If a part of your work involves handling data or manual or repetitive tasks, the team may be able to help you via targeted consultancy for specific questions, projects for larger pieces of work and training. All staff at the University can work with the Centre, for free.
These tools can be implemented in many different ways. We spoke to the Competency Centre team about some of the ways their work has been helping colleagues this year.
Working together to find solutions
Automation Developer Ben Malin’s favourite work this year has been consultancy sessions, where colleagues meet developers to discuss problems, discover solutions and gain advice.
Ben says: “I’ve worked with colleagues from all parts of the University including colleges and departments. You get to work with people who are doing some really interesting things, and each session is different. The requests are varied, from questions about part of an automation someone’s built that they are stuck with, to discussing an idea and finding out whether the tools we have could help. People appreciate the chance to talk through ideas in an informal setting. It’s nice when you can see the positive impact your involvement has, and colleagues are happy when they can automate something that is time consuming or repetitive.”
Ben recently worked with Jo Nickless and Tracy Tompkins from the Department of Experimental Psychology who wanted to take leave request dates sent via email and create calendar events to keep track of staff availability in the team. Through a consultancy session, Ben worked to help them upskill, demonstrating how to implement a specific automation to assist with diary management, and how to use similar automation in the future.
Ben helped build a prototype which the team finished themselves, meaning they will be able to benefit from this automation itself and can use this knowledge for any further automation.
Jo said: “I really appreciate the extra time spent on this. When we finished, I was able to copy the flow and then tweak it to diarise my own holidays, based on the approval email rather than the request email. That will be really useful.”
Using automation to quickly improve processes
Automation Developer Louis Gilmour also worked with colleagues to help them make their working lives easier and demonstrate how quickly automations can start to save time and increase productivity. Louis recently worked with Abigail Corbyn from Estate Services to streamline the process of allocating teaching space.
Louis said: “The existing process involved departments sending email requests and the team copying this information to a spreadsheet. With around 1000 enquiries each term, this was a repetitive, manual task with data duplication that was open to human error. Abigail and her team were keen to use the Microsoft Power Automate tool to help. After gathering their needs, I supported them to build an automation for receiving and processing requests for teaching space. The team were keen to use this in the following term, but I was able to complete this automation and show the team how they could start benefiting from it much sooner. This was a great thing to deliver, showing the speed and impact improving workflows can have.”
Abigail said: “The team have been amazing in suggesting solutions and discussing the options available to us. Within a couple of hours, the task was complete and our flow worked perfectly. Louis took the time to talk me through the work he had done and explained the elements I will need to check when altering the flow for a new term. By making the process of requesting a space for teaching as automated as possible, our workload and human error will decrease massively. We hugely appreciate it and know our lives will be simper because of it.”
Harnessing technology for ongoing improvements
Kate Welsby, Focus Continuous Improvement Practitioner working with the Competency Centre, enjoyed working with colleagues in the Social Sciences Division (SSD) Research, Impact and Engagement team to showcase how technology can be used to make incremental improvements to their process.
The Research, Impact and Engagement team provide a valuable service by collecting and sharing research opportunities with their academic colleagues. However, this is time consuming to collect, curate, and check before sending out in a newsletter – and as soon as a newsletter has been sent, collection begins for the next one.
Kate says: “We knew that tools available to us at the University could likely help with this process, and that it was a multiple-week piece of work, rather than a consultancy. For these larger projects, the first step is to use continuous improvement thinking to map the existing process, then apply the Focus ESCAR tool to ensure that the steps that remain in the to-be process add value in the eyes of the customers.
“The SSD Research, Impact and Engagement team were open to making incremental improvements to their process and enthused by the potential of the technology available. By eliminating, relocating and automating steps we helped the team halve the number of process steps from 14 to seven. Members of the team attended the WACC’s 3-hour Nexus 365: Up and Running with Power Automate training course to equip them with the knowledge they needed to take ownership of the process once automated.”
If you have a process or task you think the WACC might be able to help with, complete this form and the team will be in touch.
If you are looking for research, engagement and impact opportunities for social sciences researchers (including training, resources, funding and more), do subscribe to the monthly SSD Funding and Opportunities Digest e-newsletter. If you have further questions, contact the Research Impact and Engagement Team via impact@socsci.ox.ac.uk
