Project Name: JISC Transformation Project – Using IT to Support and Improve Registry Processes

Lead Institution: St Marys University College

Project Lead: Matthew Taylor (following staff changes in summer 2012)

 

See the full Transformations programme playlist

Background

St Mary’s University College Twickenham was founded by the Catholic Poor Schools Committee in 1850 to meet the need for teachers to provide an education for the increasing numbers of poor Catholic children. Catholic teacher education remains at the heart of its mission today but it has diversified significantly. There are four academic schools: Education, Theology and Leadership; Arts and Humanities; Management and Social Sciences and Sport, Health and Applied Sciences. There are now around 5,000 students and together with the staff they form a strong and supportive community with an emphasis on both academic and pastoral care.

 

Similar to many HEIs today St Mary’s now finds itself in a highly competitive market place, to which it needs to respond with a new level of agility.  

 

Aims and Objectives

The University College made a bid for funding under the JISC Transformation Programme in order to secure support for the following:

 

• to identify improved efficiencies in Registry;
• to enhance the student experience by providing more automated systems for everyday administrative functions (and in doing so free up some staff time in order to be able to provide bespoke advice and guidance for more complex queries and difficulties);
• to provide training for staff in achieving a better understanding of business process design, and the identification of the key business processes which would benefit most from review; 

 

Context

The Project has taken place in the context of a higher education institution that underwent some restructure of Registry prior to the current Registrar coming into post. The effect of this was to remove dedicated IT support out of Registry and locate all IT functions together as a separate team within a different Directorate.

In addition, the previous Registrar left St Mary’s in May 2012, resulting in a lack of a senior lead and champion for this Project until the beginning of 2013.

 

The impact of the above continues to be felt as regards the level of available support for high-risk business-critical Registry functions, and hence why the benefits – particularly around User Empowerment aspects – of this Transformations Project are so valuable, both in the immediate term of the Project itself, but also going forwards. In addition, the lack of senior leadership for a period of time explains the delay in moving this Project forward – as the original completion date for the JISC-funded elements of this work had been noted as December 2012.

 

In addition, as a small institution we face the same key requirements as larger HEIs (albeit dealing with a smaller gross number of students) but with limited resources to call upon. We do not have the benefit of efficiencies of scale and therefore it is of critical importance that we continue to review the way in which we carry out our key business processes, and continually seek out improvements – and hence why the investment St Mary’s makes in ICT must deliver such identifiable improvements, and not simply continue with inefficient business processes underpinned by ICT solutions.

 

The Business Case

This Project directly supports one of St Mary’s institutional Strategic Aims of the Corporate Plan for 2011-16, namely:

 

“To manage our resources effectively and imaginatively to ensure a sustainable future and to provide maximum value for our students”.

 

In addition, the potential for significant savings was indentified from the outset – such as staff time and paper/photocopying re the Online PG Admissions process (plus the environmental benefits.

 

Similarly, any improvements which serve to enhance the student experience are more critical than ever in the current, and increasingly competitive, climate within higher education.

 

Key drivers

The key drivers for this Project were mainly institutional, as although our student numbers have grown over the years we do not now have the resources (of money or space) to simply continue to grow the staff team in Registry – we have to recognise how to do things differently, rather than expecting staff ‘to do more with less’. In essence we had no choice but to proactively seek out efficiencies and improvements in order to deliver all the required outcomes.

However, student expectations in a climate of high fees and ‘consumerism’ mean that small institutions can no longer use size/intimacy as a USP if it is to the detriment of expected levels of ICT functionality and ‘customer service’ – speed and accuracy of business processes such as Admissions and Enrolment are key to the student experience, and ‘set the bar’ in terms of students’ first impressions of an institution.

 

JISC resources/technology used 

The key technology that has been used in this Project to date is that of Enterprise Architecture business process mapping.

 

Unfortunately there has been scant interaction with other HEIs/workshops due to factors already identified re adequate and consistent resourcing and leadership of the Project.

 

Outcomes

 

• Online Postgraduate Admissions system
• Online Student Enrolment Processes
• Business Process Mapping

 

Achievements

The key achievements at the current time arising from this Transformations Project are as follows:

 

• the online Postgraduate Admissions system – this has been successfully implemented and is being integrated as a dual business process alongside the traditional paper-based application route (this is because the delayed implementation meant it fell in the middle of the application cycle – although coincidentally this has in itself provided some contingency for any failure in the rollout of the online system, and in doing so assured us that applicants would not be adversely affected no matter what); 
• the roll out of online registration for all students in 2012 and onwards; 
• the identification of key business processes which we now refer to internally as “user empowerment” issues – these are high-risk, time-critical processes for which we have now identified the need for cascaded training and support within Registry itself.

 

Benefits

The saving of staff time previously taken up by resource-intensive processes – thus far hundreds of hours of staff time have been saved, as the work required for data inputting, data cleansing and processing following Student Registration was minimised.

 

Cost savings and environmental benefits from reduced paper usage/photocopying.

 

The granular attention to detail that has been invested in visiting and revisiting our business processes as part of this Transformations Project has also usefully informed the implementation of our Academic Curriculum Management System.

 

In addition, our involvement in this Project is already informing our approach towards the forthcoming scoping, procurement and ultimate implementation of a new Student Records System.

 

Drawbacks

Although the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, the latter are very much in existence and link closely to some of the “lessons learned”.

