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The first calendar quarter of the implementation phase of the universitywide Shared Services initiative concluded at the end of March.
Shared Services will shift select Finance and Human Resources transaction-processing activities from different units across the university into one operation that will serve the entire institution.
Shared Services is one element of the university’s Administrative Services Transformation strategy. The other component focuses on Strategic Sourcing, a systematic and fact-based approach for consolidating the university’s spending with high-quality vendors to maximize pricing discounts.
“Our work on the Implementation Phase of Shared Services began in earnest earlier this year, after university leadership approved moving the project onto this phase,” says Rowan Miranda, associate vice president for finance and one of the leaders of the Shared Services project.
Miranda went on to note that the Shared Services Project Team completed the following key steps during the first quarter of the Implementation Phase:
• Established the composition of the advisory committee as well as Finance and Human Resources workgroups.
• Worked with ITS to identify technology requirements for the project, including prioritizing the changes required to M-Pathways.
• Held a number of focus groups for employees to share their perspective on what would make a Shared Services facility an appealing and productive place to work.
• Continued to investigate possible locations in and around Ann Arbor for the Shared Services facility.
• Staffed the Shared Services Implementation Team.
• Finalized the details with our consulting partners on the project.
• Began the process to establish a group of unit representatives who will work with colleagues on the local level on a number of functions, including change management, communications, and training to help ensure the project’s success.
• Continued outreach efforts to a variety of key administrators, groups and committees across the university.
“The Implementation Phase has begun in a very productive manner,” says Martha Pollack, vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs, who has been working with Miranda and Laurita Thomas, associate vice president for human resources.
“We’ve finalized the membership of a number of key groups and teams — composed of faculty and staff from across the university — that will be supporting the Shared Services initiative, and have begun designing processes to ensure that units affected by this change will be kept informed of progress on the project,” she says.
“We’re looking forward to ongoing collaboration with faculty and staff on Shared Services and its focus on helping the university contain costs and reinvest savings into our missions,” Thomas says.
