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Be ready for change

The key issue

Educational organisations are undergoing a period of rapid change as they strive to do more with less and meet new and expanding expectations, especially from learners.

Universities and colleges need strategic approaches to technology that enable them to adapt rapidly to change caused by factors such as funding cuts, new government requirements, changing student expectations, increased competition and new developments. 

What you can do

We believe you can make change pay dividends if it helps your organisation operate more efficiently while also meeting strategic objectives.

Develop your birds-eye view...

When planning change, it pays to focus on services rather than systems and implement new methods in a small project before scaling-up. Our guide will take you through an approach to building an overarching institutional strategy, while our information on business intelligence to help you access the data you need to plan it.

Our report explores the potential of analytics in supporting planning and evidence-based decision making. 

For an overview of efficiency measures, our resources on improving organisational efficiency are a good place to start, covering topics such as shared services, cloud computing and how to get more from existing investments.

Scenario planning can also help you plan for change by helping you prepare for alternative views of the future. You explore the likelihood of a particular scenario happening and how well-placed you are to cope if it does.

…and closer to the ground

Once you’ve identified where change is needed, you’ll need to take steps to implement it. The change management guide can help. Other guides you may find useful include:

Strategies for ICT

With your strategy in place, you’ll need tools to plan your ICT. We’ve supported the development of a strategic ICT guide to help you measure how well your current ICT is aligned with your institutional strategy and make plans for improvement.  

Measuring impact

As you start implementing change to your business processes, you’ll want to measure its impact. Our impact calculator  can help. Find out how six institutions fared when they used it to measure the impact of changes to their records management systems.

Taking a holistic approach

We can help you implement these plans using enterprise architecture, a technique that enables you to understand your current state and develop a blueprint for moving to a future desired state. 

How could it help me map where we are currently?

For example, this approach could help you describe

  • what your organisation does
  • the processes and people involved
  • what data are used and how they flow through the organisation
  • what and how information technologies are used
  • and the relationships and dependencies between all of these.

The archi modelling tool provides a way of visualising these relationships. 

‘Start small and build up’ is a key message to emerge from work we’ve supported. You’re more likely to persuade others of the value of this approach when you have an example of how it has led to success.

How are other colleges and universities using this?

King's College London took an enterprise architecture approach to integrating IT services across its many campuses and sites in central London. Liverpool John Moores University is using it to align ICT with corporate strategic objectives. University College Falmouth is improving administrative processes to monitor student retention and employability. These and other case studies are described in experiences with EA.

Join our emerging practices initiative to share experiences of applying enterprise architecture and other techniques. The Enterprise Architecture Practice Group will enable you to share experiences with peers in other institutions.

What does the future hold?

We're continuing to explore how you can use and apply analytics to better inform your planning and decision making.