IT & Process standardization in Higher Education

The next few years will see a dramatic change in the University landscape in the UK - with more and more universities being forced to act like corporations in their management. While this will create tensions at the undergraduate level - with the need to balanace government regulations with the University mandate, thereby making it difficult for the universities to think like a private, commercial organizations, it is at the post graduate level that I see a real opportunity for change. Change that will improve the university profitability, student experience and market access.

While this change will manifest itself in many ways, I want to concentrate on standardization of processes across universities - at the post graduate level - that could be the low hanging fruit for the universities to adopt. While certain processes are outside of the university control at the undergraduate level (eg in Admissions, where significant amount of process requirements are dictated by UCAS), the University are free from such shakles at the post graduate level. In addition, they also have pricing and curriculum flexibility. This is combined with an increased flow of international (and especially Asian) students at the pre-experience Masters level and we have an opportunity for standardization that could reduce the costs for the university while streamlining the processes for international students.

Take international post-graduate admissions for example. Most of the universities ask international students to apply online - and ask for the same information. Thus, every university stores same data about the applicant (unlike at the undergraduate level where UCAS manages the data). Also, at the post graduate level, universities face more competition from international universities (a student from China will not apply to just the UK universities - but may also apply to universities in the US , Canada & Australia). A common data mart - not at the national level as UCAS in the UK, but at an international level - through a third party such as large publishers or IT houses, would reduce the cost for universities and accelerate the process for the applicants. The same data mart could be expanded to include international alumni, thereby creating a loop between the applicants and the alumni, across multiple countries and multiple universities.

Concepts such as above are not difficult to deploy - multinationals have common global systems and processes for activities such as attendence management, CRM, performance appraisals, expense management, ERP etc, with common data mart - covering all the countries they operate in. Since Universities do not operate in as many countries, multiple universities across various regions can access the third party data mart as long as certain process standards and security protocols have been agreed to (eg the common input data from international applicants that will be shared with all the universities and data that will be university specific).

While there are enough standardization opportunities within the post graduate education in areas such as admissions, student records management, scheduling, VLE etc, I believe the lowest hanging fruits for standardization are in the areas of international admissions and international alumni management. These two areas, while important to the university, are not focussed on the 'inside' operations. Rather they are focussed on the 'outside' operations and therefore, do not change the inside status much, while still delivering significant cost savings, increased market access and a streamlined student experience.

The problem is at the post graduate level, the universities consider Admissions and Alumni management as their core operation - processing data that they would not like to relinquish. While this is a noble aim, in reality, the data is not exclusive or unique to them (are they really naive to believe that if they get hold of an international applicant data, the applicant would not go to any other university - or how many universities really have up-to-date alumni data that is not otherwise available on social networking platforms?). If the data is not exclusive, why pretend otherwise - why not standardize the process, put the data in a data mart and use the savings elsewhere, and in doing so, simplify the process for thousands of international applicants?

Over the last few weeks, I have been trying, in my official role, to get together a group of top UK business schools to agree to a concept of MBA talent fair. Simply put, this concept builds on the strength of aggregation & shared services in the area of students career management. The fair brings together MBA students from top UK B schools on one hand, and some of the top employers on the other. Each school is required to bring in 1-2 of its employers relationship to the fair, thereby, resulting in a critical mass of employers on one side, and students on the other. The students win because in this economy, they get to meet with number of employers simultaneously. The employers win becuase they get to meet with students from all top B schools together, in a cost effective way, which they would be not be able to do it on their own. The schools win because they now offer real, immediate return to the financial investments made by their students, and get an opportunity to build relationships with more employers, in return for opening 1-2 of their existing relationships. Because an individual school or an individual employer would not be able to, or willing to, organize such an activity on its, for a variety of resons such as lack of trust, lack of resources or sheer inertia, a third party such as the organization I represent, would pull everyone together and project manage the entire activity. Everyone involved pays a nominal amount to cover the cost of the organization - the nominal payment required is less than the cost of meal for a group of ten, in an average London restaurant.

On the face of it, the concept made sense to everyone involved - the academic top brass at the business schools were escastic, not just because it was a very strong model to add value to the services provided by the business school, but also because it represented what the schools preach - outsource non-core activities and let a third party deliver it as a shared service, while the schools could focus on differentiating their students from the others. After all, what is the point in schools A, B & C approaching employers X, Y & Z independently for career placement - it only results in creating wastage in economy by deploying limited resources in a sub-optimal way. Would it not be better if employer X, Y & Z could meet the students of schools A, B & C together through a mechanism of shared career services, while the schools deploy their limited career resources in training & differentiating their students.

