Are we atypical?
It’s essential for any organisation to manage access to their resources. Supplementary to this is identity management (IdM). By managing identities we can place accountability and entitlement upon an individual engendering a relationship of trust. At a meeting I recently attended the topic of ‘atypical users’ arose i.e. those out of the ordinary.
This immediately struck a chord with me as I’d guess, at this moment in time, they’d typically arise in Business and Community Engagement (BCE) related activities e.g. when undertaking collaborative research individuals from external organisations may require access to relevant resources/systems.
BCE is all about building relationships, exchanging knowledge and working collaboratively. Access and identity management are areas that really can help FE/HE to manage these areas more effectively. For example a lot of institutions provide access to learning resources via their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) but most only allow access to students, if they were to extend their identity and access management policies and procedures to include other customers, they would be providing economies of scale and better value for money.
If you’re interested in this area I’d recommend the JISC Access Management blog and the blog ‘Just thoughts…’ by David Harrison, an expert in this area. As he puts it:
“The point I’m alluding to is that access and identity management is a missing piece in the jigsaw that enables future models of higher education to develop.” Read More…
A scoping study exploring the risks and benefits of extending access management to BCE found that the greater barriers are cultural and organisational rather than technical. These are to do with how institutions deal with BCE interactions through libraries and IT/IS functions. The study revealed that there is increasing demand for more standardised access for such users from both external (collaborative partners, work-based learners, SMEs) and internal sources, the latter because managing identity and access on the basis of numerous exceptions is not cost-effective or resource-efficient. In this context it’s also worth mentioning the JISC Collections Additional Authorised User Licences, negotiated to enable access to content for new user groups.
Feel free to give your point of view and/or share your stories via the comment box below.
Extending IT support for external engagement
JISC Netskills are running a FREE event for senior IT staff, as part of the JISC Business and Community Engagement (BCE) programme. It will explore key challenges and the support available through JISC for IT services as they look to extend provision for their institution’s engagement with external partners.
The event takes place at Euston House, London on July 16th. It will include the latest work and case studies emerging from the JISC BCE programme, as well as providing an opportunity to discuss relevant issues and exchange experience and solutions. Contributions will also help to focus currently planned outputs and inform future work for the programme.
Find out more and book a place
C(a)RM before the Storm
I’m not sure if it was the mention of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or the opening from our friendly vendor but the heavens opened up at a recent event at Teesside University with a huge encore of thunder & lightening. The day itself provided an opportunity for delegates across the education sector to meet up and discuss CRM with a particular focus on its role in supporting employer engagement.
Melvin James from Diagonal Consulting compered the event, reflecting the fact that the Consulting organisation was a key partner for Teesside in enabling the institution to align their business and CRM process requirements, taking into account the change management involved, with customisation of the chosen product.
Dominic Watts (Business Manager - Higher Education at Microsoft) began with some observations on the Higher Education (HE) economy and the role of IT. Dominic noted that in the future less money will be coming into HE from the public purse with that from the private sector likely to increase. Inefficiencies within institutions lead to further revenue loss however IT can act as an enabler, reducing ineficiencies and supporting us further in our engagement with external employers.
Dominic alluded to difficulties in trying to capture (share) information across our institutions, particularly activities undertaken by academics - which was by no means intended as a criticism. The problem exists in trying to make technology that supports this activity ubiquitous and seamless thus reducing workload and effort. This is one area where a CRM can be of benefit.
Karen Clegg (Deputy Director for Academic Enterprise) showcased the work of Teesside University who had chosen to implement Microsoft Dynamics. She gave an engaging overview of the challenging journey Teesside had undertaken in getting to the point of having an agreed CRM process, a system - endorsed by IT, senior management and marketing - with users across several functions and departments and, critically, an organisational structure and culture capable of making effective use of the sytems and processes. A new marketing and account management infrastructure was a key part of this.
The result is that Teesside have created a solid foundation on which to realise their ‘Customer First’ strategy. Integrating approaches to knowledge transfer and employer engagement activities, and leadership from Academic Enterprise seem to have facilitated this. Karen emphasised that, while the system is the key tool, effective CRM is all about processes.
In line with the point made by Dominic Watts, Teesside University approached implementation of the system using a ‘3Fs’ model:
- Familiarity. As you’ll have guessed from the name the tool is a Microsoft product and so is designed in a similar manner to Word, Excel etc. The added benefit is that a toolbar to access Microsoft Dynamics can be added to Outlook meaning the user is likely to have it available at all times.
- Functionality. To put it bluntly there’s a lot i.e. managing contacts, task lists, history, marketing, search (and saved search), export to html dynamically, dashboard etc.
- Flexibility. Modules are constantly being developed for the product and their is a growing community around the tool itself. Links can also be made to other systems i.e. Agresso at Teesside University.
Needless to say, in this case Teesside chose Microsoft Dynamics, but we would emphasise that it is not the tool you choose that’s important but what you do with it! And more importantly, what you do before you choose it….
