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Successfully Integrating Services at the University

, , | August 27, 2025

by Brian McDonald

by Brian McDonald, Founder, MOR Associates, July 2025

As universities face increasing financial pressures from reductions in state and federal funding, taxes on certain endowments, declining admissions, and escalating costs, many are exploring ways to optimize their current spending on information technology, human resources, and other administrative functions. Developing and executing a strategy for integrating what have often been long-standing distributed services is one option that can leverage resources, improve service, and reduce expenses.

The goal is to design and implement more scalable service models that maximize the organization’s overall resources while continuing to improve service and advance strategic priorities.

From 2017 to 2019, the University of Nebraska system undertook a significant information technology (IT) restructuring initiative impacting 375 staff. The primary goals were to unify three previously independent campus IT groups and one central IT unit, and to reduce the overall IT spend by $6 million. While there were substantial technical components, such as consolidating systems and integrating services, the most critical challenges proved to be organizational and cultural changes.

MOR had the opportunity to facilitate this initiative and bring the stakeholders together to create a shared vision, to develop clear priorities for the initial phases, and to gather everyone’s input on the future design of the emerging organization. The process leveraged MOR’s emphasis on leadership development, and collectively the cohort helped shape the desired culture and mapped a pathway to the desired future. The resulting strategic alignment led to the successful adoption of the integrated and improved “One IT” and the desired $6 million cost savings.

In addition to the service and security enhancements, this process helped set the foundation for ongoing innovation and collaboration across the University of Nebraska system. As Bret Blackman, System CIO at the University of Nebraska, shared in a recent forum, “The technology part is easy; it is the people and culture that are a challenge. MOR’s role in facilitating our integration process was instrumental in the success of this initiative.”

How MOR Successfully Facilitates Integrations

A guiding principle of every MOR consulting project, whether it is developing a strategic roadmap or creating a more integrated service community, is to bring the various stakeholders together to constructively participate in the process. 

We believe change works when people feel that a change is being made with and for them rather than done to them.

MOR’s role helps clients achieve increased support, an optimal transition roadmap, and expedited outcomes. MOR brings both expertise and the credibility that comes from helping countless individuals and organizations in higher education in the work of deep personal and organizational change.

Engaging people in a process that respects them is the thread woven throughout the many valuable insights that follow on how to successfully design and execute major integrations.

Start with a Clear Purpose

At the outset, it is important to clarify the purposes, to be specific about the intent of the initiative. Everyone impacted by these initiatives needs to understand the “why.” The current resource constrained environment provides a context that makes moving in this direction understandable for most stakeholders.

University leaders we’ve worked with, including CIOs, have cited the following reasons for moving toward integrated service models:

  • Optimizing the overall spend
  • Reducing security risks
  • Leveraging and scaling where there are advantages
  • Eliminating duplication or redundancies
  • Improving services
  • Making it easier to teach, research, learn, and work
  • Conserving resources, achieving savings

Involve All Relevant Stakeholders in the Process

Making sure all the appropriate people are involved is critical to adoption. Having a well-facilitated discovery and design process enables people to define the desired future state, the priorities, the issues, and the concerns. As noted, when change is being made with people, they feel greater ownership resulting in increased support for the implementation.

In many alignment efforts there are several ways to ensure there is a structure that supports stakeholder involvement and clarifies the decision-making model:

  • An executive level that provides sponsorship and final approvals
  • A steering committee that gathers input and shapes the recommendations
  • A design group that is broadly representative providing the input, building the trust, and creating the alignment that leads to greater adoption

Leadership may decide that aligning services and resources is a strategy they believe will help optimize the overall spend, and they may be tempted to leap to action. For sponsors who want to move quickly, MOR urges caution. If only a few people determine how best to reorganize and then communicate it out, the process will not go well or be embraced. It will be correctly received as a directive and typically result in a backlash from the people who are on the receiving end.

