Budgeting for the Right Resources
The following section highlights considerations around establishing a sufficient budget and appointing the necessary resources to implement a new system. However, the mistake is often made of underestimating the Total Cost of Ownership, a phrase used readily nowadays to refer to the true cost of acquiring, implementing, using and maintaining a system.
The impetus to purchase a new system is often given by the availability of special Government, sector or institutional funding. This is particularly true of the implementation of VLEs in the FE sector. As with any other major tangible assets, a new system should not be looked upon as just another commodity purchased, and factors other than the initial cost of the licence affect the true cost of using the system. These factors embrace the various costs incurred during the initial implementation phase, but they also include the cost of sustaining the system beyond go-live, activities which must cover:
identifying and fixing errors in the software;
managing the database(s) and software patches;
providing help desk support;
conducting system training;
developing staff skills;
controlling change requests;
reviewing business processes;
upgrading the system on a regular basis; and
implementing deferred on enhanced functionality.
An example of the sort of issue arising from ignoring questions of sustainability can be seen where special initiative capital grants were given to colleges to implement VLEs. There are cases now where some colleges are finding it difficult to use appropriate and readily-available content because they do not have the ongoing resource to upgrade to later versions of the VLE software.
Whilst the factors affecting the total cost of ownership listed above are all items of expenditure, there should ideally be a return on investment (e.g. an increase in productivity, a reduced administrative burden, a re-assignment or diversification of staff roles) to offset some of the expenditure.
The implementation of a new system requires a considerable amount of senior management time and effort. It will entail the co-ordination of many different elements of the system and will require solid management of the project, organisational change and the attendant risks. It is therefore essential that the implementation is carefully planned and adequate resources released to help with the project, whilst balancing this with the fact that there is still a business to run.
It is easy to underestimate the amount of time that the organisation's own staff will have to devote to a system implementation. Work on the old system must continue at the same time that the new system is prepared, implemented, tested and introduced and any organisation is likely to need additional staff to implement a new system.
When an institution agrees to pay consulting partners hundreds of thousands of pounds for the software's implementation, it is easy to assume that this will be almost the entirety of the staff costs for the project. The reality is that internal staff both from the IT department and virtually every other department in the organisation will have to work side-by-side with the consultants during the implementation. Many people will need to devote between 25% and 90% of their time to the project for varying periods of time. Temporary staff must be found to fill the void left by internal staff working on the implementation. If not handled carefully, the result can be a significant cost over run and damaging misunderstandings.
Again there are particular issues surrounding the implementation of e-Learning. Any form of leaning management system or VLE will only really deliver benefits if it holds appropriate content. The cost and time required to develop suitable content for meaningful e-Learning activities is a significant factor inhibiting the development of e-Learning across both FE and HE. At worst the tools become a 'white elephant' while in many cases we see the 'e-ringbinder' approach where a complex and expensive system merely serves as a replacement for photocopied hadnouts.
The strategy should be to develop painfully realistic projections of the amount of time that institution staff will spend on the project and the real costs, including recruiting and training costs, of filling their positions. Some further pros and cons about staffing are raised in the Building a Team section in the Process Review infoKit.
