DollarBytes: CIOs meeting the Financial Challenge

Created by Theresa Rowe (Oakland University) on March 27, 2009

What do chief business officers think about in the financial crisis? CIOs looking for cuts may want to consider the perspectives shared by David Creamer, Vice President for Finance and Business Services and Treasurer at Miami University in Ohio. Mr. Creamer emphasized productivity in his talks with CIOs at the Midwest Educause Regional Conference.

This emphasis challenged me to think about ways that we can use our IT spend to improve productivity on our campuses. This is a particular challenge because for IT, productivity improvements that may reduce costs often come after a significant up-front investment in technology. But it does seem that we can communicate a stronger case to our Chief Business and Financial Officers by paying attention to productivity in our proposals.

We recently brought requirements consulting to our campus after learning about efforts introduced by Bruce Maas, CIO at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, on his campus. We know that we can no longer waste time working on unclear goals and on re-do work that is necessitated by not clearly understanding the project at the beginning. A clear and unambiguous understanding of project requirements is necessary if we are to improve IT productivity.

Another opportunity emerged on the CIO list recently. Productivity on our campuses can be enhanced if we thoroughly use the options and functionality present in our enterprise systems. For some of us it may be time to bring in a consultant to review and evaluate our ERP implementations. Are we fully, adequately and correctly using the features present in our ERP? This is important because licensing and support of the ERP environment is usually a large percentage of any IT organizational budget. We can no longer afford random, inconsistent and unproductive use.

Other productivity ideas may include building reporting environments that look at issues around faculty contribution, space utilization, and scheduling. Creating reporting environments that analyze course demand could contribute to campus productivity.

Sharing our productivity measures and successes is one way our CIO constituency can help the higher education community deal with financial challenges.

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		DollarBytes: CIOs meeting the Financial Challenge Created by Theresa Rowe (Oakland University) on March 27, 2009 What do chief business officers think about in the financial crisis? CIOs looking for cuts may want to consider the perspectives shared by David Creamer, Vice President for Finance and Business Services and Treasurer at Miami University in Ohio. Mr. Creamer emphasized productivity in his talks with CIOs at the Midwest Educause Regional Conference. This emphasis challenged me to think about ways that we can use our IT spend to improve productivity on our campuses. This is a particular challenge because for IT, productivity improvements that may reduce costs often come after a significant up-front investment in technology. But it does seem that we can communicate a stronger case to our Chief Business and Financial Officers by paying attention to productivity in our proposals. We recently brought requirements consulting to our campus after learning about efforts introduced by Bruce Maas, CIO at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, on his campus. We know that we can no longer waste time working on unclear goals and on re-do work that is necessitated by not clearly understanding the project at the beginning. A clear and unambiguous understanding of project requirements is necessary if we are to improve IT productivity. Another opportunity emerged on the CIO list recently. Productivity on our campuses can be enhanced if we thoroughly use the options and functionality present in our enterprise systems. For some of us it may be time to bring in a consultant to review and evaluate our ERP implementations. Are we fully, adequately and correctly using the features present in our ERP? This is important because licensing and support of the ERP environment is usually a large percentage of any IT organizational budget. We can no longer afford random, inconsistent and unproductive use. Other productivity ideas may include building reporting environments that look at issues around faculty contribution, space utilization, and scheduling. Creating reporting environments that analyze course demand could contribute to campus productivity. Sharing our productivity measures and successes is one way our CIO constituency can help the higher education community deal with financial challenges. budget cut strategies \| Budgets \| CIO \| Productivity Theresa's blog Login or register to post comments 512 reads
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