Also, recognize just because people are nodding, don’t assume you have their support. One Provost shared with their Dean’s Council that they would be consolidating all the units across the university. The deans appeared to be nodding in support when in fact they were just acknowledging what they had heard. These deans went on to hear from their staff and faculty about why the change was a bad idea, how key people were going to leave, and how unresponsive the new organization would be. These genuine and imagined concerns went on to inspire a campaign that undermined the initiative.

It is important to respect the local expertise and relationships people have built in the decentralized units. Distributed faculty and staff sometimes have deep connections and comfortable patterns for how they interact. Moving toward a unified service model threatens to disrupt this familiarity. This will often create pushback and has resulted in some shared service models failing. In many integration initiatives, sponsors appreciated the local unique needs and relationships and left certain staff embedded in specific units, even though the reporting and coordination was with the integrated IT organization.

Another critical issue is how the financial and staffing structures will be managed. In some cases, people’s reporting lines move over first, the organization and technology follow, and budgets are reconciled afterwards. In other situations, the order can shift, though sorting out the finances can be a challenging component of these realignments.

Have a Clear Decision-Making Structure

Even with a process that includes all relevant stakeholders, decisions can still be made in a timely fashion. MOR recommends stating the expectation upfront that decisions will be made after consultation, not after achieving consensus. Communicating this early will dispel the misconception that this is democratic process. Clarity regarding the role of the steering team and the design group will prevent stakeholders from wrongfully assuming they will be making the decisions.

Establish Core Principles

It will be helpful early on to establish core principles. For example, distributed stakeholders will want to know how this will impact services. Will there be similar or even improved services? Will there be service level agreements with metrics? Staff will want to know how their employment and future reporting roles will be impacted. Establishing principles early on can address some of these concerns, though not all.

Below is example of established core principles from an IT Shared Services effort at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that James Quisenberry, CIO for Student Affairs, was responsible for leading.

  • Maintain service and support levels for each unit with staff that has historically served them
  • Share the costs for IT services across the units in a way that is proportional and fair
  • Leverage the size and scope of the new IT Shared Service to improve consistency, efficiency, and service
  • Provide a richer and more supportive work experience for current staff

Manage Expectations

Set up a reasonable yet aggressive timeline as people will be anxious the longer there is uncertainty about their future and their part in the evolving design.

During the process, revisiting the purposes and intended outcomes will ensure people maintain sight of them.

Avoid using the words consolidate, centralize, reorganize, or restructure. They immediately provoke reactions from the people impacted, leading many to resist change efforts from the outset. Our brains are constantly on alert scanning the environment for threats. Reorganizing, for example, unintentionally signals “code red” to those who may imagine their jobs will be eliminated.

Some sponsors have been able to share at the outset that a given change effort will not result in layoffs. Other leaders have been able to share that whatever reductions will take place will be through attrition over time. Of course, in some cases there is a need to reduce cost near term, and this will lead to staff reductions. Being transparent is critical to the credibility of those leading this change.

Develop a Communication Campaign

Silence is taken as something secret is transpiring, so regular communications internally and externally are critical, even when there aren’t big changes to communicate.

Socialize the change, meet with key stakeholders early, recognize the first, second, and third level impacts and who will be affected, and have an outreach initiative. Have communication pathways in place, groups to turn to, and various ways to message and get feedback. It is helpful to have channels in place for two-way communication.

Creating a regular cadence to the communications, using various modes, and finding different pathways can address the need to keep messaging to the people who will be impacted by this initiative. It will be hard to over communicate.

In Closing

Successfully integrating administrative organizations across a university is as much about people and culture as it is about technology and budgets. The University of Nebraska’s experience demonstrates that while financial pressures and strategic goals drive the need for unified service models, the real key to success lies in a clear purpose, an inclusive process, principled decision-making, and robust communication. MOR’s expertise in facilitating these complex transitions helps institutions navigate both the technical and human challenges, ensuring that changes are not only implemented but embraced. By engaging stakeholders, maintaining transparency, and fostering a shared vision, universities can build organizations that are better aligned, efficient, scalable, and positioned to support teaching, research, and innovation well into the future.

If you’re interested in exploring how MOR can help facilitate your service integration, contact us, call 617-924-4501 or email us at [email protected] today to schedule an initial consultation.

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