Making your admin systems more cost effective

The issue

At a time of severe budget cuts, it’s more important than ever for institutions to maximise the potential of their existing core administrative systems and data.

Information and communication technology (ICT) systems must be well-aligned to business processes, work together efficiently and address users’ needs.

What you can do

Organisations should take a strategic approach to planning new integrated IT systems or take measures to improve existing systems where a total redesign isn’t feasible. 

Identify what needs changing

A first step is to identify what you need to change to increase efficiency. Our taking a holistic approach guide takes an ‘enterprise architecture’ approach to help you identify your options.

Enable your systems to work well together

When new IT systems are implemented alongside the old the two often don’t speak the same language. Data becomes impossible to share and staff time is wasted on re-keying data. By enabling your systems to work well together, you are providing your organisation with accurate and up-to-date information on which to base decisions.

Our 10-step checklist and other resources on improving organisational efficiency will help to get you started in making more of your existing investments, shared services and cloud computing.

Understand user needs

It’s important to look at user needs, not just system constraints, when planning ways of making current systems work better together. We supported the University of Derby to improve the student application and registration process by putting users at the centre of service design and process improvements.