Service Excellence

We’ve heard feedback that tells us the University environment is overly complicated, and it can be time-consuming and stressful for our colleagues and students to get the support they need. Improvements are therefore needed to make our services more effective and efficient.

There is also growing financial pressure in the Higher Education sector which means we must ensure we are using our resources as effectively as possible. Service Excellence is therefore one of a number of ways in which the University will be more cost-conscious and generate savings where possible. You can read more about the University’s financial position in this blog from the Principal

Ultimately, this programme is about building a better everyday experience for our staff with simpler processes, clearer responsibilities and better support across the board.

Right now, many of our services and processes are more complex than they need to be. It’s often unclear who owns which part of a process, how policies should be put into practice, or even where to go for the right support. In some cases, things are done differently across teams or areas, even for the same task, and it can feel like you need to ‘ask the right person’ to get help. The Service Excellence will therefore work towards four clear goals:

• Easier to navigate and simpler services
• A consistent experience for staff
• Services that are more efficient and effective
• Financially sustainable services

The Service Excellence programme is sponsored by our Principal, Professor Andy Schofield.

The programme is governed by a board with leadership from David Duncan, Chief Operating Officer & University Secretary, acting as Business Owner. The board, which has representation from both academic and Professional Services colleagues, is responsible for making sure the programme stays on track, delivers what it sets out to do, and aligns with the University’s wider goals. It provides oversight, guidance, and challenge where needed.

The programme is managed by the Transformation Team, which has expertise in a range of relevant areas including service design and process improvement. They will bring together specialist teams of Professional Services leaders to support the work as required.

Service Excellence is being delivered as a single workstream, made up of a series of reviews to help identify ways to make our Professional Services simpler and more efficient. To support this, we’ve developed a University of Glasgow Capability Model. This gives us a high-level view of all the key things our Professional Services need to deliver for the University to meet its goals.

This approach follows best practice recommended by UCISA (the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association) and helps us see where our service delivery is currently fragmented and what that means for the staff and students who use those services. Using this model, we can begin to explore the different activities that sit within each capability and how they are delivered across the University. Each area will be looked at in turn to spot opportunities for improvement and build a clearer picture of how we work today.

As part of this work we will create and embed a set of Service Excellence standards. These standards will ensure Professional Services are clearly defined, use better data to track performance, and regularly gather feedback to drive continuous improvement.

Every service area will have a designated Review Lead (a current Professional Services leader in the University, with experience associated with the relevant service area). They will work with other Professional Services colleagues and members of the Transformation Team to identify improvements, by drawing on input from academic and student communities.

Each review will follow the same approach, starting with a set of key questions to understand what our activities look like now and what changes are needed. These include: What are the current processes? Which policies might need updating? Do our IT systems need to change? What should happen at University, College, and/or School level? Will the way we are organised need to change? And what savings might be possible?

As part of designing the future state, we will also make sure there is clear ownership of our processes. This means identifying who is responsible for the various sequences of activities that help us achieve particular goals, and making sure their role is clearly understood across the University.

During summer 2025, the programme focused on continued improvements to our UKVI activities, as well as improvements within our Student Wellbeing Services.

From September - December, the programme will look at the following service areas:

• Admissions
• Assessment & Feedback and Awards
• Compliance, Legal, Risk & Governance
• Innovation and Economic Impact
• Learning & Teaching Delivery
• Marketing & Communications
• Registration & Enrolment 
• Research
• Student Engagement & Enquiries
• Student Management & Academic Services
• Student Support and Wellbeing
• Timetable Management

The second phase of the programme will look at:

• Alumni Services
• Data & Information Management
• Facilities & Estates Management
• Financial Management/Procurement & Commercial
• Library Service, Technology Infrastructure, Service Delivery Management, Support Services
• People & Organisational Development
• Staff & External Engagement
• Student Intake Planning
• Transformation & Change
• Vision & Strategic Management

Over time, the programme will look at all areas and therefore all of the work delivered by Professional Services colleagues across the institution. This includes Professional Services staff working in Colleges and those in University Services.

Our Review Leads are senior Professional Services leaders with expertise in key areas of University operations. They will each lead one or more reviews, supported by colleagues from Transformation, People & OD, and Finance.

Their role is to follow an established methodology to understand how things currently work, explore what the future could look like, and design practical options that make our services simpler, more consistent, efficient, and sustainable.

They will also identify and appoint a group of key contributors, with deep knowledge and expertise of their service areas, who can share insights, suggestions, examples and feedback to help shape improvements.

Between now and the end of the year, we are focusing on 12 service areas.

