UniDesk Institutional Pricing

The membership costs are based on a simple pricing model that is transparent and based on institution size determined by their JISC banding. UniDesk is not limited to IT Service Management and your subscription means you can freely use it across all areas of the institution with as many operators and Service Desks as you wish. Our members have a mixture of uptake, generally with IT as the main Service Desk but also include Finance, Student Systems, Estates and Buildings and HR. There is no limit on the scaling usage and the onboarding of additional areas within your institution is included in the flat-rate cost of the service. Members do not need to be concerned with additional licence costs as their services expand. 

 

There is an initial joining fee which is based on the typical costs of on boarding a member with the standard UniDesk subscription (Call Management, Knowledge Management, Self-Service, and Quick Calls), with membership subscription being charged annually thereafter. 

Interested in joining the UniDesk community? Please contact us to discuss your requirements. 

UniDesk Procurement Information

As we are a shared service controlled by our members, there is a direct exemption of any EU and UK procurement rules under the Teckal and Hamburg exemption: UniDesk is able to expand its service to new members without risk of procurement challenge. However, it does not mean that new institutions can join without satisfying their own procurement process.

What are shared services?

Shared services involve public sector bodies working or joining together to pool knowledge, skills and resources in the development or delivery of services

The main drivers are to improve efficiency and save costs through pooling resources and/or aggregating demand. Creating or using a centralised service provider can also concentrate expertise and so deliver higher quality services to customers.

Structure

Example In-house (Teckal) company. Three further education colleges merge their Cyber Security functions by establishing a jointly owned limited company to provide those services, as shown below.

The in-house or Teckal company

Here a contracting authority/contracting authorities can avoid the procurement regime by establishing a “Teckal” company to provide the services (named after the case which first established the exemption). 

At present, the legal test is set out in Regulation 12(1) and, broadly speaking, has three parts: 

1.        The “control test”: the contracting authorities must exercise [joint] control over NewCo similar to that which they exercise over their own departments. This means they have the power to exert decisive influence over strategic objectives and significant decisions of NewCo. Importantly, NewCo cannot include any private sector capital or interest; and

2.        The “essential part test”: NewCo must carry out at least 80% of its activities with the controlling contracting authorities. Other activities are of only “marginal” significance. NewCo is not market orientated.

3.        There is no direct private sector shareholding in NewCo.

 HEFESTIS is established as a Teckal company already and it is jointly owned by it’s members. New members participate on an equal basis in the steering groups to existing members and therefore satisfy the legal requirements for the exemption.

 

‘Bringing UHI into UniDesk is a game changing approach to our service delivery model and will help UHI deliver equivalence of support experience across our user base – be it at one of our city campus sites in Inverness or Perth to a remote learning centre in Shetland or Argyll.

The UniDesk Service Management Team took the time to understand our business and requirements and worked closely with us to ensure we could achieve a compliant procurement.’   

Mike Burns, Customer Service Manager,  The University of the Highlands and Islands