What is Heidi Lab?

Universities are regulated by and receive funding from UK government. To help with that, higher education providers are required to submit a range of data sets e.g. on their students, staff, finances and estate. This data is also useful for a whole range of other purposes such as strategic decision-making, research and transparency. The data is collected and managed by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and stored in the Higher Education Information Database for Institutions (HEIDI). Don’t you just love acronyms?

The long standing problem, however, is that the data is particularly difficult to access and turn into something meaningful. Trust me, I tried for my MSc! In collaboration with HESA, and input from the sector, Jisc aimed to resolve this whilst providing access to a wider range of data sets to answer questions pertinent to the sector as a whole. And so, the Business Intelligence project was born.

The project itself had two distinct parts:

1. Heidi Plus — an enhancement to HEIDI, hence ‘Plus’. The key change being the delivery of data sets through a data explorer tool, along with a new layer of analyses and visualisations.
2. Heidi Lab — an environment where teams, from across higher education, can work together to solve problems not yet covered by Heidi Plus.

Heidi Lab is very difficult to conceptualise, without seeing the outputs, as it was as much about bringing people together as it was the development of new data visualisation dashboards.

What has been achieved?

First and foremost, Heidi Plus is live. It was launched on Monday 30 November 2015. It’s being used and HESA are in the process of managing the transfer of all UK higher education providers to the new system.

The team also ran a Business Intelligence Maturity survey, which received 50 responses and is available as a dashboard through the Business Intelligence project website.

Heidi Lab completed today. There were two cycles of activity where teams came together to produce a range of dashboards. A Winter cycle comprising four teams that presented its outputs back in February, and a Spring cycle comprising five teams that presented its outputs today. The standard of those deliverables was outstanding, considering they were only aiming to develop ‘proof of concepts’. Outputs from the Winter Cycle are earmarked to be added into Heidi Lab, potentially by August, and I’m pretty certain many, if not all, the Spring dashboards will make it too. Examples of the kinds of dashboards that have been produced today include:

• A graduate destination dashboard
• An institutional staff/student diversity dashboard
• A widening participation dashboard
• A course provision dashboard
• A post-graduate research populations and funding dashboard

I’m going to go out on a limb here, perhaps my knowledge is limited, but I have a feeling the UK education sector might well be leading the way here in terms of a coordinated approach to business intelligence (I’d love to know if I’m wrong). And that is testament to the work of HESA, Jisc and the Higher Education Strategic Planners Association (HESPA) in bringing it all together.

What next?

Heidi Lab has run its course, however we are still riding the BI wave. We’re using a similar model to focus in on the library community. I should have said that the core audience thus far has been strategic planners. In this next phase we want to see what’s possible by mashing up some of the sector’s library data sets with existing data sets from elsewhere. And it doesn’t stop there with new developments in the pipeline, but more on that later :-)

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I’m glad to report that Gary, the French Bulldog, is settling in nicely to life at the Stewart household. He’s a little under the weather but we’re hoping some antibiotics might perk him up a bit for next week. One thing I’ve noticed, having a dog, is that I’m learning to relax. I’m never that satisfied doing nothing on a night so I’d always busy myself with something. Having Gary has helped me to feel at ease with doing very little which, in the words of Louis Balfour, is nice.

My main outings this week were to reflect on the learning and teaching conference Jisc helped to support at the University of Hull and to also catch-up with the strategic aims of Hull College Group. I could do with some time to catch-up and follow through on actions from previous meetings which I’m hoping will be the case next week.

I don’t feel like I’m making a massive amount of progress on my knee at the moment. Slowly but surely I guess. Starting to try and get a bit more cardio in on the cross trainer, but I’m extremely jealous seeing people out and about running. I may have to sort my bike out and start getting out on that.

A couple of links caught my eye this week:

• Amazon – the new research council?
• Providing young people with the tools to succeed
• Time to put a stop to the Sound-byte Generation

The last on that list was written by my colleague, Lawrie Phipps, who is writing some fantastic posts of late. Well worth following his blog.

Finally but certainly not least I wanted to say massive congratulations to James Gupta and Omair Vaiyani. Their upcoming education platform recently went through a £200,000 investment round and a beta will be available in the coming months! They impressed me hugely during their time with Jisc’s Summer of Student Innovation and I wish them all the luck in the world!

I was down at Grimsby Institute for Further and Higher Education on Friday. It was lovely meeting two new contacts both doing some really interesting work. I felt a bit low after the second meeting as there were a couple of questions that I couldn’t answer which I felt I should have been able to. Not that my contact was too bothered. But that, for me, is the worst part of my new role. I hate not being able to answer people’s questions even though we’ve always said there’s no way we can answer everything — it still sucks.

