brief descriptions of sample projects completed by Minear & Company consultants to help university administrative departments focus their resources on what matters most

1. University Student Loan Office
Client:
What staff do we need?
Project Length:
8 weeks
(3 of active consulting)
The Student Loan Office was in
the midst of a number of
changes, as responsibilities
were shifting to other groups,
moving on-line and becoming
more self-serve. They wanted
to look at roles and
responsibilities within the
department.
Core work
requirements
should dictate
staffing needs.
We began with an inexpensive
time estimation exercise with
the staff to approximate the
effort required by each work
process. We incorporated data
on transaction volumes to
measure efficiencies and
interviewed staff to hear their
hypotheses and ideas as well
as what they liked and didn’t
like about their roles.
Taken together, these data led
to various outcomes: elimination
of activities that were expensive
and unnecessary (e.g., double
checking software functions),
evaluation of services that were
more expensive than their
merits, mapping of inefficient
processes and their antidotes,
re-allocating responsibilities
among staff based on
preferences and aptitudes, and
drafting longer-term projections
of staffing needs.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective

2. As part of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment
Act (ARRA), recipients of
Federal research grants were
required to provide quarterly
financial and progress reports.
These requirements were
outside the department’s
established reporting
processes. Initial efforts to
address them were requiring
hundreds of effort-hours each
quarter.
Where
processes
involve clear
rules, use
technology to
implement
them.
The project focused on 2
components: 1) an automated
batch process to take financial
data from university systems
and automatically generate
the reports; and 2) a simple
web interface to easily collect
progress updates from
researchers all in one place.
Once the rules for how reports
should be populated were
clear, the tool development
went quickly.
Time tracking indicated that
the new process cut out more
than 75% of the effort
requirements of the one it
replaced. Reports were
completed and automatically
submitted in a fraction of the
time it had taken to complete
the process manually. The
process also completely
eliminated calculation and
translation errors from the
financial portion of the reports.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
University Office of Sponsored Programs
Client:
How can we quickly and easily address new requirements?
Project Length:
2 Reporting Quarters
(3 weeks of active consulting)

3. A small group responsible for
delivering certain financial
services to internal university
clients was struggling to deliver
the service levels it felt were
appropriate. The capacity of
the group was stretched thin.
They needed answers that
were not simply “do more.”
Efficiency
improvement
begins with
understanding
what matters.
We interviewed the staff to
understand their focus and
had them estimate how they
spent their time in order to
understand how the
department was investing its
resources. To identify where
improvements were most
needed, we held one-on-one
interviews with a handful of key
clients.
When compared, we saw a
clear mismatch between client
service expectations and how
the group implicitly viewed its
mission, as indicated by how it
saw its responsibilities and how it
collectively invested its time. We
recommended exercises to
clarify the group’s mission and
services, followed by
development of explicit service
delivery processes and
corresponding client
communications.
Situation
Minear & Company
Perspective
Project Outcomes
University Financial Service Team
Client:
How can we upgrade our service levels?
Project Length:
7 weeks
(1 of active consulting)

4. The group was having difficultly
answering the question, “How
are we doing?” They had
vague attitudinal measures
from an annual student survey,
a count of help desk issues but
no sense of how well they were
resolved, scattered systems
performance data,
inconsistent project metrics,
and no idea of service costs.
The quality of
performance
measurements is
far more
important than
which tools are
used to gather
them.
The first step was to define a set of
metrics based on “success” in
fulfilling the group’s mission. Next
we looked for ways to collect
representative, comparable, and
actionable data using existing
technology wherever possible. We
implemented annual customer
surveys using a low-cost online tool,
used the help desk ticketing
application to collect transactional
satisfaction data, used the existing
project management tool for daily
effort tracking, and created semi-
automated dashboards in Excel.
Because we had integrated our
data collection with existing
tools and processes, we had
excellent response rates. We
combined customer and
employee data with operational
data to create weekly
dashboards that directly
answered questions such as:
How often do we deliver
individual services? How well?
How do customers rate them?
What does each project and
service cost? What’s changing?
Where are we improving?
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
University IT
Client:
How can we measure and understand our performance?
Project Length:
~1 year

5. A research department was in
a growth phase that was
expected to accelerate. The
finance team was struggling to
keep up. They wanted to
investigate what processes,
skills, tools and staff positions
would be needed to help
them grow successfully.
Improve
productivity
before
increasing
headcount.
To really understand the work
requirements, time was spent
on-site closely observing
processes and interacting with
staff. A staff exercise provided
estimates on process
investments. Further interviews
were conducted with clients,
external stakeholders, and best
practice departments.
Benchmarking data
provided additional context.
The data displayed lower-than-
average productivity measures
while observation showed
significant time lost in back-and-
forth, both with clients and
within the team. Brochures and
job aids were created to simplify
policies and outline consistent
decision rules. Simple processes
were automated. Broader
automation opportunities were
examined. Staffing model
options and leadership
requirements were provided for
forward planning.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
Medical School Research Department
Client:
How should we prepare for growth?
Project Length:
8 weeks
(5 of active consulting)