Teesside highlighted a number of benefits to the institution in standardising CRM processes and system usage across key functions, including:
- Effective coordination of engagement with employers across the institution (single record; avoids duplicate contacts).
- Reporting made easier e.g. Higher Education - Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey.
- Managing the risk of Data Protection and Information Management legislation.
Lessons Learned at Teesside University include:
- Involve your procurement services at an early stage. For more on procurement visit JISC Procureweb.
- Communication is of upmost importance as it is in any large scale project.
- Senior Management buy-in is essential.
- Be aware, interoperability is a political issue!
As mentioned in a previous post (on employer engagement) readers may find a recent toolkit, the CRM Self-analysis Framework to be of great value. The toolkit was developed by the University of Nottingham following the JISC CRM study by the KSA Partnership, which helps institutions work through their approach to CRM.
Many institutions are grappling with the same issues on CRM and by all accounts some have made considerable progress in embedding the business philosophy of CRM. It may be the case, though that the holy grail of academics using the system remains elusive in most cases yet…….
Employer Engagement
The Commonwealth Club posed the setting for an excellent conference on Employer Engagement, bringing together a range of delegates. Further and Higher Education (FE/HE) institutions were represented at the conference with a much greater bias towards HE, which some may argue requires the most development in managing and delivering employer engagement activities. The venue, located on Northumberland Avenue in London was excellent albeit a slight shortage of sockets for us JISC people. No live blogging or tweeting for me 
With regards to this conference employer engagement in itself covered a multitude of activities including: collaborative research, curriculum design and delivery, workforce development, consultancy etc. It’s worth pointing out that none of these activities are new to Universities/Colleges, a point presented by Madeleine Atkins in an inspiring historical journey. Madeleine highlighted the inception of Coventry University as a school of design in 1843 which was based around a specific industry (manufacturing) need.
The day itself started with a fresh outlook highlighting that although the country itself is in economic turmoil the environment to stimulate partnerships between employers and UK FE/HE has never been better. Employers require the service of training providers to up-skill their workforce in order to build capacity and save costs. Institutions/Colleges have the expertise to deliver this training in a professional, timely and tailored manner. It’s not just about the income generation either; institutions/colleges gain valuable industry experience which can be used in other contexts while employers are introduced to the forefront of innovative research and expertise increasing their chance of survival/sustainability.
Building upon earlier comments above, this isn’t a new area and there are already many examples of clear engagement including the involvement of employers on governing bodies, steering groups etc. and vice versa. The role of this activity in advancing institutions’ business development opportunities was also raised. This isn’t to say each and every institution must start engaging with employers to generate income, rather institutions should analyse the area in line with their strategic values and make an informed decision as to how they might best engage with the agenda.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that HE probably requires the most development in terms of professionalising employer engagement, however it was refreshing to hear from Derek Longhurst (FDF) that HE actually contributes to a large proportion of taught foundation degrees (almost 50/50 part-time, approx 33% full-time). Colin Monk spoke about an initiative at the University of Brighton called ProfitNet. ProfitNet brings together like-minded businesses in a forum where they can share best practice to improve productivity, profitability, skills etc. which was evidenced by a survey carried out with their members.
David Sweeney (Director: Research, Innovation and Skills at HEFCE) was very optimistic about the shape of HE and highlighted the progress made to date but also noted challenges that still remained, most notably:
- a lack of information about who to contact within the university
- university offer was not appropriate for skills need of the business
- lack of information about what universities offer
- lack of academics’ time to fulfil their HEI roles
- bureaucracy of university administrators
- insufficient rewards resulting from interaction
- unwillingness of the external organisation to meet the full cost of interaction
Further information on some of the challenges outlined above can be found in the CBI Education and Skills Survey 2009 (section 9, p47).
These were further evidenced in the presentation given by Graham Henderson (VC & Chief Executive - Teesside University). In order to address those priorities Teesside University are:
- starting to behave like a business
- developing a more flexible and responsive approach i.e. central coordination, senior managers within each school, account managers within each school and the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool
- placing the regional economy at the heart of everything they do
For more on the Teesside approach - espacially with reagrd to CRM - watch this space!
People may be interested to know that JISC and its services can help in a number of areas. The JISC approach encourages institutions to develop integrated external engagement strategies, whether in employer engagement, knowledge exchange or public engagement, so that information about interactions can be managed, reported and reviewed across the institution, leading to less duplication, more efficiency and opportunities for cross-selling. Notably, a recent toolkit, the CRM Self-analysis Framework, was created, put together by the University of Nottingham following the CRM study, which helps institutions work through their approach to CRM. You may also find the change management infoKit from JISC infoNet beneficial to your work, especially the section on culture.
What does BCE mean to me? Brian McCaul explains…..
Brian McCaul, University of Leeds, explains what BCE means to him in this short video.