Business Challenge
Transforming Solutions, Inc. (TSI) was engaged by Information Technology Services at a southern public flagship university as a strategic, transformation partner to ensure that appropriate mechanisms were in place to meet the needs of the multi-institution University community for the modernization of its student information systems. One goal of the initiative was to build a more centralized environment for university system-wide functionality. As a strategic partner, TSI’s transformational team worked to identify, align, and drive the needs of the University with the identified institutional priorities as well as analyze the academic governance structure of each institution to ensure alignment with the new system to maximize successful implementation. Using change management strategies throughout the project, TSI emphasized people and processes over software while working to ensure that the proposed student information system efficiently and effectively aligned with key university values.
TSI’s Approach and Role:
Approach
To accomplish the identified goals, TSI engaged in the following:
Change and Cultural Management
To achieve the goals of the digital transformation project, TSI used various strategies. Change management strategies were employed throughout the entire project across the four campuses. TSI assessed change readiness with various key stakeholder groups, leadership, and other critical players using a series of organizational context definition sessions. TSI worked collaboratively to foster a culture of innovation and improvement throughout IT Services and the University campus community. The conversations with stakeholders, the development of requirements, and the early discussions with the vendor regarding functionality all facilitated the development of detailed Business Cases as well as a Roadmap for demoing the proposed software.
IT Needs Evaluation and Assessment
TSI conducted an IT needs assessment to determine areas of need, technology currently used, integrations needed, existing gaps, functional and technical requirements, etc. TSI worked closely with an identified vendor to gather and analyze all necessary functional and technical requirements to support the customized demonstration of and design of software to meet the needs of the institution. Working collaboratively with representatives from the four campuses and Workday, TSI led the development of user stories, scenario narratives, and personas based on the gathered requirements to lead software functionality demonstrations.
Business Process Improvement and Requirements Gathering
Additionally, TSI spearheaded process improvement initiatives across the four campuses to assess the current state of readiness for change, opportunities for improvement, pain points, process complexities and connections, requirements for a new student system, and collect data about student, staff, faculty, and administrator experience. TSI created a visual representation of business processes that identified the stakeholders responsible for the process, to what standard it should be completed, and how the success of each process should be determined for critical entities with direct influence into the Student System. The team also helped drive the designing of future state processes to foster interconnectedness throughout campus, improve efficiency in university operations, and maximize use of technology. These student-focused units were assessed independently at each of the four institutions to document the similarities and differences of the current state business processes.
TSI managed the process work in order to appropriately plan for, staff, and map out processes for all functional areas across the institution that worked with the current student system. This included all functional areas that touched Recruiting and Admissions, Student Records, Student Accounts, and Financial Aid such as Athletics, Bursar, Financial Aid, Registrar, Advising, International programs, the Graduate School, Online programs, and others. Processes and session outcomes were used to align system requirements and processes across all four campuses to align requirements and needs for a new system and ensure all campuses’ needs were met. The team mapped 350 process improvements and held constituent experience sessions and supplemental requirements gathering sessions resulting in the gathering of 1119 unique requirements to support the broader system selection project.
TSI led the process of prioritization of the identified requirements to ensure appropriate infrastructure and planning was established for a smooth implementation.
Role
TSI served as a project manager, transformation leader, change agent, and facilitator throughout this project. Additionally, TSI collaborated and worked closely with the Workday software team to deliver requirements, demos, build user stories and personas, and meet the needs of the University client.
Results
Throughout the engagement both the University and TSI gathered data to support progress toward goals, effective implementation of methods, measure outcomes, and evidence a return on investment. Some of this data included:
- 350 processes were mapped for the current state and analyzed collaboratively with TSI and the University
- 46 Constituent Experience sessions were held across the four campuses
- 145 unique requirements were gathered from the Constituent Experience sessions
- 1119 unique student lifecycle requirements were gathered throughout the duration of this project across the four institutions
- Metric tracking was established to monitor total numbers of: pain points, opportunities for improvement, participating stakeholders, processes, and sessions held.
- 20 University staff received training in BPI, Lean principles, Project Management, and Organizational Change Management
- Methods for tracking business processes and desired metrics that were developed with TSI for this project continued to be used for the PMO internal work within the PMO after completion of the project