And finally but not least we had a new addition to the family. We did not expect this at all but we could not be happier with Gary. Yes, Gary!

Monday was rather strange, I’d had a rubbish night sleep — Sunday night insomnia maybe?, and yet after returning from physio, I felt really energised and managed to get through quite a lot. I got caught up with a number of emails leftover from before Christmas, finalised a number of meetings, organised my travel for those meetings, handled a couple of customer queries, carried out some detective work for a colleague, and began to think through my objectives for the year ahead.

After a good night’s sleep, I felt horrendous on Tuesday. I was so tired but at the same time had a bit of a lie in. Am I a morning person, or was it the exercise? I believe it’s a bit of both. Physio early on Thursday morning bore the same results as Monday. Early starts FTW!

Tuesday, was predominantly preparation and travel. Off to Hull to support the University with it’s Learning and Teaching conference. I met the rest of the team in Hull where we ran through the activities for the day to make sure we were all on the same wavelength. All good, and so then it was a question of where to head for a quick drink and bite to eat. For some reason, the first reaction of most people when I said I was going to Hull was “rather you than me”. I’m not really sure why, because I’m glad to report we had a really nice meal in the Old Custom House, and an amazing pint in Ye Olde White Harte. The weirdest thing about Hull is the empty streets! There is no one about. We were half expecting a Zombie Apocolypse to reign down on us.

We were up early the next day to get across to the University. The focus of the conference was Digital Capability and we’d agreed to give an update on Jisc’s Building digital capability project. We didn’t have long to explore that in detail, more of a head’s up before examining how different individual’s behave in different digital spaces using the Visitors and Residents model. The second activity explored existing good practice and areas for future development. It was a great day, with about 100 or so like-minded people actively debating their use of digital services and what it means more widely for the University. See Mike Ewen’s storify for more. Next steps? The University’s Technology Enhanced Learning team are exploring all of the outputs to inform future direction, which they’ll revisit in their Summer conference.

Digital literacy is about mastering ideas, not keystrokes — Gilster, P., 1997. Digital Literacy. New York: Wiley.

I blocked Thursday morning out to reflect on the conference but didn’t get a chance until later that afternoon. The morning was spent following up a couple of new opportunities to support the sector and then I got caught side tracked continuing to think through my objectives from earlier in the week. All good though because I certainly feel like I’ve got a better handle on what I need to be doing over the next month or so which is already looking extremely busy. Anyway, I’ll leave it at that for this week and wish you all a fantastic weekend!

Ps, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Hull. It made the rough guide’s list of best places to visit in 2016 and is the City of Culture for 2017. The Old Town is beautiful with fantastic pubs and the University campus is stunning. Don’t believe me? See for yourself!

Let’s look at the options

I first of all want to have a look at some alternative options. We’re very lucky in the education sector to have such an active directory of mailing lists, especially in the form of JiscMail. If you’re after detail, support, and examples of experience then that’s definitely the place to look. If, on the other hand, you’re just after the latest news or updates then there are other options. Here’s my top 3:

1. Signing up to a newsletter. My advice here being to select carefully, what’s most important to you, for your role? It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the influx of mail so use rules to manage it. An older post on organising your email highlights some useful tools if you become unstuck. Difficulty — easy.
2. Follow relevant social feeds. They often provide you with the most up-to-date information about an organisation or specific product/service. Twitter is my weapon of choice in this category but I use Tweetdeck to manage my network and Nuzzel (h/t Doug Belshaw) to catch-up on popular feeds. Difficulty — moderate.
3. RSS readers pull in relevant feeds that you sign up to. It can take a little time to get your head around but seriously, invest some time in working out how to make it work for you. My weapon of choice for RSS readers is feedly but there are loads out there, well worth investigating. It can be difficult to find a good working practice with RSS feeds but once you do they really pay off. Difficulty – hard.

Keeping up with Jisc

We’re often criticised for how much we — Jisc — do as an organisation. Over the last year or so we’ve streamlined the way we work, our portfolio of products and services, and our organisational structures. That won’t stop because we’re committed to continuous improvement. But there’s still a lot going on, a lot of important stuff which is needed if we’re to do our job! So what’s the best way of keeping up to date?

Signing up to Jisc Announce is perhaps the best place to start. You’ll receive regular email updates on our most recent news, events and advice.

Tom Mitchell is our lead on all things social and he’s doing a fantastic job. Personally, I’d recommend following Jisc’s twitter account. Almost everything we do gets a mention on there and it’s a fantastic way to keep up with what we’re doing as you can ask questions and see what kinds of conversations are generated from that content.

