As universities face the “enrollment cliff” and shifting fiscal realities, evaluating your operating model is essential. Here are five critical success factors to keep in mind for optimizing campus shared services in 2026:

1. Culture – Shifting to a Service-Oriented Mindset
When many campus SSCs started, it was essential to create a culture focused on operating with professional efficiency. This remains mission-critical in 2026. SSC leaders play a key role in bringing to life a value proposition that resonates with faculty, students, and staff alike. Academic units will continue to sign up for shared services only if the SSC achieves a steady track record of lower administrative burden, relevant subject matter expertise, and world-class service. Processes must be re-designed to focus on the student and faculty “customer” experience.

2. Continuous Improvement (CI)
This is a massive driver of success. Campus stakeholders want responsive service and reduced “shadow IT” or administrative bloat. SSC leaders must own end-to-end processes—such as the student lifecycle or grant administration—and focus on continuous improvement. Leveraging frameworks like Lean or Six Sigma provides the ROI and employee ownership needed to drive results. A key point: Measure everything. Balanced metrics and broad communication of successful milestones will sell your value to the Board and the Provost.

3. Technology, AI, and the Cloud
In 2026, you must go “all-in” on cloud technology and AI integration. The landscape is complex—modern ERPs, student information systems (SIS), AI-driven predictive analytics, and workflow automation. You cannot afford to operate without an up-to-date technology strategy. Spreading the costs and benefits of these tools across multiple academic and business units lessens the risk and increases the odds of achieving institutional goals.

4. Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
SLAs are a necessary continuation of your improvement efforts. It is a worthwhile exercise to develop and iterate comprehensive SLAs that include in-scope services, turn-around times, quality of outputs, and clear dispute resolution. In a university setting, these must be balanced—they should provide accountability without becoming overly bureaucratic or rigid, ensuring they support the academic mission rather than hindering it.

5. Centers of Excellence (COEs)
Determining your institution’s operating model is one of the most challenging tasks. What are your core competencies? Which functions—such as HR, Finance, or Research Administration—should be shared across the entire university system versus kept within a specific college? As processes become standardized, they are prime candidates for a COE. However, high-touch areas like specialized faculty research support may require local subject matter expertise. Collaboration across the institution will provide the guidance needed to strike this balance.

Evolving your institutional operating model to optimize shared services in 2026 can pay handsome dividends. By keeping these success factors in mind, you can increase your odds of long-term sustainability.

Contact TSI at tsi@transforming.com to learn how we help institutions navigate these transformations.

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When evaluating your business operating model, strategy and goals, here are five critical success factors to keep in mind for optimizing shared services and achieving the next level of performance.

1. Culture – when many SSCs started, it was essential to create a SSC culture focused on operating like a profit-oriented business. This remains mission critical, but despite 20+ years of experience in this arena, the concept is still elusive for some organizations. SSC leaders play key roles in articulating, selling and bringing to life the vision and SSC value proposition for customers and employees alike. Most internal business units will continue to sign-up for shared services, if (and usually ONLY if) they can achieve a steady track record of lower costs, relevant subject matter expertise, and world class service.

As part of the culture, processes must be re-designed and people continually incented to relentlessly focus on the ultimate customer, as well as their changing needs. As part of your culture and operating plan, build in competitive benchmarking and significant training to facilitate achievement of your specific, clearly-defined goals.

2. Continuous Improvement (CI) – this is a huge driver of success. It is no secret that SSC customers want lower costs and responsive service. How do you get there? Another main role of a SSC leader is to own end-to-end processes and focus on continuous improvement to deliver what customers need. Click here to visit TSI’s Process Improvement page for more information. Leveraging ISO, Six Sigma, Quick Change, and other CI frameworks will provide ample ROI, SSC employee ownership, and drive results in this area.

A key point here – measure, measure, and measure again. Balanced metrics and broad-based communication of successful performance milestones will sell your value and keep all stakeholders focused on the goals and activities that matter most.

3. Technology and the Cloud – go all in to leverage technology and the cloud. The options and possibilities are ever-evolving and complex – ERP, CRM, eCommerce, workflow, AI, mobile apps, predictive analytics, data visualization, bar coding, cloud integration, Google apps, and the list goes on… Bottom line here, you can’t afford to not have an up to date technology strategy and plan to generate top-box performance through automation, innovation, and technology utilization. Create a truly differentiating customer experience – Click here to visit TSI’s Customer Experience Training page for more information. Finally, spreading the costs and benefits across multiple business units, functions and channel partners lessens the risk and increases the odds of achieving the required benefits.

4. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – this is a necessary continuation of CI from above. SLA’s will drive CI and customer satisfaction. It is a very worthwhile exercise to develop and iterate comprehensive SLAs – including: in-scope services, ad-hoc requests, agreed service turn-around times, quality of outputs, roles and responsibilities, metrics, cost/pricing, issue reporting and escalation, dispute resolution and other special requirements. Integrate SLAs into the culture via training, measurement, and rewards. Be careful, there is a real balancing act to assure SLAs are neither too complex nor overly simplified.

5. Local/Regional/Global Centers of Excellence (COE’s) – this is one of the more challenging elements of an organization’s operating model. It poses several questions, including – What are our core competencies? What functions and services should be shared locally, regionally, or globally? What geographies should they be located in and why? What are the risks involved? And, can certain sub-processes or activities be virtual outside of a main SSC? Naturally, as processes become standardized and routine, they are candidates for shifting to lower cost COE’s and geographies (e.g., APAC). However, for processes like Tax, a local level of subject matter expertise is required. The answers to these questions depends in large part on an organization’s geographic footprint, knowledge of a specific country’s legal, political and regulatory environments, as well as a host of many other issues. Collaboration with multiple business and channel partners can help provide guidance and direction here.

