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SMU Staff Spotlight – Abby Kinney

abby kinneySince last summer, the Operational Excellence website has been featuring a series of staff spotlights: stories about staff members who’ve taken on new leadership roles since the implementation of OE2C and are helping bring more innovation and efficiency to campus operations. Read more SMU staff spotlights

Abby Kinney has made a career out of efficient technology purchasing. During the shared services restructuring in 2015, she became the University’s IT category manager in the Purchasing Department, but her connection to SMU and coordinating technology purchases has a decades-long history.

“I graduated from SMU in 1986 with my BBS in Accounting and went to work with a regional investment securities firm as an analyst supporting the research group,” says Kinney. “I soon transitioned to helping with the purchase, installation and support of all their computers. I eventually moved to managing a team that supported the computers, phone systems and services, and data services for the main office and 42 branch offices.”

Kinney came back to SMU in February 1995 and started as a desktop support consultant as part of Project Pegasus, an initiative that issued desktop computers to all faculty and staff. “I completed my master’s in MIS in 1996,” she says. “I eventually became manager and then director for the User Services team and was responsible for buying computer technology for half of the University after the campus computer store closed in 2013.  During the OE2C project, I participated in the Purchasing Initiative, and when the possibility of centralizing technology purchasing came up, it was something I definitely wanted to be part of.”

In her current role, she purchases technology-related hardware for the entire campus (desktops, laptops, displays and accessories), tracks technology spending for the University and assists with RFPs for hardware, software and tech maintenance. Though she has moved from OIT to Purchasing, she still works closely with her former department.

“I have learned a lot about how the entire Purchasing team helps the campus with the procurement of the variety of goods and services the University uses, how the RFP process works, and how the IT procurement role can benefit the campus,” says Kinney. “The most significant advantage is the cost savings that we have been able to help SMU realize by purchasing the University standard computers in volume for the ongoing computer refresh process, saving more than $100,000 in FY17.”

Kinney says another key advantage of the structure is increased awareness about technology savings that helps individual departments spend their budgets wisely. “I get to continue working with everyone on campus to help them with their technology needs and ultimately help the University save money.”

As for challenges, the biggest one has been “keeping up with the demand, especially around fiscal year-end and the start of each semester,” she says. “Since moving to Purchasing, I now buy for the entire campus and the number of items I purchase each year has doubled, to more than 6000 items annually.”

Going forward, Kinney says there are many process improvements she would like to make in the technology purchasing process. “In partnership with OIT, I’d love to create a website with all purchasing information and Technology Fund eligibility details, create a web-based order form to help guide people through the ordering process, and provide more visibility to the purchaser on the status of an order in process.

“I’d also like to look more strategically at Technology purchases to see if SMU can realize any additional savings with software licensing and maintenance contracts. I’m proud of the cost savings we’ve established so far, and look forward to making them even better.”

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Staff Spotlight

SMU Staff Spotlight – Curt Herridge

Since last summer, the Operational Excellence website has been featuring a series of staff spotlights: stories about staff members who’ve taken on new leadership roles since the implementation of OE2C and are helping bring more innovation and efficiency to campus operations. Read more SMU staff spotlights

Curt Herridge loves to solve problems. “There is something special about finding a solution to a technical problem,” he says. Whether it is building a first-ever data mart for SMU, managing a system outage or saving the University time and eliminating paper usage, he is always up for the challenge.

Curt came to SMU in 2007 to help the University migrate to its current electronic imaging system, ImageNow (AdminImages). He moved from systems administration to team leadership the next year, completed his MBA at Cox in 2010, and was named director of data and integration services in early 2015. Then, when SMU restructured the Office of Information Technology (OIT) in 2015 as part of the OE2C initiative, Curt was promoted to director of software applications.

“In this role, I am responsible for the implementation, operations and maintenance of enterprise software like PeopleSoft (my.SMU, SMU financials); departmental applications in partnership with individual departments; website development and support; and database management,” he says. “The goal of this new structure was to try to organize all teams that support campus software applications into one department, thus streamlining methodologies.”

In their first two years of work, he and his software applications team have achieved significant results for SMU. “We estimate thousands of hours have been saved with the introduction of electronic payroll authorization forms, grounds use forms, additional new payroll forms and others,” says Curt. “We are now automating forms like the one for pre-tax parking deductions. To accomplish this, we partner with a department and move a paper-based form to something electronic. I think it’s truly awesome to save time (and paper!) with technology.”

Curt says his team also tested a method to build a data mart, which is basically a mini data warehouse, from scratch in conjunction with the Simmons CORE group (Center on Research & Evaluation). “The goal was to automate loading of data that had traditionally been moved around in a huge spreadsheet having literally hundreds of columns. We entered into this project with the knowledge that it was completely experimental, and it’s been exciting to see how the work has expanded the skillset of our team and increased our contribution to University research. Now we are working to address our capacity in order to build a data warehouse for SMU.”

Of course, challenges have occurred along the way. “We had a fairly substantial system outage in October 2015, which began on a Saturday,” he recalls. “But our newly formed leadership team was able to band together and perform a massive recovery operation. In fact, some of the practices we developed during that long week still stand us in good stead today.”

In the months to come, Curt and his team will expand the use of technology that is more mobile-friendly. “You may have noticed a change to my.SMU,” he says. “We will continue these critical changes over the next year.”

“We also heard loud and clear that Sitecore, the software that runs www.smu.edu, needs to offer more training and an easier way to make edits,” says Curt. “We have scheduled personalized clinics, updated documentation, and are working on a new set of templates designed to help the brand of SMU move forward.”

Curt says these problems are not easy to solve, but the challenges make the accomplishments even sweeter. “It requires us to have great teams, great partnerships with others on campus, and a willingness to do things differently than before,” he says. “I am proud of the progress we have been able to make together in our first two years, and I’m looking forward to continuing improvements for the campus in the coming year.”