If you prefer your RSS feeds, there are a few to choose from, but definitely worth following the blog, news and events feeds.

If you’re interested in our research and development activities I’ve pulled together a spreadsheet of useful information channels that highlights what we’ve got going on. Please note: this might not be 100% accurate but I’ll try to stay on top of it and update it when I find errors.

It’s always interesting to see what mailing lists other people are on, so I’ve included my subscriptions in the second worksheet of that spreadsheet (excluding internal mailing lists). And worksheet three highlights a list of professional bodies that I tend to keep a watching eye on. It’s worth knowing that my background was predominantly in higher education so I’m in the process of developing my understanding of FE and Skills. There are really useful search facilities on JiscMail, but I also find it really useful to browse the lists by category and review these every six months or so.

The key to all of this? Find out what you need to know and how to get it!

No editing to this one apart from the cropping, taken using my iPhone 5s and the native camera app.

Cracking day out with one of my best mates and our boys. Just liked the shadows at play and how fresh the trees looked.

1. Trying a new workflow which hasn’t really been working for me, relying solely on a CRM — I tried!
2. I’ve been very busy personally, creating an outside space that my son deserves. The grass is growing as we speak and my bones ache :-)

Today, I had time to reflect and take stock on where I’m at. It also coincides with having just read my friend’s, Doug Belshaw, article on Trello Kanban. It’s not hugely different to how I used to work, the only difference being my choice of tool which was Wunderlist. But Doug is offering a Kanban 101 badge and I want one so I thought I’d give Trello another go…

I’ve gone with a very basic set-up to begin with and only have one board at the moment — focusing on work tasks. I’m not using it with team members at this stage – it’s just for my personal work load. I may broaden the scope of my board to include tasks outside of work but we’ll see.

My Trello board comprises four lists, in this order from left to right:

1. On hold
2. To do
3. Doing
4. Done

For me, it makes sense to have On hold at the beginning. I’m not really sure why but it just didn’t feel right in the middle of all the others. You can see an early snapshot of my board below.

In terms of style, I’m trying to start each task with a verb, write each task in sentence case and assign a relevant tag to each task. At the moment my tags aren’t very well defined so I’ll work on that. For me tags should be based on functions in relation to my role but I have a couple of extra ones in there at the moment. In terms of timescales I only ever set deadlines where necessary e.g. a submission deadline, otherwise I find them arbitrary and counter-productive. Something else I haven’t quite fathomed out yet is how many tasks I should be Doing at any one time. As I write this post I have five tasks in the Doing column, although that’s about to be four.

Now how do I get my badge?!?

My son has been so ill recently, as have the rest of the family. It was lovely to see him back into his reading. He’s been so tired of an evening he’s just crawled into his bed. No milk, no book, nothing daddy – haha.

What have I been up to?

It’s been a strange week. It’s been hectic but not a great deal to tell that would be of interest to anyone. Lots of organising travel, arranging meetings and preparing for future meetings. Perhaps of more interest will be the links below.

Things that caught my attention

• Delve for office 365 users – learns from the way you and colleagues work to surface files that might be of most interest to you. Looks pretty good from a quick glance.
• Copyright guidance from the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC).
• Copyright and family history – slightly more interesting copyright information from the IPO blog but only because it has a personal slant to it.
• Supporting Research Data Management from Jisc.
• eCampusAlberta Quality Rubric for Online Courses.
• Great post from my old boss and friend @gillferrell (if you don’t already, follow her – she’s a genius!) on Electronic Management of Assessment.
• UCISA’s Information Security Management toolkit.
• Competition and regulation in higher education in England.
• University Business on learning spaces.
• An overview of Jisc’s progress in terms of the Open Access roadmap.
• Absolutely love this post by @sheilmcn on using Trello for learning design.

Recipe of the week

Not quite the best ever but it was a pretty good macaroni and cheese!

Mammy was away this weekend so things got messy!

What have I been up to?

As you may, or may not, know — last week’s weeknote was a little on the sombre side although it was the first poem I’ve written and made public. I’ve tried to catch-up on everything I missed out on in this post.

I attended Jisc DigiFest, helping out on the Digital Dream Wall where art students from Guildford College visualised attendees’ digital challenges and aspirations. There was a fantastic buzz around the place, if you couldn’t make it you can always catch-up with the recordings.

I was interviewed about Digital Leadership which will feed into a scoping report for Jisc. The discussion I had focused on what Jisc might be able to do, and for me I think it’s a bit of a no brainer. Simon Nelson (Futurelearn), at DigiFest, mentioned that they are being asked to run a course on digital skills. Every project I’ve been involved in, staff/student skills always comes up. I don’t understand why Jisc isn’t delivering this (maybe there are some conversations ongoing that I’m unaware of) but I think we have enough experience, background research, and contacts to make this happen. Let’s see what comes out of the scoping report.

