15 October 2019

Revised plans for Student Lifecycle Programme

Key priorities for the Student Lifecycle Programme (SLP) have been set for the remainder of 2019.

After several months of ‘readiness’ – the phase of the programme designed to establish what needs to be delivered – the team has now clarified its priorities for the remainder of this year, in the run-up to entering the delivery phase in early 2020.

The main priority is implementing updated student records system Banner 9 – due to happen at the end of the year – to create a stable platform from which to build future changes. This transition follows a successful upgrade to Banner 8x earlier this year.

The team is also developing a target operating model, in conjunction with the student education service, so that any changes to systems, processes and ways of working are clearly linked to an agreed ‘future state’.

Up until the end of 2019, the SLP will be focusing on four projects and five ‘task and finish’ groups. The projects are:

• business continuity (moving from the Banner 8x to the Banner 9 platform)
• HESA Data Futures (understanding and making some initial improvements in data quality for the HESA return)
• admissions (understanding Banner 9 functionality and developing a proof of concept for an additional admissions Banner product); and
• curriculum management (focused on understanding what can and can't be done within Banner 9, and to what extent our current complexity could be accommodated or would need to change).

The five ‘task and finish’ groups are:

• the target operating model – being clear on what we are trying to achieve (the ‘future state’ for student education services) and what is the SLP’s role in helping achieve it
• benefits – capturing benefits from the readiness phase, clarifying the benefits aligned to the target operating model and benefits realisation plans for the delivery phase
• the plan for 'Future Banner' simplification – our approach, what we are going to do first, what sequencing, dependencies, timescales and resourcing are required etc.
• process mapping – focusing on mapping of about 140 of our 200 current processes so that we can baseline our starting point and understand the scale of changes required; and
• programme office – developing what is needed to manage the programme in the delivery phase, including management reporting, lessons learned and risk management etc.

Please contact the Student Lifecycle Programme team if you have any specific questions about the changes.