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Transformations Cranfield University

Project Name: Business Transformation Team

Lead Institution: Cranfield University

Project Lead: Claire Gale

 

Background

 

The Higher Education sector is now a fast changing environment with significant pressures on finance both from government and from students due to increased fees. The sector is also now a competitive arena fast becoming similar to the commercial world. Institutions must become more efficient, more customer focussed and competitive. Relying on “reputation” to attract students is no longer an option.

 

Cranfield University is a post graduate only institution with a high emphasis on Research students; located in rural Bedfordshire and not closely linked to other institutions. The specific institution problem area is the disparate processes and means of communication used in the conduct of student business within and between schools; departments and campuses of the university.

 

Aims and objectives

 

The objectives of the BTT project is to:

 

  • Create a flexible structure of Business Process Review teams across the university to provide a communication channel for business process change, the highest level team being the Business Transformation Team;
  • Improve the efficiency and communication across the university in order to provide transparency between organisation strategy and IT strategy;
  • Be responsible for the identification of the business process improvement opportunities, facilitation of workshops and the progression of these through partnership with the affected service area(s);
  • Identify and train the Business Process Review Champions in each of the Schools and business service areas in business process review workshop facilitation and change management;

 

The BTT aims to enable staff to have a structure to work within to encourage business process review and change; it has been found that generally staff wish to improve processes but have not the time in their “day job” or the mechanism to enable process review and change. As part of the BTT project, the "culture" within the university is being asked to change, the University Executive are being requested to allow staff to be allocated the time to review business processes and partake in the BTT structure and workshops.

 

Context

 

In December 2010 the University undertook a pan university business process review of student processes. The outcome of that review is a three year (now extending to 5+ years) Improving Student Processes (ISP) programme of development of the student processes mainly based on the Tribal SITS student system but also enhancing interfaces for example to Finance and to the Accommodation systems. All student processes have been reviewed at a high level resulting in a series of projects being identified. The first project, Applications and Offers, was initiated in June 2010 with detailed business requirements being gathered, the first phase of this project, an enhancement to the online application form was implemented in January 2012, the next phase consisting of a staff portal detailing on-line applications with workflow functionality was implemented in January 2013. The next phase is commencing with requirements gathering in May 2013.

 

A means of reviewing processes, gathering requirements and of communicating change is not in place and it is a significant challenge to ensure the smooth implementation of projects and ensuring all staff are aware of the aims of new projects and the changes to be implemented. An additional recommended outcome from the business process review is the formation of a pan university Business Transformation Team (BTT) to address these issues.

 

The business case

 

The specific institution problem area is the disparate processes and the means of communicating in relation to student processes across departments; schools and campus of the university. Traditionally, Cranfield University, like many other universities has allowed fairly varied projects at the local level to encourage innovation and meet the needs of different groups of students. In order to meet the demands of the changing HE landscape, processes need to be common, efficient and cost effective across the university. The introduction of a Business Transformation Team (BTT) will encourage a wider and deeper understanding of all areas of student customer service expectations and where different projects and priorities overlap or converge this greater understanding will lead to more sophisticated approach to strategic developments as the key players will have been brought together to discuss the processes by the BTT.

 

The university’s strategic plan, approved in December 2010, has a key strategic theme of “Inspire our people to achieve their full potential - work as one team, valuing and developing the contributions of all our people” (people in this context include all staff and students). The key enabler under the University Strategy for this is “Excellent People and Organisation – enhance our technical, leadership and management capability, blending empowerment and collaboration to deliver effective and efficient processes throughout the organisation”. The existence of the BTT will encourage all staff and students where applicable, to actively participate in business process review and change as it will provide a positive framework to enable change.

 

Key drivers

 

The key drivers for this project are:

 

  • The HE landscape has changed dramatically due to the economic climate and government policy on student fees, this necessitates the University to be efficient and competitive;
  • Disparate processes across the university used in the conduct of student processes, have grown organically due to departments and schools implementing varied projects at the local level, this is not cost effective or efficient in terms of staff resources;
  • The university has embarked on a programme of improving student processes, the formation of the BTT is part of that programme with a remit to facilitate business process review;
  • The ISP programme is primarily focussed on the IT student system; a mechanism of obtaining detailed and accurate requirements is required, this will be fulfilled by the BTT workshops;
  • The introduction of the BTT to facilitate business process review will have cost and environmental benefits in that existing paper based processes will be incorporated into the central university IT systems;
  • The need to identify where different projects and priorities overlap or converge in order to feed into strategic developments, the BTT structure will help to identify where this happens by bringing together key users to review processes.

