The Workflow and Automation Competency Centre helps departments, divisions and project teams implement new tools and processes to make their work easier and more efficient, empowering digital transformation.
Newly combined awards
This year the Vice-Chancellor's Awards moved from five separate sets of awards to a single celebration of the University’s people. This meant the awards teams needed to develop a single way of managing nominations across the 11 combined categories.
The awards team worked with the Centre to develop a completely new process for submitting, managing entries, and communicating to nominees, regardless of the award category.
Handling complexity
The awards entry process involves specific considerations and requirements, with several ways to submit entries and individuals potentially being nominated for multiple awards. The scope of the awards means there is a vast amount of data to be managed, organised, and securely stored, and a large volume of personalised communication is required.
The Competency Centre’s business technologists and technical experts analysed the awards team’s needs and helped implement new systems to automate previously admin heavy tasks. It provided consultation, training, and support to streamline processes, freeing up time and replacing manual processes with simple, technology driven ones.
Dan Selinger, Head of Communications and Engagement for Professional Services, and Co-Chair of the Awards Working Group said:
“Working with the Competency Centre was a breath of fresh air. We had a complex set of requirements for an ambitious and high-profile project. The experts in the centre were great at understanding our needs, working with us to find the right solution, iterating it over time and supporting those of us with limited technical expertise to put it into practice.”
Automated processes
Entries are now automatically stored into relevant SharePoint folders for judges to review, improving the process and reducing opportunities for human error. No automation is used to grade or influence the award outcomes, or replace important human judgement, but it has streamlined the admin work required to get the right entries to the right judges as efficiently as possible.
Other processes have been implemented to automate personal emails notifying individuals on their nominations and if they were successful or not. Over 1,500 emails were sent covering around 250 nominations, reducing the admin burden, saving time, and making communication timelier and more efficient.
Continuous improvement
Rather than simply implementing a one-time solution, the centre focused on working closely with the awards team to ensure they had the skills and training needed to implement and use these systems in the future.
An evaluation and after-action review is due to take place at the end of this year’s awards, and the learnings will feed into enhancing processes in future years.
Competency Centres, being introduced as part of Oxford’s digital transformation journey, are helping to transform the way that a department or project team uses a key area of existing or emerging digital technology. There are other current Competency Centres focused on cybersecurity and research computing. Alongside these, two new centres are being introduced in 2024, including AI and Machine Learning Support and Immersive Technologies.
For more information or to work with a competency centre please visit Competency Centres | Staff Gateway (ox.ac.uk)
