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Administrative Unit Review

The second part of the Administrative Review included surveying all of the administrative
units at the university. The process involved identifying all of the units under the domain of a
vice president. Once the listing was obtained, each vice president was asked to introduce the
survey in their respective areas. There were some major themes lifted from the results and
they are summarized below.

Common Themes from the Administrative Unit Survey
• Processes are manual and very labor intensive
• The system (Banner) is not being used to the extent that it should
• The workflow should be automated rather than relying on paper processing
• There are multiple layers of approvals. It seems that we could streamline some of the
processes
• There are many handoffs within the processes which creates operational inefficiencies
• We need a common platform for student engagement that takes in a variety of
factors—providing a whole picture of the student

There is the recognition of process fragmentation that results from years of administrative
changes where the systems have not caught up. For example, one of the difficulties realized
was matching the formal budget with the actual organization. A business process
reengineering effort would create a proper budget hierarchy that conforms to the
organizational structure. This is one of the precursor chores to establishing a realistic budget
management process. Such a reengineering effort could permeate the entire administrative
operation producing greater efficiencies and greatly enhancing productivity.

An additional step was undertaken to identify Strategies, Barriers, Opportunities and Next
Steps in the administrative areas. The next section highlights the results from each area.

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