Category: OE Updates
OE Weekly Update – 9/13/19
Good afternoon – I’m pleased to announce the launch of the new Travel and Expenses site, travel.unc.edu. As you may know, this site launch is the culmination of many weeks of work, starting with a policy review to clarify and consolidate existing travel policies. The new site contains several new resources to improve the user … Read more
OE Weekly Update – 9/6/19
Good afternoon – The month of September marks the one-year anniversary of Operational Excellence. Our team is busy planning for the year ahead, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the core themes that have led to our initial success. Here are a few takeaways: Collaboration across … Read more
OE Weekly Update – 8/30/19
Good afternoon – A quick reminder that today is the last day to submit nominations for the inaugural Operational Excellence Award, which recognizes the outstanding contributions by a staff member to the advancement of Operational Excellence’s mission and goals. This week’s updates are brief, but I do want to take … Read more
OE Weekly Update – 8/23/19
Good afternoon – Hope you’re enjoying the last weeks of August. Below are a few items I’d like to highlight this week: On August 19th, the University Gazette published two articles about our work. The first article, “Early successes help build support for Operational Excellence initiative,” is told from the … Read more
Weekly Update: August 16, 2019
Good afternoon – This week I have an exciting update to share: As we approach the one-year anniversary of Operational Excellence, we’re introducing our inaugural Operational Excellence Award! This award recognizes the outstanding contributions by a staff member to the advancement of Operational Excellence’s mission and goals. We intend to … Read more
Weekly Update: August 9, 2019
Good afternoon – Hope you’ve had a great week! On Monday we held the August Steering Committee meeting and shared the latest updates on the Early Impact, Travel & Expense, HR and Research Teams work. We updated the committee on our Early Impact work focused on improving the hiring process … Read more
Weekly Update: August 2, 2019
Good afternoon – This week the Early Impact, Travel & Expense, HR and Research Teams continue to make progress on the items we reported last week. While these projects all focus on different aspects of operations, they were all developed using the same structured, collaborative and transparent process that is the foundation of Operational Excellence. An … Read more
Weekly Update: July 26, 2019
Good afternoon, Hope your month of July is going well – our team has been busy designing and piloting our current initiatives as well as rolling out the Early Impact work to the final cohort. Here are the latest workstream updates: The Travel & Expense Team continues to collect feedback on the new Travel & Expense website resources from the three pilot units: the Kenan-Flagler Business School, Undergraduate Admissions, and the Department … Read more
Weekly Update: July 19, 2019
Good afternoon, As some of you may know, I was recently in Austin for the NACUBO 2019-20 Fellows Program, where I had the opportunity to discuss Operational Excellence and learn from the other participants. I’m very proud of the Operational Excellence work to date and want to thank everyone for your support. Please note that due to scheduling conflicts, the Steering Committee meeting scheduled for earlier this week was moved to August 5th. Here are the latest … Read more
Weekly Update: July 12, 2019
Good afternoon, Hope everyone has had a great July so far! We set a July 8th internal deadline to launch pilots and start user testing. Thanks to the hard work of our design teams we’ve been able to meet this goal. More specifically: The Travel & Expense Team launched its pilot to collect feedback on the new Travel & … Read more
Weekly Update: June 28, 2019
Good afternoon, This week our team has been busy preparing for the launch of the Wave 1 pilots for Travel & Expense Team, HR Team and Research Team. All three pilots will kick-off the week of July 8th. More specifically: The Travel & Expense Team is finalizing the resources for the new travel … Read more
Weekly Update: June 21, 2019
Good afternoon, Hope you’ve had a great week so far! The Operational Excellence team continues to focus on the three Wave 1 initiatives. More specifically: The Travel & Expense Team continued developing resources for the new travel site. They also discussed a plan for an initial pilot rollout to begin in July. The HR … Read more
Weekly Update: June 14, 2019
Good afternoon, Hope your week is going well! Here’s a quick look at what the Operational Excellence team focused on this week: The Travel & Expense Team completed the first version of a Quick Reference Guide, Travel Checklist, and Booking Guide. They also discussed what other resources would be helpful to create for travelers. … Read more
Weekly Update: June 7, 2019
Good afternoon! This has been a busy week in Operational Excellence. The Steering Committee met yesterday and we had a robust discussion centered around research administration. Thank you for those of you that participated – your input is invaluable. Below is an update for all our workstreams: The Travel & … Read more
Weekly Update: May 31, 2019
Hey everybody. I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend – and enjoyed their short week of work. Here is a brief recap of Operational Excellence work from the week: The Research Team continues to design solutions to expedite the award negotiation. One deliverable will be a more streamlined … Read more
Weekly Update: May 24, 2019
As we head into to the long weekend, I want to share a quick update on the progress our team has made this week: The HR Team continued working in two groups to address student employment and position management. The student employment group began to catalog and evaluate the usefulness and accessibility of existing trainings … Read more
Weekly Update: May 17, 2019
Hope everyone has had a great week. With commencement in the rearview mirror and summer schedules taking shape, teams in Operational Excellence are going strong. Take a look at how we’re moving forward in each workstream: The Research Design Team conducted interviews in different units to learn how they carry out research administrative functions. They also started designing solutions to … Read more
Weekly Update: May 10, 2019
Happy Friday everybody! Campus is buzzing in preparation for this weekend’s commencement. Our teams continue to dig in on solution mode – and have made great progress this week: The Travel and Expense Initiative team continued their conversations from last week about the complexities of our travel policies and began thinking about recommendations for … Read more
Weekly Update: May 3, 2019
Welcome to May everybody! While much of campus is focused on exams, OE teams are in solution-mode. Here is the latest from those efforts: The research project life cycle effort and the research sub-team for roles and responsibilities prioritized potential solutions and began the design phase for improving proposal submission … Read more
Weekly Update: April 26, 2019
Hi everyone, We are nearing the end of the month. Here’s what we worked on this week in Operational Excellence: The research project lifecycle effort and the research sub-team for roles and responsibilities joined forces this week. Their work streams are aligning and they will work together going forward to … Read more