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UMCal: University Calendar

The University of Minnesota's new central calendaring service is offered by the Office of Information Technology to staff and faculty (system-wide) at no charge. The University's current scheduling and calendaring practices are either antiquated or not integrated, creating inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.

The following is an auditable scenario representing an extremely conservative approach to Institutional savings for this technology/service/initiative.

Assumptions
The following assumptions are based on institutional metrics and reports which are then used to drive the ROI metric below. Where reports are not available, an intuitive assumption has been made. In this scenario, the intutive—but conservative—assumption is the amount of time that could be saved by automating the scheduling process where telephone message or e-mail communication is used to determine attendee availability, finding a suitable time that meets each attendee's schedule, and informing each participant of the resulting scheduled appointment.

  • The University currently pays licensing fees for a number of systems that total a minimum of $50K annually.

  • It is assumed that the sum of the University's decentralized calendar administration activities require the equivalent of one FTE's time.

  • A minimum of 5,700 staff and faculty members on the Twin Cities campus use some form of electronic calendar regularly.

  • The average electronic calendar user has approximately 500 annual appointments.

  • It is assumed that the average time saved by using UMCal for scheduling rather than e-mail and/or telephone is a minimum of 4 minutes per appointment where there are more than two attendees.

  • The average salary at the University is roughly $42K or $20/hr.

Costs
OIT has licensed vendor software to provide the UMCal service. Technologist labor accounts for a majority of the costs in the implementation period, which then taper off after successful implementation, general availability, and departmental migration. Continuing maintenance costs are primarily labor-related in the OIT Helpdesk area. Third year costs include equipment upgrades. These costs are summarized in the 'ROI Index' section below.

Impact / Savings / Institutional Value
Broad use of UMCal is expected system-wide. As a result, today's existing decentralized electronic calendar systems may be retired and their corresponding support efforts applied to a departmental unit's strategic initiatives. These economy-of-scale economics and their resulting efficiencies are expected to generate productivity savings for the institution. A few of these examples follow:

1. If 1% of the annual average of 500 appointments for existing electronic calendar users were to be scheduled through UMCal, rather than the historically labor-intensive telephone/e-mail process:

  • The University would save approximately 1,900 hrs per yr in productivity or:

    • The equivalent of 1 FTE

    • Roughly $50K per yr

2. If the UMCal customer base were to grow by 5% of the University's staff and faculty population each year, average 250 appointments each, with 10% of those appointments scheduled with greater efficiency according to the criteria above:

  • The University would save over 8,000 hours over a 5-year period in productivity or:

    • The equivalent of almost 4 FTE

    • Roughly $220K over that 5-year period.

ROI Index
The following matrix reflects the running total of annual savings and corresponding annual costs to derive the ROI Index.

1-Year

3-Year

5-Year

Savings

$200K

$735M

$1.4M

Costs

$340K

$639K

$868K

ROI Index

0.58

1.15

1.61

Probing Questions

  • Is the Institution at less risk by retiring the distributed servers used to "house" disparate calendar systems and accounts? Are there additional productivity gains in this area?

  • Are the estimated distributed costs for administering disparate calendaring systems accurate?

  • Is the projected growth of this service an accurate estimate? How does this affect ROI?

  • First year students will receive UMCal accounts in Fall 2004. How might the Institution realize additional productivity gains? Will students be able to use UMCal to schedule appointments with advisors and faculty?

  • Is there an opportunity to create a positive Institutional quality-of-service perception if faculty were to use UMCal to schedule student conferences/meetings?

  • Are there additional service enhancements that can be realized by integrating UMCal with other systems? Are these service improvements quantifiable? How might they impact the ROI projection?