Evolving your operating model to optimize shared services and take advantage of new tools, practices and opportunities can pay handsome dividends. Keeping in mind the above critical success factors will greatly increase your odds of success. Contact TSI at tsi@transforming.com to learn more.

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With the end of the first calendar quarter approaching quickly and the relevance of looking back, I was recently reflecting on what similarities and differences there were compared to last year and years past in terms of the type of project I was engaged in. One thing that struck me as relevant during my reflection was the presence of certain trends in change management, including topics in organization and service. Further, in researching a bit on the topic, I came across this article from our managing partner, Dan Feely, written 10 years ago! And while the projects have changed, I feel the top 5 trends in change management are still very much present.

In his article, Dan presents the following trends as the top 5 of change management, with some supporting insight into the experience he has had with these trends:

1. Rapid, Process, and Quality Improvement Events
2. Need for More Performance from Technology (Results Relative to Cost)
3. Developing a Shared Services Model
4. Driving Customer Service and Service Excellence
5. Training

Below, I’d like to share some of my thoughts and insights on how these change management trends are still relevant and top of the list of things we are seeing 10 years later, in 2021.

#1 Rapid, Process, and Quality Improvement Events

Over the course of my first few years in consulting, I became accustomed to long engagements of 6-12 months, or longer. We often performed deep dives into change management and processes, mapping and analyzing over 350 processes for one client alone! While we still have these types of engagements, it seems we are seeing more organizations interested in sprints. This may mean tackling one functional area or more high level processes to see where efficiency can be gained including reducing hand-offs, removing manual entry and review, and adding more automated workflows and approvals.

Regardless of the direction an organization wants to go with their project, we can tailor our service offering to fit their needs and ensure maximum value for their investment with TSI.

#2 Need for More Performance from Technology (Results Relative to Cost)

In 2011 we asked our constituents to consider “do you know your organization’s total spend on technology?” This cost consideration included licenses, security, maintenance, data centers, staff, ongoing support, consulting fees, and the cost of upgrades. 2021 is no different, with additional focus on the sharp movement to the cloud over the last 10 years. The fact of this matter is simple – technology is expensive and the costs arise in a variety of different areas. It is not simply the subscription cost.

Chances are your organization is considering or has recently completed an IT assessment or technology improvement. Many organizations are finding this increasingly necessary due to the sunsetting of legacy systems and the aforementioned move to cloud-based solution. Often, they discover many disparate or redundant systems that have been accumulated over the years. Examining your IT inventory and infrastructure for redundancy, the cost of managing this technology, and where you may see an advantage in right sizing can save you millions.

#3 Develop a Shared Services Model

With the growth of cloud-based solutions and a common focus to reduce redundancy, the shared services model continues to be a popular trend in change management. Just as we have highlighted for several years, the advantages of the shared services model are not just cost savings from reduced redundancy, but also improved operational efficiency by removing information silos. Ultimately, the design of these shared services organizations should take on a focus that leads the organization to being more customer centric and value add focused.

#4 Driving Customer Service and Service Excellence

We’ve seen elements of various trends showing up in the qualities and benefits of the others. Perhaps no more so than the overall improvement of customer service. So much of an organization’s strategic planning, especially in times where competition and information are at an all-time high, is based on service excellence. Additionally, this commitment to service may be the differentiator in shaping customer decision-making. Along these lines, Voice of the Customer is central in many of our projects, even those not specifically devoted to this effort, making the foundation of the project stronger and the results more impactful for the growth of the business.

#5 Training

As we pointed out in our original article, as budgets get tighter training is often one of the first items to be eliminated. However, more pointed training programs may be well worth their investment and pay dividends in the future. We specifically have recently engaged in some large-scale business process improvement training and other change management processes. This program has the benefit of quickly completing valuable improvement of several process and training resources within your organization with skills to keep the improvement efforts going well into the future.

Bottom Line

Just as in 2011, there is a robust market of talent available. However, we recognize that there is also a valuable opportunity to improve the organization by joining one or more of the trends mentioned above.

To share a quote from 10 years ago that withstands the test of time – “investing in self-improvement initiatives, these organizations will create an efficient, cost-effective organization that will thrive in any market.”

If these self-improvement initiatives generate a spark and you would like to learn more, feel free to contact us.

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Why a Positively Memorable Customer Experience (CX) Matters

A positively memorable Customer Experience can mean the difference between retaining a customer for years to come, or losing them forever due to issues that may have been easily overlooked. Click Here to read more of Dan Feely’s latest blog on this exact topic.

Our events’ details can be found in Dan’s latest blog, as well as on our Customer Experience Training page. If you have any further questions, you can reach Dan directly at dfeely@transforming.com or (847) 705-0960 x202.

Five Critical Success Factors for Shared Services Optimization

Over the last couple of decades, organizations have made significant progress utilizing shared services and outsourcing to optimize and improve performance. Over this time period and even in a more accelerated manner in the past 5 years, Shared Service Centers (SSCs) have tended to become more global, multi-functional, virtual and cross-organizational (i.e., operated by more than one entity/business partner) … Click Here to read more.

Top Three Future Technology Disrupters for 2017 and Beyond

We live in fascinating times, where the pace of change and innovation never slows down and continues to accelerate and disrupt our world in ways we couldn’t imagine a short decade ago. It is only fitting as 2016 comes to an end, that I share my Top 3 Future Technology Disrupters … Click Here to read more.

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