Courtland Provides Help Desk and Quality Assurance for Michigan CIMS Project

The Michigan Department of Education (MDE), Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services needed help establishing a new monitoring and quality assurance system with a focus on improving educational results for Michigan students with disabilities. With our history of successful system implementation, Courtland Consulting was selected by the Prime Vendor, Public Sector Consultants (PSC), to provide project management, testing, training, documentation and helpdesk support.

Implementation

The Continuous Improvement Monitoring System (CIMS) project was under an extremely tight implementation schedule. Courtland’s implementation expertise enabled PSC to meet project deadlines and exceed expectations.

Only six months from conception, the CIMS application was built, tested, deployed, and staff were working under a fully-functional application. Courtland participated in process analysis prior to writing functional designs that met state and federal regulations for use in creating the web-based application. In addition, Courtland tested the application for functional design compliance.

Training

Creating effective training is one of the most important aspects of a new system implementation. Courtland Consulting created and delivered a comprehensive training package consisting of custom in-person training for management, web-based training and follow up training for employees, and a well-organized training website and virtual classroom that allowed users to quickly access and review any of the information presented to them at the touch of a button.

Courtland’s team also wrote a comprehensive user manual and designed live introductory events that included interactive video presentations. Our consultants provide regular top-notch training in the form of webinars, live events, and a comprehensive online resource that includes FAQs and tutorials.

Help Desk

Courtland also established and staffs a highly-praised help desk. With a diverse group of users scattered across multiple geographic locations, it has been important to make effective technical assistance readily available. Acting as the first point of contact, the help desk staff log and track user issues, make recommendations for system improvements and collect and document solutions for user issues.

Due to our emphasis on customer service, the help desk staff quickly gained a reputation for their friendly, knowledgeable assistance — even receiving a standing ovation for their outstanding service at a MDE sponsored event!