Our team, Jisc North, held a team meeting at Leeds Beckett University to reflect on the first ten weeks in operation and plan for the next ten weeks ahead. It was also a great chance to meet new team members (we’ll soon be up to full strength), and an opportunity for sub-groups to share key information. I have to say that my new boss is doing an excellent job in bringing the team together — almost family-like which makes work an absolute pleasure.

We’re currently re-procuring the Yorkshire and the Humber regional network, currently in a consultation phase and so I sent out a request to all of my accounts in that region for information regarding their future requirements. We’ve had a positive response so far which has also resulted in a number of site visits being arranged.

I also had a couple of calls with colleges last week to introduce myself. It was interesting listening to their existing challenges and what they’re focusing on. Although there was a sense of need, in terms of what Jisc can offer, they struggled to answer the question “if Jisc could do anything for you, no restraints, what would that be?” I have a feeling that the Johari window model is going to be useful for Jisc Account Managers to bear in mind.

Things that caught my attention

• Why publish and be so damned hard to find? via THE
• Academic broadcasting hubs — a call for participation. by Tom Mitchell
• Exemplars of effective practice in support of students’ digital experiences. via Jisc Digital Student blog.
• Nuzzel. via Doug Belshaw
• On blogs. < my pick of the bunch, absolutely fantastic read by Matt Gemmell

Recipes of the week

Two recipes for you this week:

• Easy slow cooker pulled pork — really really nice this and very easy.
• Grilled halloumi — bit different this one which is why I wanted to mention it. Yoghurt, mint and carrot combo was outstanding.

A healer’s true form will find you in time

At times our world

can seem so unfair.

Broken hearts, a last breath —

manifests in despair.

Its grip, unyielding,

pulls you deeper below.

Keep it close to your chest,

or release and let go.

Each to their own

in both remedy and rhyme.

A healer’s true form

will find you in time.

Not always complete

but often stronger in mind.

We’re all human, remember,

don’t assume and be kind.



What have I been up to?

I had a meeting with an IT director this week. It was a really useful meeting and I can’t thank them enough for basically laying their cards on the table; challenging me in a constructive manner; and sparing their time to listen. I’m looking forward to working with this organisation and hope that I can help to make a real difference.

As an Account Manager it can be quite daunting going into an organisation. It feels like there is an expectation (albeit an assumption on my/our part) for us to know absolutely everything there is to know about Jisc and the technical details behind various services and solutions that we offer. On Wednesday I attended some training that helped to ease some of that pressure, helping us to think through how we might deal with different situations and reiterating the point that it’s ok if we don’t know the answer. The key is taking note, and following up.

On Thursday I was down in London for a meeting with Jisc’s Futures directorate, who are responsible for a large chunk of Jisc’s research and development. Internally, I have a responsibility to liaise with this team and share key updates with other Jisc Account Managers so that across the piece we’re all fully aware of what’s going on. It was a great meeting, lots of great individuals doing some wonderful things in various spaces: student experience; enterprise and efficiency; FE and Skills; and Research.

I spent Friday focusing on the BI project I mentioned last week. Things are progressing and plans are crystallising. Our discussion centred on how we might develop an agile approach to allow for the development of new sector-relevant data visualisations (not to be confused with infographics!). There are two options emerging, quite similar in their nature, but we’re not sure which one will be the most suitable.

1. Participatory—we manage the production of visualisations through a series of events. Event one is focused on developing user personas/stories so that we can better understand what kinds of visualisations will be of most use to the sector. This would be followed by a number of events (maybe 6 throughout the year) focused on creating the visualisations, preferably over nighters so that people (business representatives; data gurus; data analysts) have adequate time to do the work.
2. Agile—this approach builds on the one mentioned above. Instead we create teams that can commit to and work on visualisations in between events. Any events, post start-up, will be a chance for everyone to regroup and showcase progress.

I also spent some time with my line manager brainstorming the agenda for an upcoming face-to-face meeting. Our team is geographically dispersed and so any time together is really important. We hope we’ve created an agenda that will be useful in reflecting on our first ten weeks; providing new starters with an overview of the work we do; clarifying our goals for the next ten weeks; and understanding how best to engage key contacts.

Things that caught my attention

Sorry, lots of Jisc stuff this week but I think you’ll find it really useful.

