Reengineering is what the University wanted and reengineering is exactly what the University will get. The Stillwater Group has enlisted Saint Louis University staff and faculty to pop the hood and adjust the nuts and bolts that keep the SLU administration running.
“The Stillwater Group is a consulting group brought in to help improve operations and student services,” said Provost Sandra Johnson.
Joe McCarthy, assistant executive vice president of planing and management systems, said the hiring of the Stillwater group follows the direction the Board of Trustees.
There are a number of business executives on the Board, McCarthy said.
Stillwater has just finished the first phase of the project, a general evaluation to determine areas of focus.
Stillwater will now begin training the individuals who will evaluate and reengineer the specific departments.
The human resources department will be the first to receive a tune-up from the Stillwater-trained reengineering group.
“We are starting with the operations side, human resources,” said McCarthy. “Kathy Hagedorn (vice president for human resources) is a strong proponent for process improvement. She encouraged it.”
“What we primarily asked Stillwater to look at were business processes,” Hagedorn said. “The Stillwater group determined that human resources has a high chance of success.”
The human resource department has many transactions with numerous staff and faculty with all the departments on campus.
The Stillwater Group is very keen on using technology to help the human resources department become more efficient. Hagedorn mentioned their desire to move to a paperless system.
“So many parts of improvement involve technology,” said Hagedorn. “[Stillwater] would like the first team to make its suggestions in four to five months,” Hagedorn said.
Once they have finished working with human resources, they will move on to other departments in the University. The Stillwater group will not be working on the academic side of things.
“There are some (non-academic) processes that affect students directly,” said McCarthy. “We may be good at those things, but there is always room for improvement. A 1 percent improvement in procurement might be $1 million.”
Johnson cited two things that attracted the University to the Stillwater Group: their involvement in higher education and the fact that they leave behind a group of trained individuals who can continue to make improvements.
Stillwater has worked with universities such as Columbia University, Georgetown University, New York University and Harvard University.
Stillwater does not come to the University with its own group of trained evaluators. Rather, the group takes qualified faculty and staff members from the university and trains them in evaluating and re-engineering.
As a result, the University not only sees immediate improvement but gains the trained staff to continue making additional improvements.
