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November 10, 2008
Reorganized, ready for the next wave

Karen Jenkins is director of University Technology Services’ newly created IT Service Management Office.

Emory Information Technology officially launched in 1965 with the establishment of the Emory Biomedical Data Processing and Analysis Center. Since then, the organization has grown and transformed several times to address the academic and business mission of the University by leveraging technological advances.

Information technology is an enabling component to the Emory strategic plan and is integral to nearly every aspect of life at Emory, from using the telephone to medical research. Over the years, institutions and organizations that effectively use, align and realign IT to provide a competitive advantage soar ahead of their peers.

In August 2007, Brett Coryell joined Emory to lead a newly consolidated IT division, University Technology Services. UTS merged two divisions — AAIT focused on applications and services and NetCom supported telecommunications. This marked the first step toward the most recent IT alignment.

Under Brett’s leadership, a cross-functional working group guided the needs and direction for a new organizational structure, our “Next Wave.” Having just completed a multi-year wave of IT consolidation, UTS is prepared to embark upon the next multi-year initiative of operational excellence, which will ultimately prepare the organization to better address the goal of innovation.

Working in conjunction with outside consultants, the group met with a cross-section of key customers including Emory College, Emory Healthcare, the Provost’s Office, Rollins School of Public Health, Human Resources, and the Emory Libraries. More than 80 other stakeholders provided input and feedback and received continual communications throughout the entire process. Through a series of meetings and brainstorming sessions, very clear themes of improvement emerged. The new UTS structure expressly addresses each key area.

Who do you call for IT support? How do you engage the division to address new needs? UTS is a large complex organization, but the goal is to make the complexity transparent to customers.

One “front door” for customers provides simplicity by creating a single entry point to the organization for all support and work requests. This service desk will improve customer service and make support requests less confusing, eventually providing 24/7 support. For longer-term strategic needs and an increased commitment to improve customer intimacy, a new role in the organization, business relationship managers, work directly with business units and schools.

The appointment of Rhonda Fuss as the executive director brings well-respected talent, extensive experience and executive focus to the areas of culture improvement and employee development. The creation of both a continuity manager and a dedicated IT Service Management Office addresses critical operational readiness needs. Operational excellence is also met through the consolidation of similar functions including application development and support services. A new Project Management Office ensures better quality and consistency for on time and on-budget project and service delivery.

The Next Wave organization eliminates duplication of effort, removes silos, redeploys resources to expand services, uses proven industry standards to improve productivity, builds capability to deliver innovation through integration and brings new competencies to improve reliability and efficiency. These changes enable UTS to meet Emory’s future vision.

The new leadership and reporting structure is already in place, with the changes detailed here, and more rolling out over the coming months. Everyone in UTS is excited and ready to put these important processes in place to better align services with customer needs.

For an introduction to the new leadership team, please see the most recent UTS newsletter at: http://it.emory.edu/newsletter.

A detailed organizational chart is available at: http://it.emory.edu/uts.