What’s new at The Process Works?

We have finally found the perfect partner of choice to fully develop our services to academic libraries. Noel Shillinglaw, formerly of Unisa Library, one of the larger, distance learning academic lending libraries in the world. Noel has agreed to come on board and fully develop this as a distinct line of business. We will now create a specific focus around this set of services. As they materialise our web site will reflect this work in progress. 

Older news at The Process Works 

Governance - we have been seeking opportunities to work with Genius Methods, a UK based enterprise specialising in:

• Board evaluations/assessments
• Corporate governance
• Regulatory compliance
• Sustainability advocacy

They have some exciting assessment tools and governance/compliance frameworks, and we believe we can become a South African parter for these, in delivering our governance and compliance services and also risk assessments.

We have also been undertaking a ggod deal of process based work within academic environments. What are some of our observations:

• Academic environments don  generally believe that they are businesses or that business principles should necessarily prevail. This creates new challenges in regard to sharing common/best practice, trends and potential opportunities
• Universities have 2 main product/service streams - these are teaching and learning and research. Revenue is heavily dependent on research output as well as the delivery of educational programmes, which creates a challenging cost model
• Differentiation may be based on "low cost/efficiency", "academic excellence", "superior student experience", "superior research partner experience". Each institution needs to decide their basis for dfifferentiation and ensure their operating model reflects this 
• Sometimes there is internal confusion between support services and services delivered to students/clients/partners. This has an effect on perceived relative importance and consequently funding of services.
• Some of the services delivered to students and academics have a different value model. Academic libraries for instance need to operate according to a "Customer Intimacy" value model, which may be at odds with the overall value model of the parent institution. If so they will struggle to offer the right services with appropriate autonomy and funding
• Whilst many government funded institutions have accepted separate, different, valuable roles for Management and Academics (see Hospitals, energy producers, health systems, research facilities), academic institutions are generally still managed by academics and management roles are filled by academics

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