FAST FIVE for the week of November 17, 2013

News:

Organization and name changes:

Central IT at the University of Alberta has changed its name to Information Services and Technology to reflect the merger of two previously separate units, Administrative Information Systems and Academic Information and Communication Technologies. The name change will help evolve the University’s perception of these units and local IT units from being separate “IT only” units to one unit that will encompass all aspects of information services and technology. New identity, bigger future

Shrinking email size:

ITS at the University of Western Ontario is lowering the limit of email from 50 megabytes to 25 megabytes. There are several reasons such as helping reduce delivery failures, minimizing the impact on email services when large attachments are inadvertently emailed to a wide list of recipients, and reducing quota consumption. See page 2 of the attached newsletter: Smaller email messages

Responsive website design:

The new University of Ottawa website is a mobile friendly site utilizing responsive design technology to seamlessly adapt to the user's device of choice. The new design is based on feedback from over 5,000 community members and reflects a remarkably clean and effective home page interface. "Awesome" new website

Email upgrade:

The University of Toronto's hosted email service is being upgraded with a new look and feel. Its webmail service will be more user friendly while maintaining existing functionality. Improved web mail 

Free soup:

University of British Columbia's Information Technology team is having a free chicken noodle soup event! Soup it up: Keeping warm ...

Another response to funding question:

During this period of financial austerity throughout the higher education system, do you see IT taking a renewed interest in production support processes? Without the money to do new projects, do you feel IT has a unique opportunity to concentrate on providing the best operational service possible?

I would frame my thoughts using the key value disciplines (kvds) that were articulated by Tracey and Wiersema in their book (and HBR article) The Disciplines of Market Leaders.  In their opinion, world class organizations have to choose among three key disciplines in their quest for market dominance. The three "kvds" are, "operational excellence", "customer intimacy", and "product leadership".

Operational excellence: superb operations and execution often by providing a reasonable quality at a very low price. The focus is on efficiency, streamlining operations, Supply Chain Management, no-frills, volume counts. Most large international corporations are working out of this discipline.

 

Product leadership: very strong in innovation and brand marketing, operating in dynamic markets. The focus is on development, innovation, design, time-to-market, high margins in a short timeframe.

 

Customer intimacy: excel in customer attention and customer service. Tailor their products and services to individual or almost individual customers. Focus is on CRM,  deliver products and services on time and above customer expectations, lifetime value concepts, reliability, being close to the customer.

The authors assert that organizations must excel at one of these three and be competent in the other two.  In the context of IT it is my belief that you do not get to the table unless you are delivering operational excellence.  Once your IT shop is known and acknowledged by your customers as delivering superior service then you have the credibility to take on new challenges that your customers will support (and fund).

Mark D. Naylor, Ph.D., President, Union Hills Enterprises Inc.