Innovations in Shared Services

 

Budget reductions, increasing demand for IT services, rapidly changing technology, and difficulty recruiting and retaining specialized staff are driving a new focus on collaboration and shared services at community colleges across the nation. While shared services—which typically involves organizations working together to centralize functions like billing systems, administrative processing areas, and hard-to-retain talent—has been around for decades, the advent of high-speed internet and cloud computing has enabled the model to evolve from location-based "neighborhood" consortia to "birds of a feather" collaborations, allowing community colleges with a shared need to work together regardless of location. 

 

When it comes to information technology, the price of "going it alone" is becoming more evident. Community colleges are finding it increasingly difficult to shoulder the high costs and responsibility associated with their IT operations. Some colleges may be wasting resources on specialized staff who are underutilized. Plus, individual colleges have less influence with vendors, which results in less favorable pricing and contract terms. Because of these factors, an increasing number of community colleges are looking for opportunities to share services. 

 

 

Collaboration enables community colleges to achieve real savings. For example, if your college employs a talented database administrator or programmer but doesn’t have the workload to support his or her full-time status, you can share this resource with other institutions and distribute the costs. It also provides an opportunity to leverage the economies of scale that are especially important for colleges with smaller student enrollments. For example, colleges who work together to purchase and implement a shared learning management system (LMS) or other technology components can see the benefit of sharing technology solutions.

Joining forces with other institutions also increases your buying power, allowing you to negotiate better discounts and contract terms, which can amount to considerable long-term savings. Some consortia have reduced their IT costs by 35% by working together. In addition, intercollege sharing can open the window to new grant opportunities because funding agencies are increasingly targeting multi-institution projects for support. 

One of the common misconceptions about shared services is that an institution must relinquish control and risk abandoning its identity and traditions in order to participate. In fact, culturally you don’t have to be in lockstep with other institutions to share services. By properly constructing the organizational structure and ownership rules upfront, you can realize the level of control and efficiency you desire. There are several shared services models available to fit your institution’s needs: 

 

• Buying consortium – Multiple colleges band together to increase their buying power.
• Shared hosting – Multiple colleges share a hosting platform to run their individual applications. 
• Shared hosting and applications – Multiple colleges share a hosting platform as well as applications, such as an LMS or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
• Shared applications and supporting staff – Multiple colleges share a hosting platform, applications, and IT support staff.
• Fully integrated operations – Colleges standardize their business process and share a single suite of administrative applications and operate as a single administrative IT department.

 

As shown above, one of the most significant shared services opportunities is fully integrated operations. When colleges work together to purchase and implement a shared, cloud-based ERP system, they are able to forego the significant upfront investment of building a big data center, purchasing costly equipment, and hiring staff to operate it. As the level of cooperation and integration of services increases, in most cases so do the potential cost savings. Of course, as collaboration increases so does the level of planning and effort required to develop and maintain the consortium relationships needed to successfully deliver services and meet members’ expectations.  

 

Fortunately, implementing shared services is easier than ever before. Prior to the availability of high-speed internet and cloud computing, colleges that were interested in sharing services were often limited to collaborating with nearby institutions regardless of their goals. But today the internet has removed geography as a limiting factor. Cloud computing could also remove the need for a shared data center and the capital costs associated with building and operating it. 

"How do we start?" is a common question. A strategic partner like CampusWorks has the experience and expertise to help you organize and operate a shared IT services arrangement that will help your college—and your partner colleges—lower the cost of improving student success. Visit www.campusworks.com for more information.

 

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Author Bio:

Jerry Smith is a senior portfolio manager/senior IT executive at CampusWorks, a strategic partner that transforms higher education institutions by providing an independent perspective and creative solutions to improve operations, reduce costs, and position students for success.