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| Newsletter: December 2023 |
As 2023 concludes, the Office of Organizational Excellence has evolved from a vision of President Amiridis to a small and mighty unit.
- The office facilitates high-impact, university-wide improvement projects in partnership with university leaders.
- They are expanding our internal improvement capabilities – the office created and launched the USC Improvement Leader Program to embed improvement skills and competencies within units.
- They're also providing strategic alignment and process improvement consultation and guidance to individual units as a neutral, third-party.
This initiative has been powered by strong supporters and partners.
University-wide improvement projects don’t happen because one office is interested in improvement. They happen because leaders see an opportunity and seek positive change. We owe a debt of gratitude to President Amiridis, our Advisory Group, our initial project sponsors (Donna Arnett, Ed Walton, Rex Tolliver, Julian Williams, Venis Manigo, Ann Vail), and all who have served on project teams and project review groups.
We are also thankful for our first cohort of improvement leaders who are taking time to save time. These leaders and their sponsors will feel the return on their investment.
With the support and involvement of so many in 2023, the year concludes with a strong foundation of Organizational Excellence at USC. We look forward to building on that foundation in partnership with you in 2024!
Academic Financial Planning Optimization
The providers of academic financial planning information from various administrative
units have come together to hear directly from users about their reporting needs,
review existing platforms, and develop a coordinated future state plan for the delivery
of academic financial planning information. The team includes the Budget Office, Provost’s
Office, Bursar’s Office, Controller’s Office, Division of Information Technology,
Human Resources, and Institutional Research, Assessment and Analytics.
Status: Initial report and action plan drafted based on user feedback, platform capabilities, and future state vision.
What's next: Incorporate feedback from sponsors and share final action plan with stakeholders.
In the photo below: The academic financial planning optimization team is working together to refine and prioritize their improvement ideas.
Student Disability Accommodations Process
The Student Disability Resource Center and Office of Civil Rights and Title IX have
partnered to provide visibility into the student disability accommodations process,
reduce student disability accommodations process time, and ensure a coordinated approach
for graduate students who need both academic and workplace accommodations.
Status: Initial action items drafted based on process mapping and stakeholder survey responses.
What's next: Refining action items for review by sponsors.
Graduate Student Application Process
The Graduate School is reviewing its application process to provide clarity and visibility
to students, faculty, and staff; improve the application process time; and reduce
duplication and ensure a coordinated process.
Status: Initial process mapping and improvement idea generation conducted by the Graduate School team (internal review).
What's next: Hearing from stakeholders via a survey to inform improvement ideas (stakeholder feedback).
Click on either or both of the following links for a quick slide-show overview of resource optimization projects and process improvement projects.
Improvement leaders have completed their core content sessions, and their improvement projects are well underway. This first cohort of improvement leaders is moving quickly and setting the bar high!
Each of the 13 people in the cohort is guiding a project – with a broad reach across the university and significant impact on a wide range of stakeholders.
- 7 are process improvement projects to streamline processes, save time, and improve the experiences of students, faculty, and staff.
- 6 are resource optimization projects to align efforts toward common outcomes and make the best use of faculty and staff time.
What's the impact: Some of the projects are focused on individual academic units, and the project discoveries and plans will be relevant to and useful for academic units across the university. Similarly, projects focused within administrative areas will facilitate better service to students, faculty, and staff throughout USC and will reduce time spent on low-value activities.
When to expect results: The last improvement leader session is scheduled for February 2024. Many of the projects will conclude by that time, and others will be completed soon after. Action plans and improvement results will be shared, with details and links in the March newsletter.
During their learning sessions, participants engaged in an in-depth simulation for hands-on experience with process improvement. In the photos below, they're studying a process to find occurrences of process waste.
| Newsletter: September 2023 |
USC's Improvement Leader Program is underway. The 2023-24 cohort had its first session in early September, with participants from 3 colleges, 5 administrative units, 3 student services units, and the Alumni Association.
Focusing on results: As the sessions unfold, each participant will build a core toolset for improvement and facilitate a project in their department. With 13 people in the program, this real-project approach will have a tremendous multiplier effect.
Building our capacity: Participants were identified by their units as contributors to positive change. Congratulations to all of them – and to their colleges and divisions!
See who's in the 2023-24 cohort.
Learn more about the program.
The Purchasing Department is implementing its improvement action plan – developed through an improvement project that included customer listening sessions, a survey, process mapping, and close analysis of all the input.
Why it matters: The aim is to improve process times for purchase orders and increase customer satisfaction.
One key point of focus: Loopbacks factored heavily in the findings. These occur when a requisition is submitted with incorrect or missing information, or under the wrong procurement method – and Purchasing needs to "loop back."
