Operational Excellence: First Year Report
In August of 2025, the Operational Excellence steering committee prepared a report for Portland State University’s Executive Council, outlining the process followed by the Operational Excellence project's workgroups during the first year of the initiative (2024-2025) and their recommendations. The project's goal is to build upon previous operational reviews and allow PSU to improve efficiency and dedicate more resources to mission-critical areas. The project's four key objectives are:
- Aligning Administrative Structures: Creating a more efficient system that reduces redundancy and improves service delivery for students and staff.
- Reducing Duplication: Eliminating overlapping efforts to improve operational efficiency and provide more focused support for student needs.
- Achieving Excellence and Compliance: Improving quality, consistency, and compliance in the key areas of Human Resources, Finance, and Marketing and Communications.
- Career Pathways for Administrative Staff: Increasing employee retention by offering professional growth pathways and specialized training to administrative employees.
The project, which launched on November 5, 2024 with the formation of a steering committee, involved three work area teams focused on finance, human resources, and marketing and communications. Consulting firm MGT Impact Solutions (MGT) was hired to assist with the design and implementation planning phases, helping to identify and streamline processes.
Process and Findings
Each work area team, composed of PSU employees and led by a subject matter expert, was tasked with identifying and prioritizing processes to be mapped and streamlined.
MGT hosted three virtual listening sessions to seek stakeholder feedback on the selected processes, and conducted a survey that allowed respondents to offer feedback in all three areas. The marketing and communication listening session drew 94 participants, human resources had 103, and finance had 123. The survey received 92 responses.
Finance Work Area Team
The finance team, consisting of seven members from various university finance functions, met nine times to create a list of processes that were inefficient or overly complex. Additionally, insights were provided by finance area leaders to ensure the perspectives of our centralized teams were represented. The team also conducted outreach to individuals and groups including the Faculty Senate Budget Committee, the Academic Leadership Team, and the campus Senior Fiscal Officers’ group.
The team's findings, confirmed by stakeholder outreach, included frustrations with complex processes, long turnaround times, poorly suited technology, and confusing roles. The highest priorities identified by stakeholders were training and documentation, assistance with contracts, and improved PCard processes. While respondents were less concerned about items appearing in the strategic budgeting and financial guidance section of the workgroup’s list, this was still selected as a high priority by a number of finance area leaders considering the overall objectives of the Operational Excellence project, the high-risk nature of this work, and increased scrutiny from PSU’s Board of Trustees of financial reporting. Therefore, recommendations in this area reflect these priorities as well as those received from the listening session and survey.
Human Resources Work Area Team
The human resources team, with eight members who engage in HR functions as part of their jobs, met five times to evaluate and improve processes. The team noted challenges such as a large number of people engaged in processes infrequently, a lack of backup personnel, compliance risks, and inconsistent work processes between units. Feedback from campus outreach confirmed the team's perceptions and highlighted the need for improvements in training, hiring approvals, and recruitment searches. There was also broad support for centralizing some HR functions to simplify training and improve compliance.
Marketing and Communications Work Area Team
The marketing and communications (MarComm) team, consisting of six members, met nine times to address issues related to marketing processes within their units. The team noted inconsistent brand application, a lack of coordination between units, and a large number of practitioners with limited training and experience. Stakeholders and survey respondents highlighted challenges with student and employee communications, website maintenance, creating brand assets, and measuring ad performance. MGT developed new process maps to improve the experience and outcomes in these areas. A decision was also made to engage RW Jones, a consulting firm specializing in marketing and communications, to evaluate the unique challenges related to university-wide marketing strategy. RW Jones's assessment found that PSU's central marketing unit (UCOMM) is under-resourced and structurally misaligned compared to its peers.
Recommendations
The following recommendations will provide pathways for streamlining service delivery and achieving the project's overall goals.
Organizational Effectiveness
- Workflow documentation: As a standard practice, processes should be documented to identify who is responsible for them and to encourage feedback. The lack of clear and available documentation causes confusion for employees.
- Process ownership: Departments responsible for workflows should be recognized as the owners and be responsible for documenting them and identifying the last review date.
- Process communications: Standards should be developed for process communication, including where they are posted and what information is included.
- Organization charts and contact information: Organization charts and contact information for support areas should be standardized to make it easier for employees to find who they need to contact.
Finance Recommendations
- Create a Financial Services Campus Support Center: Centralizing financial transaction processing will reduce administrative burdens on faculty and staff and reduce duplicated efforts from a large number of low-volume users. Functions to be centralized include customer service, purchase orders, invoice entry, and PCard transaction processing.
- Create Strategic Budgeting Campus Support Hubs: This recommendation presents two options to address the issues of SFO turnover, inconsistent training, and lack of direct accountability to central finance operations.
- Option A: Organize Senior Fiscal Officers (SFOs) into service hubs. SFOs would be co-located with the areas they support but their direct reporting lines would shift to professional financial management staff under the Vice President for Finance & Administration. This would provide mentoring opportunities and allow for cross-training to cover absences or turnover.
- Option B: Maintain the current structure where SFOs report to unit leadership, but strengthen fiscal accountability, training, and alignment with institutional priorities through a technical reporting line to a central position, a standard position description, and a Service Level Agreement with the Finance & Administration division.
Human Resources Recommendations
- Create HR Campus Support Hubs: The proposal is to consolidate decentralized frontline HR work into specialized central positions to increase dedicated support resources for all business units. This involves expanding the HR Partner role and creating five HR service hub teams.
- Expand Training Resources: Expand HR training capacity by adding additional training positions to address ongoing deficits in training and onboarding frameworks. This will centralize and standardize training efforts, reducing the need for individual departments to create their own materials.
- Consolidate Protected Leaves: Consolidate protected leave programs under a unified, PSU-centric management system. This will simplify the employee experience by creating a single administrative path and streamline administrative efficiency by reducing duplicated efforts and improving data accuracy.
Marketing & Communications Recommendation
- Implement a centrally led and coordinated marketing and communications strategy: Centralize the development of the university's strategy and coordinate its implementation. This will be led by an interim Chief Marketing and Communications Officer (CMCO). The strategy involves a phased approach to increase the connection and responsibility distributed units have to a strong, centralized strategy and operation. Along with new processes developed by MGT, this is expected to improve adherence to brand guidelines, increase accountability, and ensure that marketing efforts are efficiently directed toward the university's goals.