Category: News

In order to help SMU realize the maximum amount of savings and efficiency possible in the travel booking process, the OE2C Travel Initiative has recommended that Christopherson Business Travel serve as the University’s new travel management company (TMC). The new travel software solution, Concur, requires integration with a TMC and the committee felt Christopherson was the best provider to issue airline tickets, book hotels and rental cars, and provide live assistance for travel booking and itinerary changes. The company has more than 60 years of experience in the travel business, has been recognized as a top corporate travel agency by Business Travel News and Travel Weekly and is one of 23 Concur Preferred Partners.

The OE2C Procurement Initiative is in the process of exploring how the University can save on printing costs, as a preliminary assessment indicates this is an area where we can achieve significant savings. In order to better understand the printing environment at SMU, the committee is interested in looking at the University’s aggregate printing data. This information will be gathered by PaperCut, a new application that will be installed beginning Wednesday, January 21, through the campus computer management system (LANDesk).

Dear SMU Colleagues,

Through Operational Excellence for the Second Century (OE2C), we have been involved in a process to restructure administrative operations across campus to increase resources for our academic mission. Today, we will begin to implement these changes. Though we believe these decisions are necessary to ensure SMU’s long-term progress, we know this will be a challenging time for our campus community.

Last year, spending on finance administration at SMU was 70% more than at our peer institutions, due largely to duplication of work and systematic inefficiencies. To help the University save up to $6 million annually, the Finance Initiative committee began their work on December 19.

The primary work of this team will be to reorient finance from a functional processing unit, focused on transactions like expense reimbursement, to an operation more concerned with strategic activity like forecasting and budgeting. To that end, they will explore ways to automate and digitize processes to make transactions more efficient.