Data-driven improvement: This front-end delay can be very time-consuming, so the action plan includes improvements to reduce loopbacks. A targeted reduction from 80% to 50% in one year will free up an estimated 6,300 hours for higher-value work. And because 3 days pass on average for a loopback to be fully resolved, due to the inevitable back-and-forth to get needed information, every eliminated loopback will speed up the process by an average of 3 days.
Project report with background, data, and all improvements
Slides from August 2023 team presentation [pdf]
Video of team presentation video
Want to improve a process but don’t know where to start?
Check out this list of high-potential improvements. It gives you 14 practical recommendations on one concise page. It’s based on a review of 100 improvement projects to pinpoint key changes that had maximum impact in making processes more efficient, effective, and user-friendly.
Subtractive improvement: Most of these high-impact improvements involve subtracting and simplifying – which is perfect because no one has time for extra stuff. Perhaps you can eliminate redundant approvals to reduce hand-offs and rubber stamps. Or provide one clear checklist on the front end to mistake-proof initial inputs.
| Newsletter: June 2023 |
Over the last six months, the Office of Organizational Excellence has evolved from a vision articulated by President Amiridis – to a start-up unit supporting efficiency, effectiveness, and outstanding service. Many partners across the university have made this progress possible.
Selected highlights:
- Hired the Organizational Excellence team
- Launched website with tips, tools and resources
- Delivered interactive improvement workshops to 100 people
- Provided organizational excellence overview presentations to 115 stakeholders
- Facilitating two high-impact improvement projects:
- Purchasing process improvement
- Academic financial planning optimization
- Heard from +300 faculty and staff as an essential component of these two projects
- Launching improvement practitioner program in Fall 2023 (see below)
And we’re just getting started!
USC's new Improvement Leader Program blends practical learning with real improvement projects and results.
- The program begins in September and continues through March 2024.
- Applicants submit three potential improvement projects supported by their department.
- Applications are being accepted through August 1, 2023.
The Controller’s Office has recently announced a new process for reimbursing students and non-employees for travel expenses. Implementation is planned for early in the new fiscal year. Student and employee feedback, and data on travel reimbursement process times, made this a priority for the Controller’s Office team. The improvements will shorten the timeline for student and non-employee travel reimbursements and minimize the personal obligation for upfront travel costs.
Now in effect: Colleges and Support Units can take advantage of the Department Travel Card Program to book airfare (for employees, students and non-employees) and pay registration (for employees and students). Reach out to the Travel Team travelcard@sc.edu for details.
Summer 2023: For qualifying expenses that have not already been paid with a Department Travel Card, a new process with automated workflow in Finance PeopleSoft will simplify and speed up reimbursement.
Why it matters: It’s a costly imposition on students to have them pay with personal credit cards for travel to conferences or events, and then to have them wait to be reimbursed. Now, major costs (such as airfare and registration) can be covered by the university on the front end with the department travel card and the timeline for reimbursement of other costs (mileage, per diem, etc.) will be much shorter.
An improvement team from the Purchasing Department has been listening to its customers in a major way. The team held six input sessions and conducted a survey – in order to gather feedback, perspectives, and suggestions directly from the people they serve.
- 6 sessions to gain in-depth input from key customers and stakeholders
- 16 people provided input – including principal investigators and other researchers, administrative directors, business managers, IT managers
- 161 people provided feedback via a survey of requisitioners
Team members studied all the input, discussed it as a group, and uncovered key themes,
common concerns, unexpected insights – then used this information to identify specific
improvements to make the process easier and better for everyone.
The team plans to issue a report summarizing its action set in mid-July. In August,
team members will lead a presentation sharing the action plans and telling the story
of what they did to take improvement to the next level.
Why it matters: Every process has people who need what the process delivers. Customers are supremely
important – they're WHY the process exists. With improvement projects, teams should
reach out and hear directly from a cross-section of their customers – regarding needs,
wants, frustrations, compliments, and suggestions. Kudos to the Purchasing Department
for doing this so thoroughly.
When it comes to improvement, a few measures can make all the difference.
Without them, improvement can be guesswork. With measures, you can better understand the current situation, set realistic numeric goals, and see the degree to which implemented improvements are having an impact.
This tip sheet [pdf] gives you a full set of measures tailored for process improvement. They're in straightforward plain language, they're in four categories, and they're all on one easy page.
There's a lot on that page, but no worries, no one uses all these measures. Most improvement efforts involve a few – with process time (aka lead time), number of loopbacks, and rework rate being among the most common.
- After you check out the Key Measures [pdf] compilation, visit the Resources section for more tip, tools, and templates.
The Advisory Group for Organizational Excellence has quickly become an important force for positive change since its formation in January.
The group has met three times so far – reviewing accomplishments to date, identifying potential improvement projects, ensuring coordination, shaping near-term plans, and maintaining a vision of longer-term possibilities.
They have been active between sessions as well, working with the Office of Organizational Excellence regarding possible projects and other opportunities.
We are fortunate to have their guidance, support, and advocacy.