Another couple of interesting sessions – Partnering with 3rd parties and vendor management, and REF and internal research management.
Partnering with 3rd parties and vendor management – Lucy Baron, Head of IT Policy and Process Kings College London.
[Lucy was using Kings thin client service to remote access her presentation.]
Kings have outsourced all their eComms, including their ActiveDirectory. Lucy suggested that she might want to sit on the fence on the debate as to whether it was the Holy Grail or poison chalice, and that service by service, case by case consideration was needed.
Some key issues about staff presenting consistent and appropriate messages to suppliers and potential suppliers. Clear ownership of contracts and relationships needed, including in the provision of supplier references.
Four areas identified as key:
- service delivery (making sure that what was delivered was what was agreed)
- continuous improvement (speaks for itself)
- relationship management (Lucy suggested that she speaks to key vendor contacts on a daily basis and doesn’t see that going away anytime soon.
- contract management
There are clear benefits for both the organisation and the vendors.
Some tips, around spreading renewals across the year to balance the load, to undertake contract risk reviews with procurement, and to establish vendor management meetings schedules.
Whilst the session focussed on managing relationships with vendors for outsourced provision, in essence, the same points apply equally to any of our existing supplier arrangements. Clearly, those can prove more critical if your operations depend on them for delivery day to day.
REF and Internal Research Management – Stuart Bolton, JISC InfoNet
Stuart talked about the differences between the information requirements for REF (Research Excellence Framework) and the RAE. One of the big changes is a requirement for bibliometrics, and HEFCE funded a pilot with 5 institutions in summer 2008.
The REF return will require two key areas of information; the staff record, and outputs. The staff record requirement is largely the same as for the HESA Staff return, and our existing HR systems should be able to meet this with some additional data collection.
There were two options for approaching Outputs; collect from local and remote sources, or maintain an institutional catalogue.
The tricky part is linking the two sets of information – linking staff to outputs. Stuart felt that the easiest way was through an automated data warehouse, but these are expensive resources to develop. Once they are in a DW, the REF simply becomes something that can be done through a standard report.
Stuart made a coherent case for seeing research information needs as being more than simply the REF return and that we may well wish to make a case for an institutional research information management system to meet local needs as well.
Tags: cisg09, cisg2009, outsourcing, REF, research, UCISA, vendor management