Our Review Leads for these areas are:

• Admissions – Kirsten Swankie
• Assessment & Feedback and Awards – Michael Murray
• Compliance, Legal, Risk & Governance – Alastair Wilson
• Innovation & Economic Impact – Uzma Khan
• Learning & Teaching Delivery – Billy Howie
• Marketing & Communications – Rachel Sandison
• Registration & Enrolment – Andrew Struan and Katherine Henderson
• Research – Jane Townson and Sumi David
• Student Engagement & Enquiries - Katherine Henderson
• Student Support & Wellbeing – Neil Bowering
• Student Management & Academic Services - Neil Bowering
• Timetable Management – Sharon McGregor

 Review leads for the remaining service areas will be identified early in 2026.

If you would like to share any feedback for consideration by our Review Leads, you can do so here. 

The Research review will look at how researchers and research activity are supported across the full research lifecycle. This includes early ideas and partnerships, grant applications, project management, outputs, knowledge exchange, and research impact. It covers researchers in academic, specialist, and professional roles at all career stages.

The review is structured into seven sub-areas:

1. Research strategy and performance
2. Research compliance and governance
3. Research and impact culture and environment
4. Research postgraduate support
5. Research and partnership development (pre-award)
6. Research award project/programme management (post-award)
7. Research infrastructure and environment (high-level only at this stage)

Impact and knowledge exchange has a broad definition and elements of this are relevant across both Research and Innovation and Economic Development capabilities.  

For the Research service review, many of these themes are core to research practice and are relevant to the ways in which we provide support to researchers. Equally, within the Innovation and Economic Development service area, there are a number of activities that fall under the definition of impact and knowledge exchange. This will include things such as supporting academic consultancy and knowledge transfer partnerships (KTP), entrepreneurship (student and staff), industry collaborations and business engagement, intellectual property and commercialisation activity including spin-out creation, civic engagement and other support activities that enable job creation to drive regional economic development.

It's likely that some areas will be discussed and considered as part of both service reviews, with potential outcomes discussed with Review Leads as required.

There will be several ways for colleagues to help shape how we improve our services.

Review Leads will set up working groups with people who have relevant experience and may contact individuals directly to take part.

We’ll also be focusing on user research, which means taking time to listen to the people who actually use our services to understand what’s working well and what could be better. This will help the teams designing changes to hear directly from a wide range of voices, so that the improvements we make are based on real experiences and needs, not assumptions.

There will be opportunities to take part in this by joining user research panels where you can share your views, which will then be used by the working groups to ensure they are drawing on insights from colleagues and student communities. 

The Service Excellence programme will run for the next two years.

From now until the end of 2025, we’ll be working closely with leaders across our Professional Services to review existing activity and identify opportunities for improvement for 12 service areas. In 2026, we'll do the same for the remaining service areas.

We’ll build on this work by developing detailed plans for the changes we want to make. We aim to share the outcomes of this planning by the end of next year and begin implementing the changes shortly after.

We expect the planned changes to be fully introduced by September 2027.

The project team will bring together Professional Services leaders across the University, to look at how we currently deliver our services, and how we can improve this. They will hear feedback from a range of voices (including both staff and students) on how our services are currently working, and they will work with specialists to identify ways to our services simpler to access and easier to navigate for our staff and students. This could generate savings by simplifying processes, standardising ways of working, making better use of technology and looking at how our staff are organised, all of which can help us avoid unnecessary costs.

The University is in a position of relative strength, compared with some of the institutions which have been hardest hit by the financial challenges in our sector.

However, we are not immune to these and it’s important that we continue to make the right decisions to protect the institution in the future.

 A number of initiatives are therefore underway (including Service Excellence) to help us manage our resources more effectively, find savings where we can, and reinvest in what matters most for the University’s future.

We expect there will be a need to make some structural changes over time. This may include upskilling staff and redeploying them into alternative roles or teams as new ways of working are identified. As with any restructuring we are committed to minimising the risk of any redundancies wherever possible

Regardless of the nature of the change, we will be upfront about this as early as possible and any changes will be subject to our Management of Organisational Change policy, where required.

Structural change is just one of a number of means we will consider, including different ways of working, automation, introduction of different technology, changes to IT systems and policies, and process improvement.

Dedicated training and transition support will be provided to support staff through any changes.

Yes. Ongoing and transparent engagement with our trade union representatives is something we do in relation to all activity across our Transformation portfolio, and Service Excellence is no different.

Union representatives have been briefed on the programme regularly over the last year, and we will continue to engage with them via the JCCN forum, so they can best represent their members’ views and input to any  change proposals and the approach we may adopt to implementing these.

If you have a concern or idea to share about any aspect of the Service Excellence programme, please complete our Service Excellence Feedback Form.

Once we receive your query, we’ll make sure it’s directed to the most appropriate person. This could be:

• The Review Lead for the area most relevant to your role or question
• A College Transformation Business Partner who acts as a link between the colleges and the Transformation Team
• A P&OD Business Partner who can offer tailored support or development based on your needs