So what do you do exactly?’ In challenging times justifying the roles of the web teams from UKOLN on Vimeo.

This my talk at the IWMW10 also see http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2010/talks/sidhu/.

Since last week I have been thinking about what should be next steps, the importance of the timing was further enhanced by the next day listening to Vince Cable talking about funding for the universities and the Lord Browne report that is sure to be challenging. Unlike previous years, there is a real sense of urgency that things need to happen now.

Further, from an outside prospective, I think it is important that institutions are seen to be proactive in this.

With this in mind I have come up with what is important to get in place to help universities follow up from the IWMW10: Here are my suggestions- feedback, as ever, is essential:

1. Creating a structured program for showing value for certain areas of your online site

One point that became clear at the event and subsequently is that although the talk was a good starting point, more detailed examples of providing value would be helpful. It still feel that in many areas the true value of what the online university community is doing is undervalued and perceived as difficult to communicate. I will be looking at giving examples of how to provide a detailed value analysis of:

• Prospective postgraduate students applications
• •Mobile Apps
• •Particular sections of a site (eg Editorial)
• Providing more detailed scoring of events on the site and its reporting

2. Getting together “meaningful” institutional statistics.

Before I left for Australia in 2006 we were providing Sector Statistics for 22 universities at IWMW 2006 and around 40 before I left. What I am hoping to do is pick that up and carry on with it, but this time actually providing more meaningful reports for the community. All reports will be aggregated data and used basically for:

a. benchmarking so to provide background for the statistics communicated

b. To provide “industry standard” statistics for use when their own institutions statistics are not available.

Example of these reports would be:

• average monthly applications online
• average applications per country per month
• average applications per site section (undergraduate/postgraduate/international)
• average level of use for mobile application by current students

These reports would obviously start with the basic reports and grow in number and complexity over time. New reports could be sourced from the community as to what is required at differing times.

I will be sending an email out asking organisations to join, but if you could register your interest that would be a helpful start.

3. “Kick Start Day”: A day per institution

I am also mindful that experience has taught me that getting going on something like this is often hard and can get sidelined when the everyday issues come knocking. Often a kick is needed to build up the velocity to get reporting.

With this is mind I am proposing is a “Kick Start Day”. This would be a day per university where we would go through the process and at the end provide a one page report as a template they can follow. We would go through:

• what they would like to report on
• how to get the relevant data out
• Create and a one page report.

I would be providing this at cost service and limited to a one per week on a first come first served basis.

Summary

So, this is my plan to get going, as you can imagine it does entail a fair amount of work and commitment from my side so really need to know whether it is worth it. Working with the Universities in the past I know that we can do some amazing things and create new reporting and systems.

What I ideally like to know:

1. Do you think a structured schema of measuring value for parts of your online would be valuable?

2. Would you be provisionally interested in the sector analysis and statistics?

3. Would you be provisionally interested in the Kick Start Day?

4. Is there anything I have missed that you think would be important?

Look forward to your comments and ideas. Leave them here or email ranjit@sidspace.info or twitter: @rssidhu

Ranjit

Andrew Hutchinson, General Manager – Marketing

However, as we are setting up the UK office I have used this opportunity to have a re-focus on what we are doing- and ultimately ask the question- what exactly we want to achieve?  The answer was to provide a better, relevant product and have well trained,  positive staff who have developed whilst working at the company. In line with this we will be looking to change:

1. How the company will be run
2. How we provide our service to our customers

How the company will be run.

On a personal level I consider the most important factor that prevents IT companies providing  a good service  for clients is having staff who not only understand what the client requires, but also have an understanding of technically how it should work- basically rounded people in the industry. In this world of specialism and segmenting, often you have people who are either technical and would never meet (or be allowed!) to meet a client unless sharproned, or a client facing sales person who knows the talk, but would not know the first thing about the nuts and bolts of what they are selling. In my view this leads to the client not getting a good service; often the language used is jargon filled and meaningless leading to service agreements that are tick lists instead of being  driven to providing a meaningful end product.

On the other side of this fence: when employing people you often end up with  either technical efficient people who are really lacking customer empathy or sales people who are lacking in service delivery- and often this has been engrained into them over years of working in IT companies where this distinction is not just in place, but actively pushed.

So we are looking to set up the UK office differently: Each team will consist of a team leader (I shall be the first) and three others who we are planning to take get straight from university/higher education. The key emphasis will be that each staff member will be directly responsible for technical implementation/project management/sales- basically the whole lot. The training will be broad and wide ranging.

Yes, of course, there will be specialisms within the team, but each member of the team is involved in all aspects of the running of the company- i.e. doing client sales pitching as well as technical support. Hopefully this will provide the customer with a better service.

We want to work with people straight from education for a couple of reasons: Firstly, is that there seems to be such a lack of opportunity for clever, motivated people to get a footing in IT in the UK and particularly Scotland. Secondly, we do want people who have not become ingrained with the duality of roles in IT companies and thirdly on a personal level I remember how hard it was after University for someone full of energy and optimism being pushed into narrow job roles which were basic admin which became very boring very quick.

Will we be able to get the right type of person? I will keep you posted!

How we provide our service to our customers

Our previous company statement stated:

“Our underlying ethos is to bend the technology available to fit into your requirements, rather then you having to bend to fit the technology.”

This holds true, but we will be adding a key word to it all: “understanding”: We will be focusing further at understanding where exactly the client is currently and what they want to achieve, and then look at what is the best way to gain the data that will provide the necessary results:  It could be qualitative or quantative, a free product or paid product- it could be tracking or not tracking, but no products or services will be used until we have a clear understanding of the requirements. Once the data is gained it will be analyzed and presented. The next cycle will be to use this analysis and the clients input to set the next achievement and so on, the aim being a full interaction with the client at all times

Sounds simple and obvious? Yes it is, but behind it are two key lessons we have learned over the years: a. Making sure the data is what the customer asked for, therefore making sure it is useful and will provide some insight: It is very tiring and boring producing reports that no-one is interested in and no-one reads. b. Too often products are installed at great cost of time and money and not used at after the first week and just produce the one dimensional automatic reports.  Clients’ effort should be used in telling us what you require in pain english- it is our job to do the rest.

This is all very exciting and as a project has already got good  feedback- I look forward to yours! Please feel free to tell us what you think!

Thanks
Ranjit Sidhu

Director- SiD

email: ranjit@sidspace.info

twitter: @rssidhu