What are the four (4) most critical factors that have contributed to the successful TO initiative at USQ?

Post by **answerhappygod** » Mon May 02, 2022 12:43 pm

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making]' There is a consensus among USQ ICT Managers on the impact level of three factors: 'focus on core capability' (high), 'political reasons' (low) and 'cost predictability' (high). However, their opinions regarding 'cost reduction', 'commercial exploitation' and 'career development of IS employees' vary. With the exception of 'political reasons 'commercial exploitation' and 'head count reduction, all factors are considered medium to very high impact determinants. In this study 'cost reduction' received three different impact rankings. One of the interviewees believed that ... what we are doing more these days is partnering with ICT providers to give us access to cloud ... so the upfront cost is reduced because we are not spending as much time developing something from scratch, ... then we pay a 6:30 AM
maintenance fee ... our capital budget is pretty much stable but our recurrent budget is increasing every year because we are implementing new systems. Student and staff numbers are increasing and all these things impact the license fee that we pay ... Another ICT executive maintained that: .... cost reduction is almost never a key determinant ... [with outsourcing] we can buy a set of skills at great expensive rates for short period of time rather than putting staff ourselves to do that. I don't think we are saving money doing that ... with the exception of very commoditized services, the make-buy decisions we did on very big systems [shows] they are almost always exactly equal. Instead of 'headcount reduction, one manager reported 'headcount stabilization' as a determinant. Another
human resource issue in ITO decisions is the change in required skills, for instance by increasing the outsourcing level, the organization needs new skills such as expertise in vendor management and less technical skills such as programming. Also levels of risk acceptance are different; 'there are universities that years ago adopted cloud! In addition, various external factors also influenced ITO initiative of USQ. For example, the local job market certainly has affected USQ's outsourcing decisions. USQ's main campus is located in regional Australia (Toowoomba) and even USQ's IT graduates tend to work in larger cities, thus the local supply of IT skills is limited. For instance, USQ has outsourced some tasks related to its computer network due to local unavailability of highly skilled
Cisco network professionals. Three other USQ campuses give USQ another choice in IT sourcing decisions. For instance, Springfield campus is located near Brisbane and has better access to skilled IT human resources, and it is possible to employ people there, since the campuses are connected via network. Also, the variation in the IT job market depends on the Australian economy cycles, and affects USQ's IT Sourcing decisions. Therefore, sometimes sourcing locally is a challenge because the local business environment does not have the required skills and expertise. One of the USQ participants suggested industry maturity as a new determinant factor by reasoning that 'different sectors have different maturity ... higher education is moving fairly slowly, compared to other industries.
I think some other industries went from in- sourcing to outsourcing in a year or two ... If we want to outsource all of ICT for the university, that would be a long slow painful process, because we have union engagement, government obligations, [and] compliance obligations .... ITO decisions and the experiences of other universities in Australia exert a significant influence on USQ's IT sourcing decisions. USQ ICT managers believe that 'the pressure is on and it is necessary to run the same applications or similar that other organizations in your business are running. So there is a competition factor ... 'the risk goes down when other universities have done the same thing successfully. We share information across the sector ... we are not competitive, we work together ... we actually even
collaborate at a national level on sourcing contracts. The participation of universities in the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) and also informal sharing of information and collaboration increases the mimetic effect. CAUDIT is an industry- wide group representing the IT Directors/ CIOs of all universities in Australia and New Zealand. CAUDIT negotiates collective procurement agreements, provides professional development, undertakes projects and fosters collaboration through the sharing of ideas, experiences and best practice amongst its members. With 57 members and an annual IT expenditure of almost $2 billion, CAUDIT is able to speak authoritatively to government, industry and university bodies on all aspects of IT. CAUDIT also
provides a strategic procurement service that provides significant value to members by leveraging collective spending power as well as building strategic partnerships. For instance CAUDIT has provided a discount of approximately 34 percent to members on Microsoft software purchases. In 2012 CAUDIT introduced a set of procurement guidelines to provide guidance and best practice when undertaking negotiations for collective procurement agreements with ICT vendors on a sector wide basis. In 2010, CAUDIT claims its procurement activities saved the Australian Higher Education sector more than $12 million. USQ is currently using a wide range of cloud services such as: customer relationship management (CRM) solution, contract management system, plagiarism detection software, student
system, and electronic survey system. There is a trend towards expanding the use of cloud based applications and services at USQ and more applications will be cloud-based in the near future. The increase in cloud sourcing has urged USQ to define a cloud computing policy. Since the amount of offshore ITO is very low at USQ, and all of the offshore contracts are with English speaking countries, this study did not identify any socio-cultural factors impacting ITO decisions at USQ.