Share services to save costs and form strategic partnerships
By sharing services, UK universities and colleges can save costs, increase efficiency, share knowledge and form strategic partnerships to develop cross-institution support services. They also satisfy the government’s shared services agenda.
A shared service differs from outsourcing to a contractor in that it requires a formal framework and additional governance. The advantage of a shared service is that users play a much stronger part in determining how it is developed and delivered.
Shared services have become more attractive with the development of technology that facilitates collaboration. JISC is a shared service which itself provides a range of national shared services, such as JANET, the UK’s education and research network, and JISC Advance, which gives advice and guidance to institutions about technology. We’ve also developed resources to help organisations plan and implement their own shared services.
- We’ve updated our shared services infoKit as part of the Improving organisational efficiency series of infoKits. This gives the historical and political context of shared services, covers the benefits and risks and some of the steps needed to implement a successful shared service.
- A first step is to understand where shared services may offer genuine benefit and strategic advantage. Our Taking a holistic approach infokit can help you make this assessment taking an ‘enterprise architecture’ approach. See also Strategies for agile institutions.
- Failure to understand the importance of good process design and good workflow is the main reason why so many shared service initiatives fail to deliver the expected benefits. It’s essential to review and re-engineer your business processes before deciding whether to share or outsource. North Hertfordshire College, for example, managed to reduce the cost of its finance processes by 30% in a six-month period after such a review, removing the need to outsource or develop a shared service.
- You will need to know the cost of existing services and the benefits they deliver before deciding whether a shared service or outsourcing represents value for money. Our costing technology and services infoKit can help you with this valuation.
- We’ve produced a series of case studies to illustrate how different organisations have approached shared services. The University of Plymouth and Plymouth City Council HELASS Project, for example, developed a useful approach for identifying many possibilities for sharing services and selecting the best two.
What does the future hold?
Shared services have been used mainly for sharing administrative processes such as student records or timetabling. However, organisations are now looking for strategic partnerships and sharing around the core businesses of learning, teaching and research.
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