IT SERVICE ORIENTATION FOR THE FUTURE.

emerging trends in resourcing capability

2020.

The year that delivered COVID-19, remote learning and the proliferation of video conferencing. A little over 12 months have passed since international borders were closed due to the global pandemic.

As a result, 2021 international student enrolment revenues in the Australian higher education sector are significantly down on 2019 figures. The impact of the reduction in international student numbers on the Australian economy, is far greater than just the higher education or vocational education and training sectors.

International students contribute to the Australian economy for the duration of their studies, and modelling suggests that the economy in general may face wider losses until 2023.

Businesses have now lost access to the security blanket of the Federal Government’s Jobkeeper scheme and are faced with the stark reality of needing to optimise their business operations, or face closure. Higher Education providers have already been through multiple rounds of drastic cost-cutting measures to reduce operational expenditure and now find themselves unable to meet the demands of delivering business as usual operations, mandated legislative changes or any remaining funded project work.

Another growing concern is how providers can find and exploit their niche and deliver exceptional student experiences from application through to graduation, to increasingly choosy and digitally savvy students, as they fight for market share to offset revenue losses with reduced funded OPEX capacity.

Approaching external IT consulting firms that offer on-demand service orientation frameworks to prospective clients, has allowed many higher education providers to continue to fulfil daily operational requirements and innovate to improve the study experience offered to continuing and commencing students, in a cost-effective manner.

What are capability on-demand services?

Under a Business Analysis as a Service (BAaaS) framework, providers can access highly skilled resources that quickly and deeply embed themselves within key stakeholder groups to identify, document and recommend strategic business process optimisations, using industry best practice methodologies. 

Software Development as a Service (SDaaS) specialists can design, develop, and deploy digital transformation initiatives and integration platforms that alleviate the need to conduct error-prone manual data entry or file transfers between related systems, more quickly and efficiently than in-house resources with growing backlogs of internal tasks.

Testing resources are often the least funded IT area within an organisation. Staffing a testing team can be difficult to justify when resources are only required when the software vendor releases a product upgrade. On-demand Testing as a Service (TaaS) resources use defined frameworks to develop test strategies and plans appropriate to the testing activity, manage and coordinate testing phases, design and execute test cases and/or provide test reporting capabilities as needed.

Limited reporting information is available on independent consulting expenditure within the sector. In their 2019 annual reports, Queensland and Victorian providers reported total annual independent consulting expenditure amounts of $87M and $58M respectively, on engagements valued over $10,000. Although external consulting resolves short-term capacity challenges, many in the industry question the long-term value of such engagements, given that business process knowledge and intellectual property typically walk out the door once the work is complete. External consulting companies should be giving serious thought to how they can provide on-going long-term benefits to their clients, that comprises more than just a superficial documentation handover after an engagement finishes, to ensure that providers are indeed realising the highest possible return on their consulting investments.

Creating strategically aligned partnerships that allow external consultants to gain a deep understanding of a provider’s systems and processes, alongside the ability to deliver on-demand targeted, value-adding solutions seems obvious. But consideration must be given to creating a sustainable, customer-centric alignment, and finding the balance between optimal staff capacity vs. on-demand specialised resourcing will be an on-going challenge in the new normal.

ESAM’s work

If you are experiencing resourcing issues and would like to know more about how ESAM Consulting’s on-demand service capability frameworks could assist you, call us for a complimentary obligation-free discussion.

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To learn more about our work for higher education facilities, utility providers and super funds, click through to read our case studies.