 

JISC resources/technology used

 

The following Jisc resources have been accessed or attended:

 

  • Participation in Action Learning Sets 
  • JISC Emerging Practices: Enterprise Architecture Workshop. The EA workshop was attended in London on 3rd July 2012. The day was very informative; as an Information Systems Manager I immediately saw the benefits and use of the tool and I subsequently recommended our Systems Architect to look at the Archi Tool, however, I felt ArchiMate was not a tool to be introduced to the group of staff selected to partake in the Business Transformation Team as it was too “technical” for the technical maturity of the staff involved in the BTT process. 
  • JISC Enterprise Architecture Strategic Information Practice Group. although at the time of the bid I was particularly interested in this JISC resource; it did not prove to be relevant to the BTT project due to the technical maturity of the members of the BTT. As part of my role of Student Information Systems Manager, it is very useful and I will continue to investigate under that role. 
  • JISC Advance (infoNet): Change Management Workshop. The Change Management workshop was attended in Coventry on 25th October, 2012. Another project team member, Business Analyst from Academic Services, attended this course as well. The course was very informative and I could see the benefit of running one of these courses at the University, however the funding did not cover both this course and the Business Process Review Facilitator training workshop and so the training had to be prioritised. However, I still think that a course of this nature will be of benefit to those involved in the BTT. 
  • JISC infoKit: Process Review. The resources within this infoKit will be used in the monthly meetings set up to support the trained Business Process Review Facilitators. An agenda item for these meetings will either be a discussion on a particular tool or understanding a definition or using and understanding when to use a particular template (e.g. data collection template); these tools will be used in conjunction with the tools introduced under the Facilitator Training. 
  • JISC infoKit: Change Management. The whole section on change management is extremely useful but in particular the section on “Change Roles” which helped to identify which roles the BTT required for example our “Change Champions” are the BTT Champions who champion the review of processes within the BTT structure. The infoKit also has helpful information on for example, resistance to change which will make a good topic for a monthly BTT members meeting and the “Force Field analysis” tool can be demonstrated. 
  • Project Blog. A project blog has been maintained at http://cubtt.jiscinvolve.org/wp/ to enable dissemination of the project to the wider HE community.

 

Outcomes

 

  • An outcome of the project so far is the recognition that the staff in the “business” i.e. Administrators; Course Directors and anyone involved in a “process” needs to know how to review that process in order to feed their requirements into new systems being developed.
  • Following on from the recognition that staff need to know how to review processes; it has been recognised that a university wide team “structure” is required to enable local processes to be reviewed; new requirements identified to meet new demands and then these communicated into a central business transformation team for the university wide process to be reviewed and designed.
  • Recognition that “standard” university wide processes are required to ensure a better student experience as university procedures will be and will appear to be, “joined up”.

 

Achievements

So far the achievements of this project have been:

  • Recommendation of a structure to be implemented pan university consisting of local Business Process Review Teams within each school and service department; these local teams then feed into a central pan university Business Transformation Team - structure approved by the ISP Programme and recommended to University Executive.
  • The agreement of the Executive that staff will be given time to participate in and recognised for being Business Process Review Champions.
  • Fourteen staff members have been trained in business process review methodology and workshop facilitation techniques; these staff will facilitate Business Process Review workshops. Trainees represented every school and two central service departments.
  • A further three senior staff members have attended a workshop to understand the concept of the business process review methodology.
  • Two members of the university Learning & Development department have attended a workshop to understand the concept of business process review methodology to provide support to BTT facilitators.
  • A business process review team workshop has taken place on a major IT project to determine the "as-is" process and obtain the requirements for the "to-be" process, also funded by JISC under the Course Data Programme; this workshop was facilitated by a staff member trained under the BTT project as a business process review facilitator.
  • The next phase of the Applications and Offers ISP Project will use the BTT structure to engage with stakeholders to determine the "as-is" processes and obtain the requirements for the "to-be" business process. Business Process Review workshops have already taken place in some schools, facilitated by the trained facilitators (champions).