• Jisc’s latest podcast focuses on DigiMap for colleges
• Great post by @JohnPkaye—Storing and sharing research data after the ‘Space Race’
• Sarah Davies’ post—Technology-enhanced learning for efficiencies and enhancement
• A new detailed guide—Enhancing the student digital experience: a strategic approach
• The collaboration to clarify the cost of curation (4C) project has produced a roadmap to maximise the efficiency of digital curation and to ensure sustainability

Recipe of the week

Gah, incomplete this week. It was a chicken madras but I started it and my wife finished it off so I’m not sure on the full recipe. Sorry folks!

Took this a while back but I miss this place! Used Tadaa SLR (worth waiting for a deal) for the blurred effect. Not the easiest photography app to get to grips with but fantastic once you do.

What have I been up to?

• I’m starting to attend a weekly Jisc Futures team call so that I can stay up-to-date with everything that’s going on in that area. I’ll be the conduit between the Futures team and Jisc North.
• Caught up with Lisa Gray and some of the fantastic work she’s been doing in the area of Electronic Management of Assessment (EMA). Find out more via their blog: http://ema.jiscinvolve.org
• Caught up with Myles Danson with regards to Jisc’s Business Intelligence project, working with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to reinvigorate the Higher Education Information Database for Institutions (HEIDI). I’m very excited about this project and will be helping out with a small work package – I think it will be an amazing tool for the sector.
• I’ve been carrying out some background research on some of my accounts. Hope to start scheduling a lot more visits towards the end of March and throughout April.

Things that caught my attention

• My local Sunday league team were struggling and so I’ve started (trying) to play football again. These boots look outstanding. And, they’re black!! Adidas Gloro
• I’m loving Microsoft OneNote – there I said it. In fact I’m loving Microsoft 365. It works fantastically well locally on a PC and Mac, and access through the web is top notch too.

Pic of the week

What have I been up to?

• Residential – attended an event that brought together Jisc’s new customer services division. It was a great opportunity to get to know everybody, find out the most recent news from other directorates/functions and understand the expectations of our managers.
• Site visits – I’ve met with three of my accounts. Mainly to do with the re-procurement of Jisc’s regional network in the North of England (we’re getting some big pipes). It’s been really interesting to get to know some new contacts but also in getting to grips with an area of Jisc I’m not as familiar with. There’s no getting away from the fact that Jisc is a complex organisation. In a nutshell we do four things:
  1. network and technologies
  2. digital resources
  3. advice and engagement
  4. research and development

  In the past I’ve been more involved with the areas of Research and Development, and Advice and Engagement — so I’m learning a lot as we speak. The more you dig into each area the more complex it becomes. My new role is to help Higher Education Institutions and Further Education Colleges navigate this offer and ensure we as an organisation are delivering value to our customers. Perhaps more exciting though is finding more out about what our “customers” might expect from us in the future.

• Data cleansing – along with @marianneshepp I’ve been helping out Jisc’s Sector Intelligence team to tidy up some of our customer data and in defining persona types. It’s been an interesting exercise and will hopefully help staff across Jisc to tailor information appropriately.
• I have passed my coaching and mentoring qualification – Institute of Leadership and Management level 5. So happy, just need to work out how I can continue coaching without interfering too much in family time.

Working from home

So, the office is finally finished. Over the moon with it! Even made the shelves out of an old scaffolding board.

I can’t begin to tell you how vital the bean bag is!

Recipe of the week

Jamie Oliver’s beef and broccoli stir fry. Relatively cheap if you have the store cupboard items and very easy to make. Fantastic meal and you can add your own chilli to taste once cooked.

My new role

After some discussion about our new roles with the team, my colleague Marianne seemed to sum it up perfectly:

My role as account manager is to develop relationships with institutional customers to ensure they derive maximum value from Jisc services and products and to champion their needs and requirements within Jisc.

I am part of the Jisc north team with a specialism in Jisc’s research and development activities delivered through the digital futures directorate.

I’d be interested if anyone has any thoughts on this?

What have I been up to?

