Shared Services
October 19, 2017
Health Sciences Administration: Redesigning processes in the move to shared services
A move toward shared services can be an opportunity to rethink common practices. As Health Sciences Administration gears up to launch its new Shared Services Center in January 2018, staff have already been implementing new, more streamlined processes — and seeing improvements. Rethinking before reorganizing HSA supports ten health sciences units in administrative functions, and…
Academic & Student Affairs advancement: A shared vision and collective impact
“Other universities are just starting to rethink how best to organize their work to capture donor interest around affinity and experiences. We’re already doing it.” —Tomitha Blake, associate vice provost for Academic & Student Affairs Advancement Four and a half years ago, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity, Student Life, Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the…
College of Engineering: Sharing advancement discovery services
The challenge: Cultivating the next generation of major gift donors In 2009, leading up to the “Be Boundless — For Washington, For the World” campaign, advancement leaders in the College of Engineering recognized a need to develop a new generation of major gift donors. At the time, the college’s advancement team consisted of major gift…
The Foster School of Business: When centralizing services leads to widely shared benefits
“The new model has helped us establish the Foster brand as an extension of the UW’s excellent reputation. It’s also allowed us to focus on the ‘customer experience’ — for prospects, students, alumni, recruiters, donors and our programs’ staff.” —Eric Nobis, managing director of Marketing and communications at the Foster School of Business Centralization can…
College of the Environment: Sharing web services
The challenge: Updating websites in units without web designers What do you do when nearly every one of your websites is dated, unstable, off-brand or all of the above? In 2013, this was the situation for the College of the Environment’s many schools, departments and research units. From academic program homepages that didn’t mention the…
The College of Arts & Sciences: Sharing business services for efficiency and support
The challenge: Departments doing more with lessThe challenge: Administrators’ time eaten up by transactional work In 2011, the College of Arts & Sciences was seeking ways to address growing administrative workloads. Within departments, high-level administrators — hired for their special knowledge in, for example, Anthropology programs — were spending time on increasingly complex transactional tasks….
The School of Medicine’s Administrative Business Center (ABC): Committed to customer service
The challenge: Departments doing more with less Between 2009 and 2011, the School of Medicine was facing new challenges in the areas of visas and grants administration. Budget reductions and changes to compliance rules prompted administrators to review their processes — and they noticed inefficiencies. At the time, each department managed its own visas for…
What does it mean to share services?
In many areas of the UW, if you don’t know how to get something done — post a graduate student assistant position, buy a new laptop, reimburse an expense or track the status of grant funding, for example — it can take time to figure it out. Unit administrators often wear many hats and process…
UW Bothell fiscal and audit services: Transforming eTravel and eReimbursement
At UW Bothell’s Fiscal and Audit Services (FAS), an innovative model for sharing services has taken time to develop but has yielded transformative results. The challenge: Too many “experts,” not enough expertise Bothell’s FAS unit used to provide etravel and ereimbursement services for the entire Bothell campus: entering all documentation, and staying on top of…
October 18, 2017
Tips for moving to shared services
Ask for help. Find out who else has done this before and what they suggest. Support from others who use or provide shared services can be an invaluable resource. After you’ve made the move, share ideas and experiences with others. Create goals together and set clear expectations. Involve all those involved or impacted — service…