You may have noticed, in the most recent IT Services (ITS) organisational chart, a new department called Business Partnering, headed up by Tara Lamplough. In this article, we’re going to take a look at what Business Partnering is, who is currently responsible for this within ITS, and how all ITS staff will benefit from this.
What is Business Partnering?
Wikipedia describes business partnering as “the development of successful, long term, strategic relationships between customers and suppliers, based on achieving best practice and sustainable competitive advantage”. It’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?
Let’s look at this from an ITS perspective. We are the “supplier”, and the other departments within the University, who buy our equipment and use our services, are the “customers”. Business partnering means that we want to understand what our customers’ strategic priorities are for the next few years, and how IT Services fits into them – supporting the University’s strategic framework.
We can then check that our customers’ priorities match what we are planning to do this year, and start working through any areas where there is a gap in expectations.
Who is responsible for Business Partnering within IT Services?
Tara Lamplough started her new role as Head of Business Partnering in 
January 2018. Tara has worked at the University for over 15 years, in various roles within ITS. She has mainly worked on Web and Digital services; more recently, she started working on the Dubai Campus project as IT Systems Lead. She is ideally suited to Business Partnering due to her people skills, tenacity and wide knowledge of business processes and strategy.
This is a new venture within IT Services, so Tara is focusing on partnering one part of the University to start off with: Academic Services (AS). She has been meeting with the AS Senior Management Team to introduce Business Partnering – and then to listen to them, about what their priorities are and how ITS will fit into delivering them.
The early stages of Tara’s new role are very much based around fact-finding; she is also connecting with IT Business Partners at other universities, to find out how they’re fulfilling the role.
So how does this affect me?
Through successful business partnering, ITS can achieve a better understanding of priorities around the University. This will help us to focus our limited resources on the projects which will deliver the most value to the University. All projects coming through to ITS will have been pre-filtered via regular conversations with the University Senior Officers – so projects being stopped or de-prioritised should become a rarity.
- Business Partners are an advocate for IT Services and will help to highlight the wide range of services we can offer.
- Business Partners provide a consultancy and connecting role. They will need the support of Subject Matter Experts across ITS, for the depth of knowledge they can bring.
- Business Partners can help you with identifying key stakeholders in changes you’re making to your services/processes.
Earlier engagement
Business Partners will be proactively engaging with the rest of the University to find out as early about initiatives that might require IT involvement. Through earlier engagement, we can ensure that IT solutions are properly evaluated and that the relevant IT stakeholders are part of the selection/development process throughout.
A two-way process
Business Partners will be looking at ITS from their business unit’s perspective. They will help to identify where ITS needs to make improvements; but they will also provide feedback, where services or individuals are viewed positively. This should be a two-way process – if you have any suggestions for how we can improve our relationships with other areas of the University, please contact Tara Lamplough, Head of Business Partnering.
Questions?
If you’d like to find out more about business partnering within ITS, please contact Tara Lamplough, Head of Business Partnering.