Association of Colleges
EIF Funding
FE Efficiency Innovation Fund - Round 1
In June 2010 Vince Cable (Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills) advised The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) that extra funds would be allocated to enable them to work with Association of Colleges and the FE Sector to develop an innovative suite of shared service solutions in the expectation that the Agency and the sector would continue to improve efficiency.
A variety of initiatives have been developed in order to make best use of this funding. These included giving Colleges the opportunity to develop and test a range of collaborative models for improved delivery of back office functions and/or frontline services in order to determine where efficiency savings can be realised and provide solutions to barriers to sharing and collaboration.
To this end AoC (on behalf of the SFA) launched the FE Efficiency Innovation Fund from this 21 projects were successful, these projects are now being worked on and the AoC Procurement team will be working with these projects.
For a summary of Round 1 please refer to summary of round 1 projects - FE Efficiency and Innovation Fund
FE Efficiency Innovation Fund - Round 2
We are pleased to announce that funding has been established for further innovative models of collaboration and sharing to be brought forward by the sector. This has led to another 20 projects being successful, these projects are now being worked on and the AoC Procurement Team are working with these projects.
For a summary of Round 2 please refer to summary of round 2 projects - FE Efficiency and Innovation Fund
FE Efficiency Innovation Fund - Round 3
The Efficiency Innovation Fund have further supported the following projects;
Bromley College - Embedding process efficiency gains using LEAN/6 Sigma.
Orpington College, John Ruskin College and Bexley College.
This project will drive efficiency savings by using LEAN/6 Sigma business process reengineering to align three core service areas, MIS/MIC, HR and Finance of four Colleges in South East London.
The principles of LEAN and 6-Sigma will be applied to each service function with the intention of achieving an average 25% reduction in the current total expenditure, and with embedded potential for continuous year-on year improvements, consistent with evidenced metrics from other organisations' application of these techniques.
North Herts College - Innovation collaboration; harnessing entrepreneurship to drive efficiencies and improvements in the national further education College network.
City College Norwich, Gateshead College and Walsall College.
Four UK FE Colleges have developed a shared vision to drive local, regional and national economies through harnessing local entrepreneurship, starting with the transformation of the further education sector from the student experience and the College staffing model, to how money is invested and success is measured.
Specifically, the project will explore the potential to develop collaborative approaches which, through shared expertise, learning and services, will deliver significant improvements in the quality of their leadership and learning provision while at the same time sharing the development risks and achieving exponential cost savings.
Shared Services Business Models
The Barnet College led project, from Round 1 have put together a report detailing the various collaboration vehicles for the FE sector.
View the video case studies here
View the case studies on individual projects here
We talked to managers working on a few of these diverse projects to find out how they’re getting on and what they see as the successes and challenges so far:
Sunaina Mann Principal and Chief Executive is working on a project that is investigating how they can share and improve student customer service. It involves Nescot, Greenwich Community College and Bexley College.
“Although our Round 2 project is still at an early stage, we have found that one of the key benefits has been the fostering of trust and common understanding between the partners. By working together on a project that asks some really hard questions about how we deliver on the customer journey from enquiry to enrolment, we have developed a mutual honesty that I am sure will have many wider benefits in the longer term.
“One of the project’s successes so far has been the willingness of the teams in the respective Colleges to think openly and critically about what they do and how it could be improved. Shared services challenges existing ways of working and it is to the credit of the teams that they have embraced potential changes.
“The nature of building the business case is that access to accurate data is vitally important. What has emerged from the partners coming together on this project is that critical data about the customer journey isn’t always as accessible as it should be. We are learning this lesson as we work through the project and we will, of course, ensure that management data about the customer journey is at the forefront of the eventual shared service solution.”
Tony Lau-Walker, Chief Executive of Eastleigh College
“The major benefits of the project so far have been the exchange of staff (we have shared expertise at low or no cost); peer support for efficiency savings (peers have acted as consultants or critical friends on planning and scoping staff structures); the joint investigation of outsourcing opportunities; joint procurement (we’ve entered into a joint operation for savings on purchases through a third-party agreement); joint planning (shaping future curriculum initiatives and delivery modes) and joint curriculum provision (we’ve come to an agreement on specialisation – currently limited – between partners.
