Offshoring / Outsourcing service delivery - AHUA

New Ways of Working
Steve Knight
Deputy Vice Chancellor, Director of Corporate Services

Scope
• Middlesex University Overview/Context
• Consolidation
• Centralisation of Support Services
• Digitisation
• Outsourcing/Offshoring
• Way Forward
• Questions

About Middlesex
• 40,000 students worldwide (25,000 in London)
• 1,700 staff
• £180m turnover
• London (Hendon) - £200M campus consolidation
• International
• Overseas campuses - Dubai, Mauritius & Malta.
• Six schools:
– Art and Design
– Business
– Health and Education
– Law
– Media and Performing Arts
– Science and Technology

Consolidation
• Reduction from 9 London campuses to one London campus by Sep 13
• Improves efficiency
• Enables academic collaboration
• Allows for greater centralisation of support services
• Focuses capital spend and improvement of estate/facilities
• Facilitates different use of space (e.g. open plan working, hot-desking)
and greater use of technology (e.g. wireless, VoIP)

Centralisation of Support
Services
• Enabled by consolidation of campus locations
• Underpinned by IT improvements (e.g. Laptops, Ipads, CISCO unified
communications) and digitisation
• Significant efficiencies
• Business partnering model
• Enables higher spend on core academic/research activities
• Focus on improving the student experience (e.g. longer helpdesk
opening hours)

Digitisation
• Digital Mail - post delivered to your desktop rather than your desk (over 22,000
items of mail handled via digital mailroom in last 6 months – equivalent to 360kg
of paper not being stored/handled)
• Digital Conversion – conversion of paper files into digital documents
(completed over 630,000 scans in last 8 months)
• Electronic Document Storage – easier (electronic tagging) and instant access
to archived files from anywhere (nearly 1,000 users – 130,000 documents
uploaded in last 6 months)
• Multi-Function Devices (managed print service)- secure printing and scanning
(replaced 1137 staff printers with 81 MFDs; saved 1.7m pages just through
duplex printing by default (40% saving in paper usage or 200 trees))

Outsourcing/Offshoring
• UK - strategy to outsource non-core activities to specialist companies
on long-term (up to 10 year) partnership arrangements
– IBM – IT Server Infrastructure
– Compass Group (Chartwells) – Catering/Entertainment/Bars/Retail
– Dell – Desktop Managed Service
– ICTS – Security
– ISS – Cleaning
– CDS – Print/Copy/Design/Digital
– Hard/Soft FM – Multiple framework contracts
• Overseas - strategy to offshore ‘bulk’ processing/helpdesk activities to
specialist provider and ‘bespoke’ functions to university support centre
– Chennai, India – bulk processing/helpdesks
– Mauritius – ‘bespoke’ functions (being implemented)

Offshoring – How?
• January/February 2009 – exploratory visits to Indian BPOs, selected a
company (Quscient) in Chennai, India
• March – May 2009 - initial pilot project (scoping and implementation) –
student application data entry
• August 2009 – review of initial pilot project and agreement to proceed
with further pilots
• September 2009 – September 2012 – expanded range of pilot projects
– particularly around enquiries processing and helpdesks
• October 2012 – start of project to introduce student support system –
Pro-retention
• January 2013 – started process of setting up new support office in
Mauritius

Slide 9
10/04/2013

Slide 10
10/04/2013

Offshoring - Background
• India – Middlesex already had in-country presence
• Known centre for provision of BPO services
• Aligned with Middlesex strategy to expand in India
• Chennai chosen due to it being location of preferred supplier (other
cities were visited)
• Quscient – SME (2009 – 300 seats) BPO with expertise in US HE;
also carried out wider range of functions, including IT/software
development – room for future expansion

Offshoring – Why?
• Need to increase efficiency/productivity of administration
• Increasing emphasis on moving administrative functions online
• Need to improve business processes
• Need to improve data quality
• Need to support longer opening hours in UK and support worldwide
University operations

Offshoring – Pilot Projects
• Aim of initial pilot – to test whether it was cost-effective to offshore
‘back-office’ processes to a company in India and during the pilot to
test fully issues such as quality, reliability and efficiency.
• Used ‘piloting’ of projects to control risk
• Initial pilot project - student applications data entry (largest volume)
• Next pilot project - pre-enrolment student e-mail enquiries (use of e-
mail)
• Most recent pilot – student helpdesk (use of voice)

Offshoring Current Activity
• Worldwide applications processing, data entry and quality checking (during 2012
64,000 applications/supporting documents processed and uploaded into
Electronic Document Storage)
• Pre-enrolment and post-application enquiries (over 48,000 telephone and 34,000
e-mail enquiries handled during 2012)
• Student Support helpline and web helpdesk (over 31,000 telephone calls and
8,000 e-mails answered in 2012; 82% of enquiries resolved by offshore team)
• Staff IT helpdesk (over 12,500 calls answered in 2012; 58% resolved by offshore
team)
• Registry verifications (2265 requests processed during 2012)
• Unicare (facilities management fault reporting and processing)
• Finance data entry (over 12,400 invoices processed during last 10 months)

Slide 15
10/04/2013

Slide 16
10/04/2013

Offshoring Future Activity
• Being Implemented
– Pro-Retention student support system (May 13)
– Extension of admissions processing/decision making (Apr 13)
– graduation administration (Jun 13)
– Lead generation (Mar 13)
• Being Scoped
– Additional finance data entry
– HR (transactional)
– student IT helpdesk

Offshoring Resources and Management
• Offshore team
– VP senior account manager
– Function managers
– Around 60 staff
• Middlesex Management
– DVC project sponsor
– Contract Manager manages overall contract
– Line management have day-to-day control of their elements

Slide 19
10/04/2013

Offshoring - Benefits
• Cost Savings – e.g. staff and space/facilities
• Quality improvements– e.g. HESA/HESES data, responsiveness of student
helpdesk, etc
• Process improvements and added value – e.g. admissions processes
• Management Information – e.g. student enquiries
• Capacity – e.g. able to plan work throughout year to maximise output
• Flexibility – e.g. ability to respond to changing circumstances
• Competitive advantage

Offshoring - Lessons Learnt
• Senior level buy-in and strong/engaged management (champions)
• Pilot projects – defined scope/timelines; reduces risk
• Cultures/working patterns
• Process mapping/SOPs
• Not everything can be offshored
• Patience/time to implement/training
• Communications – UK staff/Trade Union reaction
• Small vs large BPO/flexibility

Offshoring – Risks and
Mitigating Actions
• Key Risk (as with any other outsourced contract) is failure of the service
provision
• Other risks: failure to achieve budget; potential impact on recruitment;
some reputational damage.
• Mitigating actions: ensure management in place at both Mdx and
Quscient; ensure all new pilot projects have clear SOPs (including
business continuity plans); ensure compliance with all data protection,
security and other appropriate regulations; carefully monitor
partnership/contractual arrangements; Executive annual review of
offshoring strategy; annual internal audit review.

Way Forward
• What’s next for digitisation?
– Student e-submission
– Student managed print service
• What’s next for UK outsourcing?
– Outsourcing – multi-activity contract?
– Shared Services?
• What’s next for offshoring
– Scaling up?
– more ‘bespoke’ activities?

Questions?