As many institutions continue to struggle with rising costs and increasing complexity of their technology environment, the notion of Shared Services as a solution to these problems needs to be more closely examined. But, what exactly is “Shared Services”? Depending on your perspective, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people - a bit like the old "six blind men and the elephant" parable from the Hindu Rigveda. Breaking things down into the categories of People, Process, and Technology, here is a start at an explanation. People Ideally, a shared service model would result in staff and employees from the various participants sharing duties in support of each other.
We often hear about organizations who call in a consulting firm or an outside expert to perform an “IT Assessment”, where the target audience is generally the CEO, President, or Board of Directors. In addition to checking the temperature of an organization’s IT operations and overall soundness, technology assessments are an important component of due diligence in mergers and acquisitions. So, what does a “good” IT assessment consist of? In my experience, a solid IT assessment results in: A shared understanding of the key technology in use at the organization Current capabilities of the technology Stability of the technology Ability to expand on the technology (or not) Current costs to opera
Everyone knows about “the cloud” these days. From the cynical techie definition “running your stuff on someone else’s computer” to the CEO-who-got-religion “it's the only way we can stay in business!”, opinions run the gamut between skepticism and naive exuberance. Rapid developments of internet and web technology have made the cloud possible. In past years, the model began to evolve as rather primitive (by today's standards) hosting services. ASPs or Application Service Providers were some of the first examples on the market. But they were limited in their ability to deliver performance based on available bandwidth and ubiquity of bandwidth at endpoints. There was also a lot of downtime.
The concept of “shared services”, where multiple institutions band together around providing a joint solution to a problem, has tremendous attraction for higher education institutions. Costs continue to rise for basic administrative software and services, threatening the very survival of many institutions - in particular smaller private liberal arts colleges and universities who are desperately trying to regain profitability. How can that be done when administrative software costs are rising at an alarming rate? Recent developments in the ERP market have not been comforting. Ellucian, the providers of the Banner ERP, has had major leadership changes right in the middle of what many custome
If you are currently a CIO, or are in a similar leadership position in technology, always be a “tough act to follow”. Of the several CIO positions I have assumed, so far in my experience all of them came in on the heels of a predecessor who had so many odd quirks that it made me look like a superstar, or at least normal, by comparison! I’ve seen offices that needed to be cleaned out of chicken feathers because my predecessor CIO sold eggs at the office. I’ve seen dog urine stains on carpet because my predecessor CIO brought show dogs to work that nipped at customer’s heels. I’ve seen audits and investigations day one because of the mess my predecessor CIO left behind. I’ve seen a guy who
Yes, I said CEO, not CISO or CIO! It’s not a typo. What’s the most important thing you can do as a CEO to improve your organization’s overall information security? Is it hiring and retaining top quality information security technical expertise? Is it purchasing and installing the latest and greatest information security, antivirus, and intrusion detection software? While having qualified information security technical experts on your team and having the best information security software & systems in place is critically important, there is one fairly simple thing you as a CEO can do that rises above all else. And that one thing is having an understanding of your organization's information
This may come as a shock to some aspiring CIOs. But, if you want to rise to the top position, you must be prepared to move. Maybe that’s just to another department, maybe it’s across town, maybe it’s to another city or state, maybe it’s to another country! But, it is a fact of life that in order to advance you often need to take a new job with a new company. These days, universities and colleges seldom promote from within to the top technology position, unless they are still mired in the old models of having operational “directors” who are expected to keep the lights on but with no real authority to effect lasting change. Institutions almost always seek to find someone from outside the o
When I started in the Higher Ed IT business in 1982, there were huge rooms filled with mainframe computers. They cost millions of dollars. There were many employees to keep these things running, and produce reports and keep the primitive administrative terminal transaction systems alive. But, fast forward to 2017. By and large, the room full of mainframe computers is gone, along with their enormous singular expense. They’ve been replaced with efficient server racks of many computers sharing the work but at an exponential capacity over the old roomful of mainframe days. Some of us are using “the cloud” to run critical services. But guess what? The new stuff also costs money - a lot of money
Someone recently asked me what I thought the top three challenges facing Higher Ed institutions today might be. "Only three?", I thought to myself. Everyone can come up with a different set of three, but here are mine. 1. Financial Survival - in an ever more competitive world of low cost education opportunities, how can traditional Higher Ed institutions survive and attract enough students to not just meet budget, but to build financial reserves for future programs, maintenance of operations, and growth of the institution? Most institutions, definitely private and increasingly more so in public, rely heavily on tuition revenue. Many have large endowments as well, but typically those endo
In my experience, many IT departments fail simply because they have not been properly organized. Here are the essential components to an effective IT organization. Infrastructure Support - you will need a dedicated team of system experts and engineers to support the technical environment, preferably under a single director. The quantity (but not the quality!) of individuals required depends on how much your company or institution relies on the cloud or other off-site computing services. Security - you will need a dedicated individual, preferably a team of individuals, who focus on nothing but information security. Keeping patches up to date, monitoring web traffic for threats, managing compl
A very wise man once told me “once you have the money figured out, the rest of the problem is easy”. Seriously? Complex problems can be boiled down to money? Yes. In my experience, having adequate financial resources is critical to solving complex IT problems. It is impossible in this day of rapidly changing technology to address campus issues without adequate funding. Of course, everyone tries to solve those issues anyway, and generally fail for lack of finances. Which leads to bad feelings from the President and the VPs and anyone else who thinks this stuff is easy. It is easy, with the right amount of money. How much money? Far more than most universities have the stomach for. Typical IT
How many times have you been in a situation where you observed or overheard someone say “now, if this person over here was doing this other person’s job, things would improve around here!” ? In my experience, many colleges and universities seem to have a very difficult time with talent management, and “thinking outside the box” regarding appropriate staffing assignments in general. In more instances than I care to admit, I've observed the rare talents of an individual are ignored or even resented by middle and senior management. Instead, they often insist that the underappreciated individual keep doing the job they were hired to do, even though that job is much more common and easily repla
Efficiency and Effectiveness. Two words that get used a lot in business, but have radically different implications for business success. In my experience, many organizations focus almost exclusively on "efficiency", and miss the whole point of why you want to be efficient in the first place! For example, you can have the most efficient production line in the world, but if the end product is poorly designed or contains inherent flaws there is essentially zero value resulting from the supposed efficiency. The important thing is to focus on effectiveness. Is the thing you are doing, the system you are designing, the product you are developing going to be effective in growing business, solvin