• Working with the team to allocate Jisc Northern England accounts. I’m responsible for 30 accounts in total: 1 land based college; 3 specialist colleges; 6 higher education institutions; 7 sixth form centres; 13 general further education colleges.
• Researching which of our regional accounts have existing links with Jisc’s research and development work.
• I had my induction which was excellent as far as inductions go and a fantastic opportunity to start and get to know everyone in their new roles. I do think there’s an opportunity to make inductions better by circulating standard information prior to the induction. This will allow attendees to digest the information and then time at the induction could be better used to raise questions, identify issues and even solve those issues.
• I’m starting to receive enquiries from “customers” and my diary is starting to look a lot more exciting! I don’t think being ill has helped me much this week but I need to work on being more responsive e.g. notifying people I’m working on their request so they know something is being done.
• I visited Leeds Beckett University this week to meet members of the Open Rose Group (opening up access for disabled users of Academic Libraries in Yorkshire). It was a chance for myself and other Jisc colleagues to update the group on recent changes but it also raised some interesting points about the accessibility of resources offered by publishers, something we’re looking into.
• I finally got to test the new Customer Relationship Management system using some real data. It was an interesting process which has really got me thinking about good practice when recording information. Personally, I think it’s better to distil information into the key learning points and wrap that up into a single document (rather than multiple email threads). This can then be linked to from our corporate shared drive making it more usable by other staff. The “interesting” part is that the linked-to document doesn’t need to contain any confidential information which is captured in the CRM itself.
• Working on reorganising my feedly account. My role covers a much broader remit now and so I need to expand where I gather news from. It’s still work in progress. Once I’m finished I’ll share my lists.
• I’ve been testing out GaggleAmp which I thought was great. It’s a way of organisations/individuals to suggest social media content that others might amplify. As an amplifier I get to chose what I publish, what channels I use, when it goes out or even edit the content if I’m not happy with the original message.

Things that caught my attention

• Ucas said a record 36,000 UK applicants who declared a disability were accepted by universities – source Guardian
• Seven places I find interesting, relevant and useful stuff in 2015 by Doug Belshaw
• The Food Assembly
• RoboBraille for converting documents into more accessible files
• An Open Letter Regarding the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education via ACRLog
• What price is Open Access? by Lorraine Estelle.
• A Hippocratic Oath for Ed-Tech by Audrey Watters.

Recipe of the week

Very simple one this week. Now that I’m officially working from home I’m trying to get into some good eating habits. My favourite lunch over the last two weeks was a very simple poached egg on toast with a slight twist. Sauté some mushrooms with some crushed garlic. Pile that on the toast first and then add the poached egg. Season well = #tastesensation :)

Pic of the week

Working from home

Our team is still very much in the “forming” stage and so we’re still assessing organisational routines, who does what and when, assessing the task in hand and how to approach it. The new team has been extremely welcoming and I’m already learning a great deal from each team member. I mentioned last week I’d provide greater detail on my role soon, I think I’ll cover that in a post along with some information on our team.

Being new to home-working I set myself a routine last week—getting up at 06:30, head out for a short run, make and have breakfast with the family, catch-up with news and blogs before starting at 09:00, drinking more water and taking regular breaks, and heading out for a walk at lunchtime.

It’s still work in progress, especially regular breaks and drinking more water, but I have to say that a morning run has really lifted my mood and set me up for the day ahead. I’m hoping to keep the morning routine up and use some form of reminder system to get into the habit of taking regular breaks and ensuring I drink more water.

My home office still isn’t fully functioning but it should hopefully be complete by the end of next week. My desk is due to be delivered on Tuesday, we’re having some new blinds fitted on Friday and I’m hoping to complete a DIY shelving project. The bean bag has been a life saver so far!

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

I attended a CRM training session towards the end of the week and was quite impressed by the progress being made in this area. I sometimes wonder, however, whether or not there should be a distinction between CRM training and “CRM system” training. The training was focused on our new system whereas, for me personally, that’s just a small piece of a much larger puzzle. Jisc’s own definition makes this quite clear:

CRM is a management strategy to generate enhanced value for the institution organisation, its customers and partners through co-ordinated information management, contact management and marketing, supporting relationship development and bringing enhanced business intelligence and sustainability across the organisation. [Jisc, 2010]

I know there is a lot more that underpins the organisational approach to CRM and I guess I’m just keen to understand more!

Food

Purchase of the week has to be the “Leon: Family & Friends” cookbook. We managed to pick it up for £10 at TK Maxx. It’s got a good mix of recipes and so far so good. Favourite so far, surprisingly, was a very simple chorizo and halloumi salad.

Embracing change

For obvious reasons this is a very sensitive area for anyone who has been involved with the changes at Jisc — past and present. I apologise if anything I say causes offence — I’m hopeful it won’t — but I would like to share my reflections and tips for anyone who might go through a similar process in the future.