6. The IT group had grown quickly
since inception in response to
rapidly increasing customer
demands. At nearly 200 staff
members, its practice of
offering custom, reactive, on-
demand services to all parties
was becoming problematic.
They recognized the need to
define and articulate a set of
core offerings.
A clear mission is
one that can
anchor an
effective service
catalog, a strong
brand, and a
useful portfolio of
strategic
measures.
We worked with senior
executives to define 5
“Principles of Service” that
differentiated the areas in which
their aims were to be
“innovative” and/or “best in
class” from those where focus
was on “reliable, effective, and
efficient” service. We linked
these principles to broader
university mission statements
and re-framed project and
service descriptions around
them.
We incorporated the new
positioning into 4 key
deliverables: 1) a marketing
booklet distributed to all clients
to demonstrate how the group
delivered on its principles, 2.) a
charter aligning the overall
mission, sub-unit mission
statements, service offerings,
service catalog, and org
structure, 3.) an on-line service
catalog framed in a “How do I”
customer perspective, and 4.) a
reframing of customer surveys
around the principles.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
University IT
Client:
How do we define ourselves and our offerings?
Project Length:
18 weeks
(14 of active consulting)

7. The HR group wanted to take a
look at some basic HR data
that had been collected for
the past several years to see
what it had to say as well as
how it might inform their
thinking about a larger metrics
strategy.
HR strategies are
most effective
when informed
by how an
individual’s work
impacts the
overall mission.
We analyzed the data to
1) compare to external
benchmarks (e.g., tenure),
2.) view trends over time (esp.,
cost per function), and
3.) examine informative ratios
such as direct and indirect
investments (i.e., core service
roles vs. management, IT, HR,
etc.). We also grouped roles to
look at the work requirements
of various functions in terms of
analytic vs. processing skills.
We advocated a focus on the
value of each role and each
individual’s performance in
their role. We outlined how to
collect the required data and
a set of useful metrics to guide
high-impact HR strategies
(e.g., merit pay for high
performers in high value roles;
re-training for high performers
in low value roles; swift
replacement for low
performers in high value roles).
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
HR for Financial Administration & Alumni Affairs
Client:
What can and should our HR data tell us?
Project Length:
3 weeks
(1 of active consulting)

8. Given a heterogeneous and
demanding client base, the
process of deciding which
projects to fund each year was
precarious and political. The
lack of transparency invariably
engendered resentments.
While costs could be
compared, there was no clear
way to compare the relative
advantages of different
projects with widely different
aims.
All organizations
need “benefit”
criteria that can
be transparently
ranked, weighted,
measured, and
compared.
The first step was to translate
the mission components into
measurable operational and
attitudinal criteria. Next we
specified discrete levels of
scope and outcome. We then
worked with a project team of
senior managers to collectively
assemble a set of weightings
for those levels. Lastly, we built
a tool to apply the
methodology.
The result was a “Benefit
Calculator” that was able to
assign a score to each
potential project based on the
project aims and anticipated
outcomes. At the end of each
project, these outcomes could
be measured using a system of
standardized surveys and
collected measures.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
University IT
Client:
How can we prioritize projects more objectively?
Project Length:
15 weeks
(6 of active consulting)

9. The group’s management was
feeling conflicting pressures
about whether or not to add
more staff: the existing staff
were feeling stretched but the
larger university was looking to
shrink budgets. They needed
on-going insight into where
staff were necessary and how
to make the case for them.
Costs-of-
services should
be the
foundational
metrics for an
administrative
service bureau.
To develop an understanding
of what resources were
needed and where, we set out
to answer: “What does it take
to deliver each service and
what are the sources of
variation in those
requirements?” We outlined
the activities that comprised
the service delivery processes
and had staff track their time
on a weekly basis.
We combined the activity
tracking data with operational
data and created a system of
dashboards that could give
information by employee, by
individual customer, by
customer’s department, by
activity, by service, by grant,
by sponsor, and by time
period. This provided staffing
requirement benchmarks as
well as service cost data to
compare to alternative
delivery methods.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
University Office of Sponsored Programs
Client:
How can we consistently know how many resources we need?
Project Length:
~ 1 year
(10 weeks of active consulting)

10. Analysis of the group’s cost-of-
service data showed a
disproportionate amount of
investment was consumed by
highly standardized operations
(e.g., report production and
compliance monitoring).
Metrics such as cost-per-report
compared poorly to external
benchmarks.
Rapid
prototyping is
essential to
fully capturing
business
requirements.
We conducted several weeks
of interviewing and job
shadowing to outline business
requirements. We then
mocked up a prototype for
review. We were able to build
a fully functional portal within 3
months. As exceptional cases
were identified, we rapidly
updated the prototype to
handle them.
At the end of 3 months, the time it
took to complete 200 standard
invoices had gone from 250 hours
each month to less than 1. After
several additional rounds of
iteration, the majority of reports
and invoices could be
completed and mailed to
sponsors with just 2 button clicks.
In addition, most research
departments were taking
advantage of the system’s
automated compliance
monitoring features.
Situation Project Outcomes
Minear & Company
Perspective
University Office of Sponsored Programs
Client:
How do we modernize our operations?
Project Length:
~ 2 years
Operational in 3 months