Changes in Business Processes

The economic meltdown has resulted in unprecedented budget cuts, and its swath is broad and deep. The university president has two choices: the first is to retrench by placing many projects on hold, freeze pay increases, and hope for the best. The second would be use the opportunity to change the status quo. Higher education is not known for its efficiency, and we have been doing “university” the same way we have been doing it for decades. During that time many universities have invested heavily in technology, including ERP systems. Many observers inside and from the community have noticed the lack of change.

The university president willing to be a change agent can move their institution forward despite the economic challenges. It is very clear the faculty will continue to introduce change incrementally, and that is OK. Faculty have been supportive of systems that improve teaching and research, and are critical of systems that are considered busy work. Investments in the academic infrastructure will continue to be important.

The change can be realized in administrative functions university-wide. The college president should use the economic climate to bring changes which were impossible earlier. A starting point would be business process re-engineering. A good place to begin would be human resources and accounting processes. The president must be willing to push the university into new methods of conducing university business to recognize the greatest savings. The business world has used ERP systems as a foundation for business process improvement for the past decade with significant returns. The goal would be to generate significant savings to reinvest in academic programs. A byproduct would be organizational agility.

The president that chooses to put everything on hold and wait out the downturn will find all areas of the university being adversely affected across the board budget cuts.

Other areas universities might review for change would be libraries merging student support organizations with IT—many libraries have shown leadership with the Information Commons concept. Another area of interest would be to rethink faculty support organizations (teaching learning centers, research support, library support) into a new organization. Bold rather than timid should define the roadmap of the next twenty-four months.

A number of individuals will say this cannot be done, higher education will never change. Interesting that Obama is choosing this time to change national policy on a number of issues. Who would have thought a year ago we would consider making student financial aid an entitlement or higher education would experience a huge boost in research funding? It is time to act.