Hi and welcome to Ohio University’s Business Service Center Annual report. This initiative is still relatively new but we are committed to sharing information with you and we hope you enjoy learning more about recent achievements, up-to-date metrics and how we are working towards excellent customer service.
We still have a lot of work to do and we are looking for faculty and staff to engage with us on process improvement items. If you would like to participate in any way, please send me an email at krugman@ohio.edu .
To close, I just want to say that I am incredibly grateful for our campus partners who have been willing to help us develop our existing services, OHIO leadership for their vision and support and lastly our awesome staff who strive every day to provide fantastic customer service. I hope you enjoy learning more about the OHIO Business Service Center.
About the OHIO Business Service Center (BSC)
Business Service Center models are well established across higher education institutions and throughout industry. The OHIO BSC was created to provide centralized support for the institution in the areas of purchasing and travel, budget development, operational finance, and hiring services.
We aim to ensure consistent, simplified, high-quality administrative services in support of the academic mission as well as streamlined processes that support faculty, staff, and students.
The end goal is to provide exemplary customer service while creating efficiencies that, over time, will lead to improved service delivery. Benefits of the Business Service Center include:
- An expert community available to answer questions and find answers. You won’t have to worry about your question sitting in someone’s inbox for weeks — you will receive prompt communication and will be kept in the loop while we find you the correct answers.
- Relief from certain transactional work being handled by strategic people in your unit.
- Continued operational excellence support — our goal is to make processes more user-friendly and efficient through technology and process improvement.
Continuous Improvement
Our Awesome Achievements
What Our Partners Are Saying
— Scott Titsworth
Dean, Scripps College of Communication
— Carl Brune
Professor and Director of the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics
— Beth Novak
Interim Dean, Honors Tutorial College
— Katy Matheuws
Senior Director of Administration, University Libraries
It’s All About Our People
We know people are our most valuable resource, and we want to invest in them. We are committed to hiring internal talent whenever possible, not only to provide promotional opportunities to existing OHIO staff, but also to leverage history, OHIO-specific expertise, and relationships already built on campus.
We have subject matter experts in purchasing/travel, operational finance, and employee hiring, but are also creating additional specialties where needed. Current specialty areas include travel, student reimbursements, and PTA account creation.
Through an anonymous survey, we solicited feedback from our staff to determine their levels of satisfaction in working in the OUBSC. Overwhelmingly, the OHIO BSC staff reported that they felt valued, had good relationships with their managers, and believed they were making an impact on the BSC and university. With an astonishing response rate of 58%, over 92% said overall they were highly or moderately satisfied working in the OHIO BSC.
Almost 60% of BSC employees volunteered for a new professional development opportunity on creating a culture of customer service. We are committed to providing outstanding service on campus, and our staff are eager to be a part of that movement. The staff recently created a new customer service vision for our unit: “to become the most trusted unit on campus” . We know there are a lot of excellent units on campus, so this is a lofty goal, but our staff want to be known for being knowledgeable, creative, good listeners, problem-solvers, and persistent in what we do so that we can provide the customer (i.e., our faculty, students, and staff) what they need to be successful. With an overall customer satisfaction rating of 93%, we know we are purposefully making an impact, but we plan to only get better.
What Our People Are Saying
— BSC Employee
— BSC Employee
Future Vision
Our vision is to be the most trusted unit on campus.By providing excellent customer experiences, reliable service, and forward-thinking innovations, we plan to help Ohio University partners improve experiences for students, faculty, staff, and guests who use business services. We will continue to expand services to additional partners across campus throughout this next year, fine-tune our technology approach, and, through analysis and feedback, improve processes. If you are not yet a partner and would like to be one of the next to convert or if would like to expand your existing portfolio of services, please contact Heather Krugman ( krugman@ohio.edu ).
Additional Information
What Our Customers are Saying
— Megan Vogel
Chief of Staff, Division of Student Affairs
— Julio Arauz
Associate Professor and Graduate Chair, McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies
— Ruth Blickle
Administrative Services Associate, ROTC
— Marian Carr
Administrative Services Associate, The Office of Global Affairs
— Megan S.
Student Employee
— Florenz Plassmann
Professor, Economics
— Aimee Edmondson
Professor, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism
— Holly Ningard
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Sociology and Anthropology