“We consider our big successes to date to be establishing complete trust between parties at senior manager team level; sharing all financial data and business systems activity; and making significant initial savings worth £650k over three years.
“Engaging with others to scale up savings and ‘talent pool’ ideas, and maintaining the momentum of working together has been the key challenges we’ve faced and successfully overcome.”
Robert Hutton, Head of Unit Central Services Rotherham College
“The project has highlighted the need to ensure that the memoranda of agreements are in place before commencing any shared service venture. These must and should commit a level of resource, whilst identifying shared goals and constraints. The project has also shown that substantial savings can be made through collaboration of procurement and expertise.
“The project is built on a managed network infrastructure developed through partnerships with nearby Colleges over many years and has now realised some of the original strategic thinking and aims of the service. The ability to share data across the managed network, or local cloud, without comprising existing WAN/JANET services is a huge benefit.
Kathy Bland, Project Manager for the North East Shared Services project
“The journey to date has been a relatively short one, commencing in October 2010. Nevertheless, much progress has been made: we have held visioning workshops, trained shared services architects, are mapping processes and holding business case workshops and also preparing an official launch.
“The partnership consists of a wide variety of providers representative of the entire sector – the trust between partners and their commitment to the project has been undeniable. The knowledge and understanding of partners has grown to an incredible extent and questions raised at the outset have been fully answered to the satisfaction of all. Partner members have internalised this knowledge and understanding. Above all, partners are seeking to enhance their focus on providing outstanding teaching and learning opportunities to their communities, whilst at the same time contributing to the very important Government efficiencies agenda.
“The biggest success to date undoubtedly has to be the commitment made to the development of the business case alongside the work on producing detailed process maps with the preferred option clearly identified and delivered to time. The work undertaken so far has been confidently led and carried out in a participatory manner so that all the partners have had full ownership. We will continue this project management approach and have complete confidence that the commitment, enthusiasm and determination shown to date will ensure successful implementation.
“Clearly the concentration of a significant piece of work in a compressed period of time has been a major challenge. However, the work has been carefully project managed, ensuring that the partnership has reached the end of Phase I in accordance with agreed timescales. Above all, the proposed North East Shared Services project contains the vision, will, approach and concord to make a successful outcome inevitable.”
Peter Milford, Project Manager, Solent Colleges Innovation Partnership (SCIP)
"Ultimately, the main benefit will be to encourage a group of Colleges to work more closely together for mutual benefit. It’s all about developing mutual trust and confidence in that Colleges are prepared to share information, not just about practice but also about performance. Traditionally, there’s been more reticence about sharing information on performance but that can be really significant. Gaining the knowledge, for example, that someone else is getting a more efficient usage of staff or other resources can help you to improve the performance of your own College."
"The biggest success so far has been getting six Principals with their Chairs or senior governors around a table in an independent location to discuss common issues and common ways forward. We’re looking at what steps we as a group can take towards maintaining the student experience, the enhancement and enrichment we bring to post-16 education, in the face of the changing funding environment. It comes down to the fact that you have to move away from a concept of competition to a concept of confidence. In the time we’ve been looking at this project, the funding environment has changed dramatically but working in these ways is helping us all to cope."
"It's all about developing trust and confidence in each other so that, in the future, if a College is faced with an issue, they feel they can pick up the phone and talk to another College to resolve it in a non-competitive and non-threatening manner. At the end of the day, the people who are important are the students, our customers."
"We’re working as a group of six Colleges. That’s been the biggest challenge so far – you can work with two or three and it’s relatively straightforward, but with six it’s harder to get people together because of diaries and it’s harder to reach agreement. When you have a large group, especially when we’re discussing things that have a significant impact on the governance of the Colleges, you've got to get agreement not just from Principals but from their Governors. Suddenly, you’re not talking about six people but you may have 120! You need to make sure that any documents that may commit Colleges to potential changes in how they move forward go to corporations and are approved.
‘These sorts of projects don’t run quickly; they’re developmental. The other key thing is that although the focus is on back end projects shared services is really about people. It’s the management of change and the management of people across the Colleges and that has to be done very carefully."