 

The lack of a consistent Project sponsor, and indeed significant changes in staffing at senior level overall, has taken its toll on both staff and the Project itself – as evidenced by both the delayed timeframe of the Project and the limited engagement of staff in reflective practice due to operational demands always taking precedence.

 

The staff training and up-skilling required to maximise the potential benefits of this new approach to Registry workflows need to be managed with care, both in relation to change management and the ever-present operational demands on Registry staff from across the institution.

 

Key lessons

Projects should be fully resourced prior to initiation – with Institutions fully considering all the costs, tangible and intangible, associated with entering into any Projects.

 

More attention should be given to Project Risk Assessments – as the mitigations identified in the Project bid proved insufficient to keep this Project on track when key risk factors became a reality.

 

Staff shouldn't be expected to subsume Project work on top of their substantive roles, as in addition to the impact on the staff themselves, some of the ‘richness’ of a Project is lost. For example, due to resource limitations we were not able to actively participate in the JISC blogs, which looking back now has disadvantaged staff in their ability to reflect and further develop their thinking.

 

The granularity of detail involved in existing business processes which can be easily overlooked as they often form part of staff’s tacit knowledge – undertaking process reviews and sanity-checking the same within different parts of the team usefully highlighted gaps in advance of the full “as-is” process mapping.

 

The significant amount of time and concentration required to fully consider any business process should not be under-estimated when embarking on this type of Project – it is immense! (To note: the original Project plan allocated only 2 months to this task!)

 

In many ways, we have learned to be more realistic about how many processes we could improve within a certain timescale. We are a small institution by national standards, but the complexity of our procedures is the same as for larger institutions - except in the volume of transactions.

 

The impact of a lack of a senior-level champion to drive the Project forwards was significant during that period of time – both in terms of gravitas/influence and continuity of staffing.

 

Looking ahead

The skills gained from this Project can be transferred to looking at other business processes across the institution, and support our ongoing commitment (within St Mary’s IT Strategy) to longer-term systems integration in order to achieve single sources of authoritative data for students and staff (which in turn will also assist in streamlining our external reporting requirements).  

 

The key, high-risk issues termed “User Empowerment” are currently being assessed in order of priority, and a plan being put into place to address these over the coming months.

 

Registry staff now feel more confident about moving forwards into developing an outline Project Plan for a new Student Records System, as a result of having benefitted from the lessons learned during this Project. 

 

Sustainability

The benefits of business process reviews and business process re-engineering will be cascaded across St Mary’s.

 

The sector as a whole is moving towards being more agile and efficient as a result of ever-improving technologies and hence St Mary’s thinking and aspirations are congruent with other HEIs, and as such offers high sustainability.

  

Appendices – please see below

 

Appendix 1

 

JISC Transformations Bid: Using IT to Support and Improve Registry Processes 

 

Work Plan: the following work plan is indicative foreach implementation.  They will be amended as appropriate to ensure the delivery ofthe implementation as required.

 

 

Task	Date	Person  Responsible	Success criteria
Form Steering Groups	November 2011	Registrar/Senior Management	To have groups capable of overseeing projects
Identify staff from Steering Groups for training	November 2011	Registrar/Senior Management	To have sufficient staff trained in process review methodologies to ensure objectivity and resilience for the projects
Appraise technology	December 2011	Registrar/Head of ISA	To ensure that the University College is aware of the full range of capabilities of the software
Undertaketraining	December 2011 (Subject to dates)	Registrar	Staff trained so that they can undertake reviews
Identify processesfor processreview	January 2011	Registrar	Processes identified for review which will benefit from the application of appropriate methodology
Undertake and document process reviews	February 2011	Steering Group Member trained in process	To have reviewed process andidentified efficiencies anddocumented new process
Review IT against newprocess	March 2011	Steering Group	To maximise IT capability
Undertake any development work	May 2011	Head of Information Services and Applications	Fit for purpose software that takes account of the University College processes
Train staff onnew software	June	Head of Information Services and Applications	Staff who are able to use the software to its full capability
Implement new software	August	All	Software implemented successfully
Evaluationand reports	November	Steering Groups	Successful strategies and lessonslearned from  process

 

Appendix 2

 

Risk Assessment:

 

Risk	Likelihood	Impact on project	Mitigation
Key staff trained in the use of JISC resources will leave	Medium	The project will not be delivered if staff trained in the JISC resources leave	Sufficient staff will be trained in the resources to ensure that the project is resilient to staff turnover. There will also be cross project membership
Staff will not engage in process review methodology	Low	If staff do not engage with the process review there will be no process gains and therefore noefficiencies	Ensure the benefits of project are clear and ensure that staff are engaged in reviewing their own processes and therebydevelop ownership of the project at all levels.
That key lessons are not learnt	Low	There will be no process gains and therefore no efficiencies if staff cannot learn lessons from implementation and process reviews	Use staff outside the area to undertake process reviews to ensure some objectivity in the process. Ensure cross- project membership to ensure issues are picked up
Lack of delivery of reporting	Low	Impact on resources for the project	Ensure that ongoing documentation is maintained by the Steering Group for each project. Ensure senior staff are engaged and can deliver reports
Lack of institutional support for the project	Low	Inability for staff to engage in Strategic Information Practice Group and Learning Sets	Ensure that senior management are supportive of the project from the outset and that the resources for the project are set out from the beginning
Slippage of projects	Medium	Failure of University College to deliver improvements to service	Realistic appraisal of the work involved and ensuresufficient time in the project plan to allow for some delays.