It seems that lots of Tier I Universities are paying millions of dollars to consultants to assess their IT offerings and make recommendations. One example is Cornell, who had their assessment done by Bain a number of years ago. After watching this video, I was surprised by the similarity not only of our current IT situation to Cornell’s but also the recommendations that Bain made compared to a similar study done here by Deloitte last year.
I like this presentation for many reasons, but the main points I took away were:
- Things needed to change
- Trust and collaboration among all of the units was key.
- Value at the edge (i.e., differentiating services) had to be maintained, while shifting common good services to the Central IT unit.
- Recommendations from the consultant, who took a very corporate (i.e. Command and Control) approach, were considered, but Cornell found its own way, designing services to meet their needs. I found most of Cornell’s solutions to be in line with what we would think is reasonable.
- Outsourcing was not the answer, but insourcing was helpful.
Closely related to this, our Division’s recent IT strategic plan focuses on the concept of specialized services. Our position (a la ITIL Positions) relies on differentiating our portfolio like this:
- Market niche specialized services: These can be custom or vendor provided services, or specialized knowledge-based services. They are differentiated by the business value to our customers. These services are most valued by our customers, both staff and students. Examples are OneHouse, Fusion, StuActOnline, MaroonLink, FishCampOnline, BigEventOnline Tier-2 service desk, technology facilitations.
- Best-in-Class non-specialized services: These services are highly valued by our customers, but may not be differentiating services. They may currently be best-in-class at the university. These services should be evaluated for continued inclusion in the service catalog, transition to a shared service provider, or spun off as a center of excellence. Examples are surveillance cameras, digital signage, virtual applications, accounting applications, project management.
- Commodity services: These services are non-positioning and should be transferred from the catalog to an outside provider OR retired. Examples are email, virtual machines, disaster recovery, software licensing, and IT sourcing/purchasing.
This leads to our first strategic principle:
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Strategic Principle #1: Prioritize services that provide a differentiating position. Transfer or retire services that don’t provide a differentiating position.
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As we begin to transition more commodity services to other providers, how do we define our value? If we can’t, why are we here?
