Stanford MIT Benchmarking in Higher Education: A Beginning

1
Stanford / MIT Benchmarking in Higher
Education A Beginning

• Final Presentation
• November 13, 2002

2
Benchmarking in Higher Education Discussion
Agenda

• Overall takeaways
• Methodology highlights
• Timeframe
• Staffing and costs
• Specific lessons for the next team
• How and when do we expand?
• Recommended next steps

3
Overall takeaways

• Valuable Benchmarking is indeed valuable
• Requires the most senior-level involvement
  commitment
• Already seeing benefits
• Helps us define credible data imperfect data can
  still be useful
• Challenging
• Significant but quantifiable amount of time
• Difficult to calculate costs FTEs across
  multiple depts
• Must have project manager
• Raises expectations
• Has real costs
• Project costs
• Ongoing data analysis, reporting
• Investments in tools and process improvement

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Overall takeaways

• Methodology
• Must invest in multiple site visits
• May be somewhat standardized for similar
  operations
• Likely will need to adapt for different types of
  operations
• Timing
• Think in terms of a full year to study
  implement
• Immediate benefits in 6 months 6-12 months to
  settle in
• Other partner(s)
• Consider after 6 months
• Key governance questions to resolve

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See more detail in Appendix 2 Project Methodology
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Key Aspects of Methodology

• Scope Carefully select and define!
• Cant over emphasize this!
• Overall goals then specific goals
• Immediately do Whats so? for each partner
• Scope determines time, methodology, output, costs
• Metrics
• Research and draft key metrics early
• Team leaders should identify key intuitions,
  standards, and metrics
• Draft the Data Early
• Even before fully understanding operations
• Identifies potential problem areas, provides
  practice

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Timeline for Benchmarking Transaction-Based
Operations
Scope definition takes several months prior to
team launch
On-site visits
See more detail in Appendix 2
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The project requires significant staff time
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Specific lessons for next team

• Scope Define very clearly
• Time Recognize a big chunk of staff time
• Visits On site for 1-3 days 2 per campus
• Video Use video conferences when possible
• Size Limit team to 10-12 prime participants
• Tools Email list serves, doc sharing, and
  project management tool
• Practice Complete draft data early!!!

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Expansion of Help Desk study requires careful
planning

• Previous Goals
• Obtain data to use for comparisons
• Use data to make funding adjustments, decisions
• Improve operations
• Timing 6 months before expanding
• With Whom?
• Education large public, large private?
• Industry internal versus external Help Desk ops
• Associations
• Help Desk industry associations, norms
• Higher Ed associations, conferences
• External vendors, consultants?

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Expansion also requires funding and policies

• Funding and staffing
• How much willing to invest to expand to other
  institutions?
• Will affect scoping
• Significant time commitment
• Governance How? Who manages?
• Sharing data
• Use an OpenCourseWare approach?
• Privacy, what risks in sharing financials?
• Share FTE performance, but not financials?
• Process to select new areas for study?

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Lets first investigate to find a partner

• Large - to understand scalability
• Wider range of services, larger population
• Stronger use of tools technology
• Organization with low in-house development
• Also consider
• Segmentation of customers
• Standards and control local versus central
• Use of tiers, self-help

13
Recommended Next Steps

• Continue to implement targeted HD metrics
• Implement quick wins
• Invest in modifications for Remedy and
  Casetracker
• Do preliminary research on potential partners
• Re-evaluate in May 2003