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Shared Services in the Higher Education Sector in Scotland

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Shared Services in the Higher Education Sector in Scotland An Assessment of Shared Services in Scotland’s Higher Education Sector August 2013 Contents Section 1 Executive Summary ....................................................... 2 1.1 Sector context ................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Key observations .............................................................................................. 2 1.4 Relative progress against the wider public sector .............................................. 4 1.5 Moving forwards & building on success............................................................. 5 1.5 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 8 Section 2 Introduction ..................................................................... 9 2.1 Purpose of the report ........................................................................................ 9 2.2 Approach to the analysis ................................................................................... 9 2.3 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... 9 Section 3 Case studies in the sector ........................................... 10 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 10 3.2 Corporate Support Services ............................................................................ 11 3.3 Procurement ................................................................................................... 14 3.4 Academic Resources ...................................................................................... 19 3.5 Learning Delivery ............................................................................................ 25 3.6 Academic Research ........................................................................................ 28 3.7 Student Attraction & Retention ........................................................................ 32 3.8 Knowledge Transfer and Commercialisation ................................................... 35 3.9 Transnational Development ............................................................................ 40 Section 4 Conclusions .................................................................. 42 4.1 Key findings .................................................................................................... 42 4.2 Overall assessment ........................................................................................ 43 Section 5 Moving forward ............................................................. 44 5.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 44 5.2 Making the right choices ................................................................................. 44 5.3 Maximising the shared service opportunity in Higher Education ...................... 48 5.4 Summary ........................................................................................................ 53 Section 6 Inventory of shared services ....................................... 54 6.1 ICT.................................................................................................................. 54 6.2 Finance ........................................................................................................... 61 6.3 HR .................................................................................................................. 63 6.4 Student welfare/support/advice ....................................................................... 65 6.5 Board member/staff training ............................................................................ 67 6.6 Widening participation ..................................................................................... 70 6.7 Transnational activity ...................................................................................... 76 6.8 Knowledge transfer and commercialisation ..................................................... 79 6.9 Learning delivery ............................................................................................ 89 6.10 Academic research ......................................................................................... 93 6.11 Estates ......................................................................................................... 105 6.12 Procurement ................................................................................................. 111 6.13 Other ............................................................................................................ 121 EY i Shared Services in Scotland’s Higher Education Sector August 2013 Section 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Sector context Scotland’s higher education sector comprises 19 diverse, legally autonomous institutions, each operating in a highly competitive global market for talent, funding and students. Due to the nature of the market, these institutions are inevitably focused on growth and presenting world class capabilities. Scotland’s higher education institutions (HEIs) make a direct and significant contribution to Scotland’s sustainable economic growth and have an impact across the Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework. Whilst HEIs operate in a competitive national and global context, our research has demonstrated how HEIs in Scotland are working together to maximise their impact and achieve value for money for the Scottish Government, and their direct customers: students, tax payers and industry. The key drivers for collaboration and innovation can be summed up by our global HE analysis, as follows: Global mobility • Emerging markets becoming global-scale competitors in the international student market • Academic talent increasingly sourced from emerging markets • Emergence of elite, truly global university brands Integration with industry Digital technologies • Scale and depth of industry-based learning Drivers for • Bringing the university to the device — MOOCs • Research partnerships and commercialisation and the rise of online learning • Industry as competitors in the certification and change • Bringing the device to the university — the use of delivery of content digital technologies in campus-based learning • Blended learning Contestability of markets and funding • Fiercely competitive domestic and international Democratisation of knowledge and access student markets • Ubiquitous content • Challenges to government funding • Broadening of access to higher education • Competing for new sources of funds • Increased participation in emerging markets 1.2 Key observations This research has pulled together a rich story of more than 170 examples of shared service partnerships. Since the last analysis of shared services across the Higher Education Sector in Scotland in 20071, there has been a significant development in both the scale and breadth of shared service ventures. While collaboration has always been a core part of academic development, in this challenging financial environment and a competitive market, the sector is becoming increasingly ambitious and innovative. Over the past decade, the HEI sector in Scotland has needed a strategic response to the emerging threats of an increasingly competitive global market for both learning and research, particularly from the higher education investment in emerging economies, and to compete with the best UK HEIs. One of the winning 1 Review of Shared Services and Collaborative Activities in Scotland’s Universities, 2007 (York Consulting) EY 2 Shared Services in Scotland’s Higher Education Sector August 2013 characteristics of the HEI landscape in Scotland has been its historic strength, shared values, and also its relatively small size enabling strategic collaboration to be a practicable reality. While achieving best value through aggregation and collaboration is a consistent theme throughout our analysis, a number of specific drivers for collaboration are apparent, namely: Driver for Example ventures collaboration Leveraging These are partnerships, ventures or projects that are specifically geared to valuable assets & pooling assets to achieve greater value, for example: achieving greater scale • ICT – for example, NESS data centre, HECToR supercomputing, Rowan Partnership (shared library management systems), Janet (IT infrastructure) • Real estate – for example, the Ayr Campus, and the Crichton Campus • Procurement – for example, APUC Developing income Institutions working together to market the sector, or a sub-set of aligned & growth institutions, particularly in working with business and in raising institutions’ profiles overseas Collaborative ventures focusing on the commercialisation of knowledge and working with business, such as University-Technology.com, and the emerging Innovation Centres. Strategic developments, such as the Crichton Institute, that bring together partnerships across the sector and beyond to enhance the economic success of specific regions. Providing efficient This has been the long standing heart of higher education collaboration, across & high quality both learning provision (focused on specific joint programmes) and the delivery academic delivery of academic research (through research pools). Improving social Institutions working together to enhance widening access to higher education impact and student welfare initiatives. HEIs working together and through
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