Setting the foundations for successful collaboration

This strategic mindset is increasingly being recognised across the sector, the work of the UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce, supported by Jisc, is helping to shape a more collaborative future by identifying practical ways to reduce duplication including through shared service models.

Identify which systems and processes could be shared

Each university is unique, but the underlying systems and back-end processes are often the same. Functions such as payroll, or out of hours IT cover, for instance, could be shared with others without compromising on that unique identity.

It’s helpful to pin down which areas could be streamlined through collaboration, as well as those which should be preserved at all costs.

This approach frees up your people to focus on those areas that have the biggest positive effect on the student experience, because it’s far easier to add ‘uniqueness’ to a shared foundation than it is to reinvent everything from scratch.

Standardise your data and simplify your systems

In my experience at Jisc, inconsistency in how data is managed, stored and used is one of the challenges holding back digital transformation in the higher education sector.

Think about how you record information. Are you doing that in a standard way that makes it easier to collaborate or share services? If you’ve got a unique way of, for example, creating a student identity, then it will be harder to adopt a shared learning platform or other system.

Many institutions have evolved, adapted and bolted bits on to their systems over time, meaning the format of data held by one may look very different to that stored by another organisation. In my former life as a chief information officer, I found so many processes that had originally been created for one reason, but the reason had disappeared, and the processes never changed.

If data is standardised at source, that makes merging two sets of data structures far easier. Before entering into a collaborative arrangement, make sure you are fully aware of the data your organisation holds, its structure, and how that compares to the institution you are looking to work with.

Also think about the platforms you use, and simplify this as far as possible. For example, if the other institution you want to collaborate with uses Teams for working on documents, but yours has a bespoke system, that will make collaboration harder.

Understand the journey of your data – where does it originate, where is it stored, and where does it need to go? With proprietary systems, sometimes you can’t get the data out – which makes things difficult when you want to do anything collaborative.

In most cases, using simpler, off-the-shelf software reduces the need for customisation and increases the likelihood of a successful partnership.

Think about systems and the bigger picture

A common problem in educational institutions is that departments work in silos, and each chooses a system that works for them without thinking about how it fits into the bigger picture. This can accumulate over time to the point where sometimes it just seems easier to keep everything running as it is, but the reality is that you have systems running in parallel, each needing support, and each with their own datasets. This situation, known as technical debt or technical legacy, can be a barrier to collaboration.

It may be that HR and finance may deal with the same people, but have separate systems. The estates department might buy access control technology without considering how it links with student record systems, or attendance applications

Thinking more holistically and sharing data across systems makes life simpler and avoids the need for data duplication and the risk of information being updated in one place but not another. It also makes collaboration far easier – bringing one system and set of data across to share with a partner is a lot easier than trying to work with several.

A matter of policy

Think about why your organisation does things the way it does. I’ve found that often there is no answer beyond ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it’.

For example, you might always hold three interviews before making an appointment – but why? If you’re sharing a recruitment process with another organisation that behaves differently, this could cause friction.

Policies have sometimes evolved in a certain way because there were specific cases or unique needs, and now that process applies to everything. The better way is to structure policies so those exceptions sit underneath the core policy, rather than being embedded in it. That way you can have consistency and still deal with edge cases.

Keep it simple

Your goal should be to look throughout your organisation and identify ways to standardise, simplify, and streamline. Set the foundations now, and the road will be smoother later. Even if your institution doesn’t need shared services now, it will be more efficient than before, and ready to collaborate when the time is right.