Monday, 6/27/19     //     2:30pm - 3:00pm     //     Room 219 

Note Taker: Haley Johnson

Presenter: Anya Petersen-Frey

Agenda:

About the Meeting

We’ve been seeing great presentations from our programs in these annual strategy meetings thus far and wanted to make sure that everyone could hear from the service side of things as well. The goal is to communicate the importance of the work being done and how everyone else can support those efforts. Support leads are expected to present on their program’s vision, goals, strategy, and measurement. They should also touch on pain points/barriers so that we can look at ways to help.

Finance & Operations Goals

Tagline = Efficient. Effective. Friendly.

Anya built the F&O goals directly off the CE-wide goals.

Goal 1: Reach more students across the 100 year educational journey.

• This goal is closely related to the work that the Registration and Information (RI) team does.
• We want to continue to build knowledge of the programs and provide administrative support across the departments.
  • Greater knowledge results in less calls being transferred over to the programs.
• We also have been looking into having the RI team handle special projects for programs during less busy times of the year.
• We’re also looking to have the RI team cross train and be able to serve as back-up for CE programs/services.
  • Anya needs everyone’s help in terms of figuring out how the cross training element might work.

Goal 2: Increase operational effectiveness to better serve students and enable growth.

• Work closely with IS&T to implement new registration software.
• Work on gathering information and creating how-to templates.
• Work with teams to improve processes and efficiencies.
  • Anya recently started a finance tools committee after noticing that each program was handling invoices just a bit differently. This should help smooth out processes throughout CE.
• RI to be key contributors to training other programs on using the new registration system (when we get it) and providing trouble shooting assistance as appropriate.
• RI to enhance focus on customer service; we’d like to be able to guide customers through the new online process and answer more program questions, thus reducing the frequency with which phone calls are forwarded to the program.
  • We’ll be grappling with the question of what customer service will look like as we shift to new technologies.
• Operations to continue to maintain the building and be proactive in addressing maintenance issues.
  • Katina is in charge of the ongoing wish list of things we’d like for the building. If you see something, let Anya or Katina know so they can get it on the list.
  • Items on the list are fulfilled as the budget allows. Now that we own this building, we really want to maintain it.
• Operations is also working on creating a resource list of professional development tools, booking travel through Concur, streamlining HR onboarding, and providing other assistance to programs as needed.
  • We know that not everyone has a high budget for travel, but we do want to build a reference of professional development tools. We are currently working on creating an approval process for travel.
• Please consider: look at your programs and see if you can find opportunities for F&O to help. If you didn’t have to do “X”, for example, and that would help you focus on a program piece, is that “X” something that F&O can handle? This isn’t a move to centralizing processes necessarily; Anya just wants everyone to know that F&O is here to help if there’s something that’s getting in your way that can be offloaded.

Financial Goal: Rebuild funds to strategically invest and collaborate to support the U’s goals.

• We are monitoring revenues and expenses quarterly.
• We’re not rebuilding funds back up to what things looked like before we bought the building. It’s more a matter of maintaining; we want to use funds efficiently and not stockpile.
• Work with programs to enhance budget knowledge and use of management reports and other tools (such as Tableau).
  • Please let us know how the reports are or are not working for you.
• Develop personalized financial tools as needed throughout the year (e.g. LLL cost per class per hour)
• Development of an investment plan for new innovation – portfolio process/idea generator
  • We’re bouncing off the strategy refresh concept the U just ran through with President Watkins.
  • If you have an idea, you’ll fill out the form by explaining your concept in a few sentences (this will not be anonymous).
  • We won’t be able to implement everything that we see, but if we find an idea we like, we’ll take it to the next level and develop more of a business plan.
• We are now setting funds aside in our budget specifically for innovation.
• We want to maintain our revenue levels; we don’t have a ton of wiggle room. We need around $1.6 million at the start of the year to fund all of our programs and cover shared costs. Next year, we’d like to have around $2 million to have more of a cushion.

RI Team Beta Testing Phone Tree for Fall Registration

Since the RI team is still using a fairly labor intensive registration system, we are going to beta test the use of a phone tree. Phone calls take up a significant chunk of the RI team’s time, causing them to fall further behind on processing registrations. Between August 5^th and August 20^th, anyone who calls our main customer service number will hear an automated message prompting them to press different buttons for different programs.

Each program will also be getting a card keypad so they can take payment. In order to take those payments, those programs will also be getting Avaya phones because those are the only PCI-compliant approved phones for the University. (You need to have a PCI-compliant phone to take credit card information over the phone; they have certain securities that ensure the protection of connection)

We realize that one card keypad per program is not necessarily ideal, but we won’t be getting any more than that for right now because they’re supposed to be changing in the future.

Card keypads plug into the computer via USB, so they can be moved from desk to desk if that’s what you’d like to do (as long as whatever desk you’re moving it to has an Avaya phone). When you’re on the phone with a customer who would like to pay, they’ll read you their card information and you’ll key it into the keypad.

This whole process will be finalized in the next couple weeks and Anya will let everyone know what to expect. There will also be sufficient time for testing before the registration onslaught actually begins!