In early December 2020, the Business Partnering, CX and Communications team held our annual “End of Year Review” meeting, writes Tara Lamplough, Head of Business Partnering. We find that this time of year is a good point to reflect on what has been achieved and to plan where we might want to improve our activities going forwards.

2020 in review

We had no idea what a rollercoaster 2020 would be. At the end of 2019 we were hopeful that we’d start to see an increased pace of delivery to clear our backlog of IT projects. We knew we’d be building relationships with a number of new key stakeholders. We also wanted to build up stronger links with Business Partnering teams at other universities so we could share ideas and keep abreast of sector best practice.

Even though we had a surprise pandemic, we managed to make progress on these goals. The new services were delivered at pace by necessity to enable the University to function remotely. We built new relationships via video conferencing, and our key contacts list needed to expand further than predicted to keep abreast of the faster-paced and less committee-driven decision making. We also set up a new Team space to collaborate with business relationship management contacts outside of UoB. It’s still in its infancy, but has already proven useful to get fast external benchmarking input into our plans.

Unexpectedly however, several members of the team were drawn into the operational delivery and support space. Whilst not our remit, there were essential gaps that needed filling to ensure the University could continue to operate. The time spent on this has ended up being less temporary that we’d have liked, but we have evidence of the positive impact this work has had on the University.

Work/life balance has been a challenge for most of the team at some point this year. Whether that’s been with home schooling, blurred home-office boundaries and/or the sheer volume of activity required. It’s something we are all conscious we need to be vigilant of ongoing so we don’t burn out.

Aims for 2021

Given the year we’ve just had, we’d be foolish to think 2021 is going to be easy or predictable! We’ve still set some goals:

We need to extricate ourselves from some of the operational activities to refocus our efforts on the strategic direction and roadmaps that guide IT Services/UoB technology development. 2020 was very reactive by necessity but we do need to ensure we’re building towards a technology estate that is sustainable and in line with our future Digital Strategy ambitions rather than a steady stream of tactical fixes.
This year has helped to identify that we don’t always have IT representation or sufficient understanding of digital in some of the senior groups/committees where it’s needed. If IT can’t be represented in all of these groups then we need to work with the senior stakeholders that attend and ensure they’re aware of our direction, capabilities, processes and capacity. We’ll run a stakeholder mapping exercise to ensure there are no obvious important gaps.
In advance of the Digital Strategy signoff there is potential for some early wins. We have two Graduate Management Trainees joining the team in 2021 to support exploring business ideas for automation, so we hope to push forward more examples in this area supporting the University efficiency agenda.
We want to continue to support initiatives that will more closely align our activities with the requirements of our users. The move to product management approach is an important development that we’re keen to lend our expertise/time to.
We’re keen to broaden out IT Services staff understanding of the wider University and HE sector context we’re working in. Within our team we have great visibility of the challenges at UoB and the impact of technologies on our users (both good and bad). We need to get better at sharing this back with the teams developing and supporting services.

Communications and engagement

The visibility of our IT Communications team has never been higher. It’s been great to see colleagues proactively engaging the team, rather than the team having to chase staff for input. It feels like many staff are now seeing the importance of a strong communications function; the team has proven invaluable during remote working to ensure staff feel engaged, updated and supported. From not having an IT Communications role a few years ago to where we are now is great progress. We’re now in a position where we can start sharing examples of our best practice with other areas of the University.

The collaboration between BPs and Comms has also never been closer than this year. Highlights include supporting the rollout and engagement with new technologies at pace, developing the Digital Strategy engagement, ITSGO sessions and In Brief (Business Partnering newsletter).

Team spirit

And finally, it’s been great to see how we’ve pulled together as a team throughout 2020. We’ve had kids, dogs, cats and chickens attend our team meetings. It was a tough year – but we’ve laughed every day and managed to retain a great team spirit, even when overloaded with work and separated by physical location. It’s a privilege to work with such a talented team every day which makes those challenging days just that little bit better.