Alas, as it happens with most of the models, we forgot the human aspect of this interaction. The B school academic forgot that in their excitement to create a shared & outsourced career services, they will have to deal with objections raised by career /placement offices within these schools - if the employer interaction bit of career services is outsourced to a shared service group, with the 'true' focus of school career services on advisory & differentiation aspect, then most of the schools do not need such large career services department they have built up. What happens to the employees within this department?

As is the case with private corporations who leave the decision to outsource or not to those individuals whose very job is at risk due to outsourcing, the B schools left the above decision to career services department. And as is the case with private sector outsourcing initiatives, the career services decided not to participate in the above initiative because they did not feel the schools would get any value out of this. This decision will ensure that large organizations have no choice but to continue their expenditure of building expensive relationships with individual schools, when other options are possible; that MBA students continue paying higher tuition fees without understanding the tangible return in career placement; that B school academicians are still removed from the reality of the huge gap between what they teach the students and how they run their own schools; but will ensure that career services department at these schools continue to grow in terms of head count.

Do business schools practice what they preach?

Couple of weeks ago, I had an interesting meeting with the dean of a very reputed business school in the UK. Among other things, we discussed outsourcing of business processes at B schools - and in particular, outsourcing of three processes. These three processes are admissions, career management & alumni management.

I was of the view that B schools (and indeed the education sector as a whole) should focus on their core activities and outsource the above business processes to specialized entities. Doing so would enable creation of shared services, thereby reducing costs and improving service. As an example, even the top business schools in the UK are not able to attract all the MBA recruiters, run their own career management & alumni management platforms and discourage their students/alumni from networking with others through formation of a closed network- precisely opposite of what is taught in B school curriculum! Outsourcing career & alumni management would enable the school to focus its activities on advice related to networking career management, thereby enabling its students to differentiate themselves (improve service) and reduce the staff employed in these areas (reduce cost), while leaving the operational apsects of alumni/career management (eg organizaing recruitment, organizing alumni events etc) to shared services provider, who can provide access to larger pool of alumni / recruiters due to economies of scale (improved service again).

While the dean agreed with me on the above in so far as the admission process went, he had concerns about outsourcing the other two processes. Further probing revealed that the concerns were primarily of 'ego' nature - the school had invested in making MBAs out of ordinary people and thus, the school 'owned' those relationships, irrespective of whether such ownership made any commercial sense. There was also the small matter of alumni donations, though it escapes me as to how an e-mail direct from school would build the relationship, while the same e-mail sent 'on behalf of the school' by a third party would starve the school of any donation which the alumnus may choose to make. Of course, the view point of the customer (the students / alumni in this instance) was neither sought nor considered. Does it sound similar to how a CEO makes decision on his/her pet project in your organization?

Why outsourcing projects over-run

Being on the vendor sales side for number of years, I had always felt it was the client who caused outsourcing projects to over-run. Having spent the last year or so on the client side, I have miraculously come to the conclusion that vendors are out to fleece naive clients, thereby causing project over-runs.

What has been your experience?

If I have to combine my vendor side and client side experience in a dispassionate way, the conclusions on why outsourcing projects over-run are suprisingly simple and easy to deduce - however, it always amazes me why neither the clients nor the vendors learn. Probably because we use the terms 'clients' and 'vendors' as if they are two individuals - in real life, they are two organizations made up of different individuals with separate egos, metrics, aspirations and businjess understanding.

Consider the client side scenario - The CFO needs the outsourcing budget to be finalized even before the users and the CIOs have figured out what needs to be outsourced. Of course, being a CFO, he would like the costs to be as low as possible, and has no time for or understanding of mundane concepts like business processes, user experience, requirements analysis, functional specifications or estimation. The CIO / business user pulls a number out of thin air to get the budget approved - further quibbbling with the CFO ensues a budget number approved which will bear no resemblence to the final spend. The CFO knows it too well - however, he can later blame the over spend on the CIO. The CIO knows it too well and can blame the over spend later to the technology miracle called 'Change request'. The business user knows it well too, but can blame it on changed customer needs.

Consider the vendor side scenario - the sales person pushes the delivery arm to create an estimate. The delivery guru pushes the process down the hierarchy. At some stage, the estimation process lands on the table of a techie who is probably fresh out of a technology school. Using established estimation methodologies such as LoC or FP estimation, he creates what he considers a 'scientific' estimate. However, since about 70% of all costs are resource costs in an outsourcing project, our freshly minted techie forgets to apply a human judgement factor to the estimation. He makes up for it by applying what he calls 'risk contingency' and pushes the estimate up in the food chain. Throughout every stage of the food chain, the approver covers up for his lack of understanding of the project by buffering up the 'risk contingency'. By the time the estimate reaches the client, the 'risk contingency' is the major cost of the project.

Does the above scenario sound familiar to you? Do you believe there is a way out of above quandry or are we all resigned to a world where the final spend on over 80% of outsourcing projects bear no resemblence to the initial budget?

your views welcome!