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. The programme required application and user support across multiple time zones, multiple campuses and varied local processes. Sera Neon were engaged to stabilise and mature the university’s Oracle Cloud environment and to provide ongoing development and managed services.
The Challenge
Heriot-Watt’s Oracle Cloud implementation was live but experiencing a range of post-implementation problems that were inhibiting business-critical processes. The initial engagement revealed priority-one incidents, multiple user support tickets, incomplete or unserviceable solution elements and configuration or data errors that prevented certain transactions and month-end activities from completing reliably. In short, the programme had moved into a fire-fighting phase and required immediate remediation before a measured stabilisation could begin.
Beyond the immediate technical and functional faults, the programme also needed governance and consistency: there was no agreed, business-facing method for scoring and prioritising risks, issues and testing defects, and the wider user community needed to be involved in assessing impact. Several fixes required design decisions rather than simple configuration changes, so the project team had to review requirements, evaluate options and agree preferred solutions before build and implementation could proceed.
The environment spanned three geographies with differing local processes and time zones, creating operational complexity for support and rollout. Users required education and enablement to reduce ticket volumes, and the university wanted to reduce ongoing dependency on third parties while ensuring the service could flex to meet spikes in demand.
What did Sera Neon do?
Sera Neon joined the Heriot-Watt programme to provide post-implementation remedial services and managed support. Our work progressed from rapid incident response to stabilisation and then to continuous improvement, using a blend of functional, technical and operational interventions.
Key actions and approach
Mobilised SWARM/Hit Squad teams to identify blockages and resolve showstoppers, addressing priority one issues immediately.
Introduced a clear severity scoring matrix (1 = critical to 4 = low) with formally defined severity definitions tied to business impact; engaged the wider user community in reviewing and correctly categorising risks, issues and testing defects.
Worked with programme and project managers (and the SI where appropriate) to prioritise missing or unserviceable functionality, distinguishing between configuration/data errors, incomplete solution designs and unserviceable builds.
Where fixes were configuration or data related, identified, tested and implemented remediation; where design was incomplete, produced options and worked with HWU to select and implement the preferred design; where builds were unserviceable, defined remediation tasks and delivered the required rework.
Delivered development work including reports, integrations and a Hyperion/EPM prototype, and created standardised, reusable components (for example an auto-receipting tool rolled out across campuses).
Established a 24/7 Support Room and a consistent ticketing and logging procedure so all requests followed the same process, with tickets managed within defined SLAs and regularly reviewed.
Aligned support teams to local campus time zones (UK, UAE, Malaysia) while operating a single standard operating model from our India centre, enabling virtual floor-walking support and ticket resolution across the full geography.
Provided flexible resourcing from a pool of consultants (initially a team of ten), able to flex up or down according to demand, and combined 1st-line support with access to 2nd-line specialists as required.
Transitioned from time-and-materials delivery to a fully costed managed services proposal covering Foundation (remediation, integration and automation) and Realisation (continued development, reporting, integrations and risk mitigation via SWOT analysis).
The Results
- Rapid removal of showstoppers and stabilisation of the Oracle Cloud platform.
- Significant reduction in ticket volumes through prioritisation, training and process improvements.
- Improved categorisation and governance of risks, issues and testing defects via a business-facing severity matrix.
- Greater visibility of service performance via management reporting and a clear framework for monitoring and control.
- Consistent, auditable support processes across all campuses with a single ticketing portal and defined SLAs.
- Reduced dependency on external third parties as internal capability and handover increased.
- Lowered service costs through operational standardisation and flexible resourcing.
- A clear progression path to continuous improvement, with capability in place for further optimisation and cost reduction.
