PIPaL project roundup

Well, what a busy time the last couple of months have been…  We have sat down with nearly all of the people in our target group, with just a couple of first round interviews left to carry out.  Very valuable feedback from the University’s Head of Public Relations, Director of Marketing, Head of Alumni Relations and Director of External Affairs.  Still to meet with the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Enterprise), Director of Business Partnerships, and the Academic Registry.  It’s also become clear that we should spend some time talking to our conference arm imago, but equally we need to be realistic about how many people we engage with, and the clock is ticking on the project plan.

A particular eye opener from the first round interviews has been the mountains of paper – there really is a lot of material in circulation that isn’t directly usable by any computer system, even if the vast majority of it started out life that way.  A good example of this is the University’s press coverage, sent to us on paper by a commercial clippings service.  When we started mapping existing processes it was also quite striking to see areas where there is no feedback loop to speak of.  For example, when sending the University Prospectus out to schools and colleges we gather very little information on how it has been received and the effect it has on decision making and the application process.  The old adage about a picture telling a thousand words is very true – once this particular process was turned into a diagram it was obvious that there was a problem.  In this case the people involved already knew that we could do more, but I expect that we will find others that are more obscure as the project progresses.