A Collaborative Multi-institutional Approach to Business Process Improvement

November 7, 2012

Dale Sims, Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance

Tennessee Board of Regents

Thomas Danford, Chief Information Officer

Tennessee Board of Regents

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Which Type of Institution Do You Represent? 4 Year Public 4 Year Private 2 Year Public 2 Year Private Other

Which Functional/Technical Area do You Work In?

Student Financial Aid Student Accounts Receivable HR/Payroll Finance IT

Today’s Topics About the Tennessee Board of Regents and

the Business Process Improvement Project The Process Findings/Observations Specific Process Initiatives Benefits Roadmap

About the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR)

Public post-secondary education system established in 1972 consisting of 6 universities, 13 community colleges, and 27 technology centers with programs in 90 of Tennessee’s 95 counties

200K+ Students, 14K+ employees, and an annual budget in excess of $2.4B

Comprehensive Banner® suite implementation (Student, Finance, HR/Payroll, AR, Financial Aid) across all colleges and universities

Operational Data Store and Enterprise Data Warehouse (ODS/EDW) used by 4 of the universities and all 13 of the community colleges

About the Business Process Improvement (BPI) Project Objective: Development of a “Common Process

Foundation”

Desired Outcomes:• Common Student Experience• Leverage Operational Knowledge• Facilitate Training• Mitigate Risk• Address Complete College Tennessee Act

(CCTA) Requirements

The Process

Consultant Led and All Inclusive Executive Sponsors and Leadership Workshops and Sessions (continued)

• Kickoff• Discovery & Planning Sessions• BPM Sessions

Deliverables Briefings and Presentations

Workshops and Sessions

Kickoff (a crash course in BMP)

Discovery & Planning Sessions• Process prioritization, planning, and

alignment• Discovery Process

Business Process Modeling Sessions• Across all functional areas• Construction of future state process models• Validation of process models

Findings and Observations

Schools are more alike than different Desire to maintain control of customer-

facing branding Sharing of best practices understood but

not realized Acceptance is inversely proportional to the

distance from the customer

Strengths

Colleges share a base process set Customer service orientation Many good and best practices in use today Innovative approaches at many schools Cross college collaboration

Challenges

Legacy silo mentality IT support challenges Few opportunities to develop robust

stewardship and governance mechanisms Negative perceptions of common processes

(e.g. loss of control/autonomy) Impact of CCTA not well understood in the

colleges Need for strong leadership

4 Quick Takeaways

Need for ERP system (Banner®) functional user training

Desire to develop functional user groups ERP capabilities not being fully utilized or

relied upon ERP and BPM provide no strategic

advantage

Specific Process Initiatives

Summary - 255 distinct initiatives that drive to defined process improvements in the areas of:• Business process optimization (137)• Documentation development and maintenance (1)• Supporting investment decisions (12)• Performance measurement (2)• Planning (for improvement) (16)• Policy and business rule review (60)• Requirements identification (4)• Stewardship (3)• Training & knowledge development (20)

Sample InitiativesArea Observation

Human Resources Work with the finance office to determine the best practice for managing group positions, pooled positions and reconciliation. Review the results of the BPM for HR with finance leadership; pursue process improvement across the business units.

Student Accounts Receivable

Banner return of Title IV funds and Title IV authorizations functionality should be utilized to assist in complying with the Title IV regulations for federal financial aid.

Financial Aid College financial aid directors, admissions and registrars offices evaluate the needs of TELS recipients to determine a system wide best practice for handling transfer credit.

Student Records Explore the feasibility and effort associated with implementing a 2-way interface between Banner and D2L. "One stop shop" for instructors to record grades.

Student Records Consistency for learning support – review the consistency of RUBRIC and use of the learning support module where applicable.

Recruiting and Admissions

Review transcript requirements, policies, and procedures. Determine where there are opportunities for consistency that would benefit the student.

Sample Initiatives (continued)

Area ObservationFinancial Aid Work with foundations to establish earlier deadline for selecting

scholarship recipients, facilitating their incorporation into initial financial aid packaging cycle. Provides student with an earlier, more complete picture of their aid package and any remaining unmet need. Also minimizes chance of an over-award requiring manual adjustment.

Financial Aid Consider a system level approach to loan default management, including consideration of use of a third party vendor. Currently, practices and results appear to vary among institutions.

Admissions Use of Self-Service Admission functionality is limited, requiring more manual processing by both student and institution staff. Increased use of this functionality should be considered. Training on its implementation and use should be provided both to new implementers and existing users.

Finance Continue collaboration across the colleges to define a standard reconciliation process for all transactions posting to the General Ledger.

Initiatives By TBR Strategic Plan Goal

Access7%

Student Success20%

Quality2%

Resourcefulness & Efficiency71%

Initiatives by Functional Area

All4%

Finance9%

Financial Aid25%

Human Resources29%

Student Accounts Receivable15%

Student (all)18%

Common Process Foundation Benefits Portability of Customer Service Consistent use of common rubrics Enhanced technology support for functional

users Better reporting and analytics Consistent performance measurement Process and system knowledge will be more

transferable/shareable Compliance with CCTA

Implementation Roadmap

Current Activity• RFP Process• Develop appropriate governance structure

Activity After RFP Award• Prioritize initiatives (2 streams)• Create workgroups• Review initiatives and validate• Implementation and training

Categorization into ‘Streams’

Stream 145%

Stream 255%

Prioritization Matrix

Questions?Thank-you!

Thomas Danford Tennessee Board of Regents

http://www.linkedin.com/in/tdanfordhttp://twitter.com/tdanfordthomas.danford@tbr.edu

Dale Sims Tennessee Board of Regents

dale.sims@tbr.edu

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