Universities are unique in their funding practices of IT. Also unique are the demands placed on IT by the nature of teaching and student support. This has led the IT function down some paths not apparent in the corporate or Government sectors.
One feature of IT group structures within many Universities is their fragmentation. Sometimes described as federated, these structures make it near on impossible for the University executive to fully grasp the true cost of IT, let alone support decision making to reduce the cost of IT (and in so doing increase research and teaching funding). Once defended under the banner of ‘academic freedom’, these structures are now under pressure with the drive for operational efficiency many Universities are striving to institutionalize.
While we expect a certain level of federation and distribution of IT services will always be a feature of Universities, this does not mean the financial management overlay needs to remain opaque. We have worked with Universities to embed standard financial and performance measurement models over their IT operations - both central and distributed.
Funding complexities add further to the maze of financial management in Universities. Both our ClearCost software tool and methodology support University Funding mapping, while driving a more pragmatic and measurable agenda for Funding based on “outcomes” rather than “inputs” – something we would be happy to discuss with you.
The final factors that we take into account in planning and implementing an effective solution for our University clients are service maturity, financial drivers and politics. We have encountered many variations on these and are able to ensure an appropriate solution is designed to address these important yet less obvious key success factors. |
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"At Monash we have used ClearCost to identify the full costs of our IT services delivered
within the university. The reports from ClearCost have been very valuable in aiding management decisions on service management.
It has also provided a tool to investigate anomalies in our expenditure and track it back to changes in technical
or operational activities or vendor issues. ClearCost is a very poerful tool that we are proposing to use more widely and use to forecast impacts on service costs of changes proposed in our Shared Services program." |
| Monash University |
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| "We first installed ClearCost at the University of Melbourne to understand the whole of Universtity cost of delivering IT services through multiple IT service providers. The analysis formed the basis for strategic university decisions on where there were opportunities for reducing costs. During the three years we've been using ClearCost it has met every service costing and charging challenge we've thrown at it. Of course software is only as good as the support behind it and ITEXC (now ClearCost Consulting) has provided this as well as excellent advice on how to get the best out of the tool. excellent advice." |
| University of Melbourne |
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"Alignment of activity to services and to budget has long been an issue for the central IT Directorate at UNE and the adoption of the ClearCost software and approach has helped us better understand and align these elements. Additionally we now have an evidence based facility through which changes to service levels or services, can be negotiated with our customers and which can then be modelled to assess impact on resources and budget."
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| University of New England |
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