There’s no doubt that one of the sectors that has been most disrupted over the past year is education, in particular higher education instructions such as universities.

The need for remote anytime, anywhere learning and a streamlined digital campus for students, stakeholders, faculty and staff, has meant end-user computing is the focus of a hi-ed institution’s digital transformation.

The 6 main influences on university behaviour:

Universities are a unique sector, all of which influence their priorities and behaviour. 

1: Funding Sources.

Unlike the corporate sector universities are funded primarily from student fees and government grants. To embellish these often-limited funds, universities seek out research funding and grants from the public or private sector. There is also a strong drive to setup SLAs with the customers of IT and Shared Services, to move the risk on the investments to the consumer.

2: Benchmarking.

Universities are in a competitive, open market and as such are more willing to share data and information for comparison purposes than their corporate counterparts. Performance against several international ratings is very important in strengthening their appearance to domestic and overseas markets, for both student numbers and research finding.

3. Breadth of Services required leading to proliferation of Satellite IT.

The nature of the education sector ensures there are many diverse ‘businesses’ being provided for by the Shared Services division. The Medicine Faculty has very different business priorities and diverse needs to the Arts, History and Law faculties, for example.

The invariably leads to a growth in the satellite IT services, with faculties often developing their own technologies and facilities. Capturing the scale and cost of satellite technologies is essential to evaluate whether to absorb and standardise, or support these areas. A careful balance of service delivery and cost to serve.

4. Distributed Delivery.

By their very nature, universities are typically situated in multiple geographical campuses and regional locations. This presents logistical challenges in resourcing and administering the service delivery, As well as maintaining transparency and appropriate centralised management.

5. Strong need for transparency.

Budgets are significant, in some cases $500m being spent across IT and shared services. Due to the public nature of education, scrutiny is significant with regulatory requirements imposed and statutory reporting mandated.

Cost efficiency is critical to survival as challenges to funding are significant. Better, more efficient ways of doing business need to be found, while preserving the quality (and international rankings) of service delivery.

6. Selective Chargeback.

Many universities implement full Chargeback, while others elect to apply Chargeback selectively where it can deliver better behaviour and Showback across many other areas.

Objectives:

The CEO of Deakin University in Victoria saw a need for full transparency and accountability across their services – especially end-user computing.

With a variety of different workplace offerings available it was critical to ensure that the right technology was provided, at the right price and that the service levels were appropriate. For example, no top-spec laptops when a basic desktop is all that is required.

The value of this engagement led to inclusion of the entire IT department and then on to the delivery of a benchmarking project for 5 universities: Melbourne, Deakin, Monash, UNSW and Queensland, to compare services, service levels and costs.

ClearCost has since been engaged at 13 Universities across Asia Pacific; Deakin, Monash, UNSW, Melbourne, ANU, Canberra, Griffith Uni, Queensland Uni, UNE, UWA, Curtin, and Auckland, as well as secondary educational institutions with several collaborative benchmarking initiatives having been completed.

To learn more about benchmarking and cost optimisation for your university, visit www.clearcost.software today and sign up for a free demo.