It’s worth saying up front that my experience was extremely positive and I would like to thank the Jisc team who managed it (they know who they are). However, it was the leadership of my service director and support of the team that really helped. Here are a few notes on what I believe helped make it a smooth process, in order of importance:

• Transparency. The whole team were extremely open in everything we did (made easier by our organisational culture). We let one another know which jobs we were applying for; we sense checked and proofread applications; we practised and critiqued presentations; and we shared our feelings. I really think this helped us all to improve our writing, presentation and interview skills.
• Communication. I’ve put communication second because I believe transparency is an enabler of good communication. From a team perspective our Director was excellent in relaying information. Emails were forwarded to the whole team at the same time and when relevant he would hold a face to face meeting to explain his understanding of key messages from Jisc—as well as allowing us to digest and question the information. That time to discuss things as a team was vital.
• Compromise. As a team I think we accepted that change was a natural part of Jisc’s lifecycle and tried not to take it personally. This made it much easier to accept what was being proposed and allowed for the team to make compromises.
• Patience. As part of the process employees had to reapply for new roles within the organisation. If you undergo a similar experience be warned that it is an extremely difficult and disconcerting experience—after all, we all have bills to pay and loved ones to provide for. I do believe that it is worth persevering with for as long as possible giving yourself time to assess the best possible scenario for your future. There may well be times when a different offer comes up that you can’t refuse but having some patience can pay dividends.
• Timings. In line with the above, I think it is very difficult to get the timings right throughout a major restructure. Things either take too long or they’re too short. There were times when I felt frantic, and other times when I wished it would hurry up. Overall, try to implement the change process as quickly as is practical. I was actually amazed the team managed to complete everything within a six month timeframe—hats off to them.

Working from home

My new role is home-based. I’ve thought a lot about working from home in the past and I’m thoroughly looking forward to the opportunity/challenge. As it stands I’m still in the process of creating my office. Here’s some thoughts for now.

• Routine. I’d really like to get into a routine but I’ve struggled this week—I think partly because my office isn’t really finished and so I’ve been working all over the house. So, this upcoming week I’m going to challenge myself to the following each day (except Thursday when I’ll be travelling):
  • Get up at 06:30.
  • Head out for a short run.
  • Make and have breakfast with the family (and wash up).
  • Catch-up on news and blogs I find interesting before starting work at 09:00.
  • Drinking more water and taking regular breaks.
  • Heading out for a walk during my lunch break.
• Office. The office is beginning to take shape. All of the painting is now finished (Grey/White theme). I have a chair, a bean bag, a new light shade and I’m currently waiting on my desk (but white, not walnut) to be delivered. As it stands I’ve been using the dining room table as a makeshift desk, moving to the bean bag throughout the day for a change of posture.
• Equipment. I’m an Apple enthusiast, however, I’ve really enjoyed getting to grips with the equipment we’ve been provided—laptop, Samsung S4, docking station, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I’ve got a problem with the docking station at the moment with zero power so I haven’t been able to utilise that, however the laptop is great, as is the phone. We’re using a range of enterprise software (Horizon for telephony, Sharepoint for document and records management, Office 365 for collaboration and Lync for IM) which is working really well and I’ve never seen Yammer so vibrant. My only issue so far has been with the sound quality over Skype, Horizon and Lync. Having tried Skype on my iMac the sound worked perfectly so I think I need to try a few different scenarios before assuming it’s my connection (BT Infinity).

Early on in the week our team held a face to face meeting which was extremely important in my eyes. Not only did it help everyone to get to know each other; for me, it also helped to remove an initial sense of isolation. I’m excited about the challenges that lie ahead and can’t wait to get into full flow!

Thinking about my time at infoNet I’m gutted we didn’t take more photos, another habit I’m hoping to change.

Line of preference

We started off with a little ice breaker to help everyone get to know who was in the room. So we asked people to form a line with people who had “sussed” CRM towards one end of the room and those who were perhaps just starting out on the CRM journey towards the other end of the room. It was a good way of finding out where different people were at with regards to their own CRM journey. It also served as a way for us to create a nice balance of groups, partnering people with others at different stages. One thing was clear, no one has “sussed” CRM and those closer to that end of the spectrum were quite frank about their battle scars.

Carousel

We then moved onto some brainstorming to try and get people thinking around the topic using a carousel. The carousel is made up of stations and each group spends 5 minutes (or so) at each station before moving onto the next topics. We had four stations:

1. Who are our customers?
2. Principles of good CRM.
3. Customer charter—interestingly took this to cover the expectations our customers might have of our organisations but also our expectations of them as customers.
4. A graffiti wall, which was a free space for each group to add whatever they liked.

The table below provides a recording of the outputs from that session.

At the end of the session we had a vote on what we thought were the most important principles of good CRM, and customer charter ideas. The top five for each are listed below.

• Principles of good CRM: governance of process, integrate with all other systems, usability, must add value, well defined process.
• Customer charter: relevant to customer needs and improves customer service, personalisation for relationship type, consistent services, clear understanding of responsibilities (customer and organisational perspectives)/keeping it simple/relevant and proactive

Even though we only asked for votes across to of the themes, the group felt so strongly about vision and leadership and governance and planning (which were on the graffiti wall) that they both got 6 votes each.