 

Benefits

The benefit so far on this project has been the recognition by both the University Executive and the staff engaged in the training that business process review is important and that as participants in that business process, they must take an active role in defining future requirements of any IT system developments, to do that they must know and understand their current process.

 

Another benefit is having the fourteen staff trained to facilitate business process review workshops and act as champions for process review within the schools and service areas. This has raised awareness of the system developments currently taking place under the ISP Programme of work.

 

The staff trained as facilitators can see the benefit of reviewing the university process and are actively engaged in organising and facilitating business process review workshops in their areas on admissions processes under the Applications & Offers ISP Project, the benefit being a better understanding of the processes involved and subsequently an agreed defined set of detailed requirements for the pan-university process so reducing time and/or development costs. This project aims to reduce the turnaround time between the receipt of an application and an offer made and will introduce workflow and direct communication with applicants via an on-line portal thus improving the staff and student experience.

 

Drawbacks

The drawbacks of this project:

 

  • The concept of the BTT was difficult to articulate to management and staff; several presentations were given from the Executive level to administrative staff to overcome this; the presentations proposed a structure in a pictorial manner and linked the concept to the University Strategy and enablers of that strategy. Additionally, projects under the ISP Programme such as the Applications & Offers project and Course Data project are being used to trial the BTT concept.
  • Changing the culture of the university to aim for pan university business processes is a great challenge; by bringing staff representatives together from all areas of the university helped, through discussion, to highlight the fact that their processes were not significantly different and they could learn from and support, each other rather than feeling challenged by each other.
  • Identifying those staff members to be trained as BTT workshop facilitators was challenging, the challenges being getting fourteen busy administrative staff, some at the senior management level,  in a room at the same time for four consecutive days; strong directives were used to achieve this including requesting the Executive to put weight behind the training. The final selection of attendees, with possibly a couple of exceptions, proved to be good with all participants of the training seeing the benefit of the using a methodology to review processes.
  • Exceptionally time consuming in terms of keeping project momentum and engagement from staff in the concept, this is a great challenge in the current economic climate in HE with the drive to be more efficient with less resource.
  • The BTT has to be embraced by all Schools and Departments for it to succeed; effort will continue to be required by the Project Team, beyond the official end of this project, to ensure the structure is embedded across the university. See section "Looking Ahead" to see how this is being addressed.

 

Key lessons

The following are key lessons on this project:

 

  • Initiatives such as the BTT are a challenge for many institutions. External funding, such as the funding from JISC, can be an incentive to progress a project, however, it is important to be aware that having to meet external stakeholder conditions of funding add another dimension of pressure to the project and the project staff.
  • When attempting to change culture in an organisation do not under estimate the amount of time required to communicate at both the individual level and the group level to persuade people to come on board with the change being proposed and to act as a champion of that change.
  • Introducing a new concept into an organisation requires tenacity, perseverance and creative thinking to communicate the idea; the new concept may need to be communicated in various different guises before it is grasped by the majority. Do not assume it will be grasped at the first presentation.
  • Resourcing projects and retaining that resource in the current economic climate is challenging. However, if the project manager accepts the pressure to continue, it is the project manager’s responsibility if the project fails. If the resource is no longer available, as a project manager, be strong enough to postpone or stop the project.

 

Looking ahead

In each school and department, key champions of the concept need to be nurtured in order for the original Project Team to relinquish their project responsibilities and for the project to close. A series of monthly meetings have been planned with a set agenda, to bring all the trained BTT facilitators together. The aims of these meetings are:

 

  • To bring the trained facilitators together to encourage networking and communication between them as a group;
  • Look at a business process review tool at each meeting to build confidence in the facilitation methodology;
  • Look at examples of where business process review workshops have been run and examine the positives for

others to learn from and review what didn’t work so well.

 

Lunch is provided at the end of the meeting to encourage the facilitators to form a relationship as a group.

 

Sustainability

Two members of staff in Learning & Development were trained in the concept of Business Process Review; it is envisaged that this will aid sustainability in that L&D will be able to participate in BTT workshops and support other facilitators.

 

The Project Team have requested that BTT duties are written into Job Descriptions to support sustainability; this request has been taken to the Executive. The request is being considered under the same umbrella as staff who take on extra duties such as “Well Being” Champions; First Aid Monitor; Fire Marshall; Green Champions; etc. which up to now are not formally recognised. The feedback is that these duties will be included in the Personal Development Review procedure.