University of North Texas tightens IT with shared services

Accenture will lead a plan to develop and implement shared services for the University of North Texas System (UNTS), the company said in a press release today. UNTS will examine campus-level and university system-wide IT and HR/payroll functions to develop a five-year plan.

According to the UNT System Vice Chancellor of Finance and the UNTS Shard Services Council, Accenture will craft a shared services implementation roadmap and five-year IT investment plan for capital, operating and personnel expenditures for the UNTS satellite campuses. The UNT flagship campus is in Denton, TX with UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth, and UNT Dallas expected to add to System administrative functions with the addition of a new law school.

“Just as businesses and government agencies have been using shared services to optimize cost-effective delivery of high quality customer-centric services, leading higher education institutions are increasingly following this path to transform their operations and make better use of scarce resources,” David Wilson, managing director of Accenture’s Canada and U.S. State & Local Government client service group, said in a statement.

In other Higher Ed, big name IT co. news…

IBM and the University of North Carolina State agreed to a deal that would help NC State commercialize some if its research stock through IBM. The deal “involves matching academic research with potential investors and then working closely with the inventors to provide counsel regarding patents and copyright to assist in determining the most effective methods to take the inventions to market,” IBM said Wednesday.

In return, NC State has agreed to use IBM’s analytics technology to “mine and analyze large amounts of web-based data, resulting in a short list of companies that might be interested in licensing technologies created at NC State.”

“In our pilot project, IBM Big Data analytics allowed our team to understand the potential opportunities for our research projects, while at the same time reducing the tedious workload of finding potential investors,” said Billy Houghteling, director of the Office of Technology Transfer at NC State, in a statement.

Related posts:

1. NYC 311 system upgraded to answer education questions
2. Oregon builds shared services model for foundation of e-permitting portal
3. Shared services, consolidations to save NY nearly $15m annually, Gov Says