Discussions

Once everyone had been around the carousel we broke into discussion groups focusing on the questions:

How do we move away from administering our customers, to placing them at the heart of what it is we do? Is CRM the answer?

Groups were allowed to take their discussion in any direction they wanted and even change the question if they felt the need. Key points I took away from those discussions included:

• CRM is a catalyst for change, not a means to an end!
• We shouldn’t get hung up about using CRM across the whole of the Student Lifecycle. Use it where relevant e.g. case management.
• There was a feeling that CRM is not the answer, and that perhaps more emphasis should be placed on other systems where appropriate e.g. learning analytics.
• Is CRM failing because our perception of the student lifecycle is linear? One group reimagined this in what might best be described as spoke diagram with the students at the centre.
• Too much emphasis is placed at the start and end of the student lifecycle, and the middle is often forgotten about.
• Customers vary from one institution to the next, we need to identify our key customers and have a clear vision as to how we will interact with them
• How do we define CRM? I do quite like Jisc’s (I would woudln’t I?) which describes it as a management strategy.

It was a really interesting session and I can’t thank everyone enough for their contributions! As Patrick O’Reilly rightly stated:

Stop thinking of students in terms of being a piece of data, passed through live processes, to being a person.

Disclaimer: I don’t class this as best or good practice, it just works for me.

My approach

1. I have a folder dedicated to every project I’m working on. When a new project comes on board a new folder gets created. I’m very organised and find it very easy to place messages using this approach.
   1. My naming convention is simple—the official project title. No acronyms or any of that crap which reminds me to use the full title when speaking about them publicly.
   2. To help with ordering and being able to quickly find things I usually prefix the project title with the lead organisation’s name e.g. infoNet A, infoNet B, Jisc A, Jisc B, UCISA A, UCISA B, etc.
2. I commute to work, which takes between 30-60mins. I spend five minutes deleting rubbish and skimming my messages on my way in. Important messages remain in my inbox. Other emails are stored in an appropriate folder.
3. I take another look at the important messages I’ve received when I arrive at work. Anything that requires further action is added to my to-do list (I use Wunderlist). The majority of emails can then be stored, I’m sometimes left with messages that are a bit left-field.
4. With regards to point 3, I have three obscure folders for storing information:
   1. Queries. I work for an advisory service and so receive various queries from across the UK education space;
   2. For information. Where I store useful information received relating to my role/areas of interest;
   3. and Appraisal. I store feedback here which I use to shape up my appraisal documentation.
5. I archive my email about once a year by saving my inbox (and sub-folders) as a .pst file. Then I start my folders afresh.

Instant messaging

I would also strongly urge anyone to think seriously about what they use to communicate with others. At the time of writing Skype is my preferred instant messaging tool and I use that for quick questions I know won’t take up too much of someone’s time. I also prefer using it to make calls because it gives me the freedom to make notes. I do think that my use of Skype reduces the amount of emails I receive. I make myself available via Skype because I prefer to solve something there and then rather than having to manage an email so to speak.

Of interest

Some of the following have worked for me, some haven’t but you might find them interesting!

• Managing your email infoKit — I know this is a resource from the service I work for but it’s seriously worth a read. Written by the amazing Steve Bailey, it provides loads of hints and tips.
• 8 ways not to manage your email (and 5 and a half tactics that work)
• SaneBox—prioritises your emails and summarises the rest
• Unroll.Me—helps to manage your subscriptions
• Inbox Zero—you’re best off just searching for this, there are loads of articles out there. Many people disagree. The majority of the time I do operate inbox zero, being ruthless helps as do the tips offered by Matt Gemmell (see the last bullet)
• five.sentenc.es—a principle-based approach to creating emails.
• Slack—an alternative for managing team communications < thanks Ignacio
• Managing email realistically < love this :)

• Limit your availability through certain communication channels and make sure your team/peers and others are aware of this.
• Let people know when you’re free and when you’re not by sharing your calendar—“Busy” is not really an appropriate entry ;)
• Set constraints where you can’t avoid interruptions i.e. warn the person you only have five minutes to discuss something because you have a key deadline to meet.
• Choose your time wisely—work on important pieces of work when you’re least likely to be interrupted.
• Plan for the interruptions—give yourself more time to achieve key tasks.
• Lead by example. When interrupting others always start by asking whether or not they have time for a quick chat.
• Automate your own systems to save time and make your life easier e.g. set rules within your email client to manage incoming mail.
• Choose your location wisely—if you don’t need to work at your desk then don’t especially if it minimises the risk of interruption.

Avoid burning yourself out, and look after yourself! I hope you find this list useful, please share your tips via the comments :)