Applied Science and Innovative Research ISSN 2474-4972 (Print) ISSN 2474-4980 (Online) Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir 1 Original Paper Developing a Process Improvement Request System at SUNY Empire State College Cynthia T. Bates1*, Julia Penn Shaw1, Stephanie L. Thomas1, & John J. Lawless1 1 SUNY Empire State College, Saratoga, US * Cynthia T. Bates, E-mail: Cynthia.bates@esc.edu Received: December 7, 2021 Accepted: December 18, 2021 Online Published: December 24, 2021 doi:10.22158/asir.v6n1p1 URL: http://doi.org/10.22158/asir.v6n1p1 Abstract This paper presents the Process Improvement Request System initiated at SUNY Empire State College as a case study for institutional change management. Through this system, employees can submit suggestions for improving any kind of institutional processes at the college using an Information Technology “ticketing” system like the one used for technical issues. These communications are addressed, tracked, and stored by the Process Improvement Committee which includes representatives from all areas of the college. The Process Improvement Request System addresses many critical goals including 1) the storage of process issues, concerns, and suggestions; 2) a mechanism for addressing these; 3) open access to all employees (and to students through employee representatives) to submit ideas; 4) the ability to make suggestions about all levels of process issues, from college wide to personnel specific; 5) anonymity for making a request when desired; and 6) a feedback loop about the effectiveness of new processes. In this paper, the essential aspects of this project are discussed and analyzed. The paper also enables readers to ascertain the viability of such a project at their campuses and invites them to reach out to the authors if they have questions about doing so. Keywords change management, transformational leadership, organizational innovation, technology transfer, process improvement, Information Technology (IT) ticketing system Introduction SUNY Empire State College (SUNY Empire) employees are dedicated to making our college work as smoothly and efficiently as possible so we can best serve our ever-changing student population. A group of employees developed a mechanism called the Process Improvement Request System through which all college employees can identify ways that various processes at the college (i.e., analyzing a www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 2 Published by SCHOLINK INC. student’s transcript for transferrable credit or how students navigate our college’s website, etc.) might be improved. This mechanism is managed by the Process Improvement Committee which is comprised of support staff, professional employees, faculty, and administrators from around the college. All college employees are invited to share ideas for improving any college processes with the committee. The committee reviews each submission and discusses if and how the idea might be implemented. The office responsible for the specific process in question is then contacted and work gets underway to address the idea. Sometimes changes in processes are made quickly, while at other times, changes take many months. In some instances, the college lacks the budget or staffing to address a requested change. Regardless of what happens, the Process Improvement Committee documents each request so the college can track trends and periodically review requests that could not be immediately implemented. This paper is a case study that identifies the reasons why the Process Improvement Request System was formed, how the Process Improvement Committee crafted the system, how the committee operates, and how the system has evolved over the first year. Examples of actual requests submitted are also shared, and a few of those requests are discussed in greater detail. The Process Improvement Request System goes a long way towards improving our students’ experiences at our college—from their first experience with the admission process to receiving their diplomas. While the Process Improvement Request System ultimately serves our students, it does so by helping our college’s employees do their jobs more efficiently and with a greater sense of fulfillment. All of this contributes greatly to improving the climate/morale of our college. It is our hope that by sharing our story, we can help other campuses create similar process improvement request systems on their campuses. Why Develop A Process Improvement Request System? SUNY Empire was founded in 1971 as a public university that could focus on “educating students at any stage of life or learning” (“About us,” n.d.). Ernest L. Boyer, the SUNY Chancellor at the time, recognized a need for a SUNY college that could meet students “where they are” both in terms of location and in terms of educational aptitude. Instead of asking students to “go to college,” SUNY Empire comes to them with offices in every region of New York State as well as in seven international locations. The college’s mission statement identifies the college’s values: SUNY Empire State College provides motivated adult learners with access to innovative, flexible and quality academic programs that empower people and strengthen communities. We build on the diversity of our students, their work and life experiences and their individual personal and professional goals as the cornerstone for each academic program” (“College mission and vision,” n.d.). Our faculty mentoring program sets the college apart from other SUNY schools in that each student works individually with a faculty mentor to develop a tailor-made and academically rigorous degree plan and is supported throughout one’s college career by that mentor as well as robust academic services. The college has a strong social justice commitment to make higher education possible to anyone seeking it. Given this mission, the college community works collaboratively to provide the best path and supports for each and every student. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 3 Published by SCHOLINK INC. In recent years, SUNY Empire underwent major administrative and technological infrastructure transitions. Given the stress caused by such massive and widespread changes, college wide surveys indicated that the campus was negatively impacted. These deep, transforming, simultaneous, and rapid changes to multiple administrative, learning, and student success systems were confusing and disorienting to all involved. More recently, with the chaotic onset of COVID-19, additional system-wide changes have been a shared experience around the globe, disrupting education at every level and in every way. Such changes have resulted in questions such as:  How can solutions to process issues be effectively gathered, tracked, and addressed?  How can confusion in various processes be avoided so the most effective delivery of education can be provided to our students?  How can we assure that process issues of critical importance are addressed the first time they are raised?  How can we hear from all perspectives, so that solutions do not improve processes for one set of employees while negatively impacting others?  How can this project help us take a meta-look at processes that impact our success with students at every point in their time with us? Prior to COVID-19 and arising from the significant transitions mentioned earlier at SUNY Empire, the college’s president and Senate jointly appointed a committee called the “Climate Committee” to explore and ameliorate morale issues. A subcommittee, then called the “Process Change Subcommittee” (and thereafter renamed the “Process Improvement Committee”) was devoted to exploring this concept of providing college employees with a way to bring forward suggestions for improving college processes from the ground up. Literature in the field of higher education change management investigates the concept of innovative behavior within higher education institutions (HEIs). Innovative behavior includes actions that respond to the specific needs of individuals in an organization so they can help an organization move consistently towards fulling its mission and goals. Sung and Kim (2021) argue, “An organization’s ability to respond to environmental changes begins with the innovative behavior of organizational members” (2). Innovative behavior, Sung and Kim (2021) argue, “starts from the individual and spreads to the organization. Therefore, for organizational innovation, it is necessary to search for the factors that induce innovation within individuals and create an environment in which they can express their innovativeness (8). At SUNY Empire, the Process Improvement Request System creates just such an environment so that innovative ideas can work in tandem with concrete steps for bringing such ideas to life. Technology Transfer Technology transfer is a wonderful thing. One member of the Climate Committee had formerly helped to establish a process improvement process at the IBM Endicott (NY) Software Development Laboratory. That seven-year site-wide effort of bridging process improvement systems across the www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 4 Published by SCHOLINK INC. seventeen stages of a software development cycle led to that location becoming the first IBM site to receive the ISO 9001 Quality Management System Certification (IBM). This certification, awarded in 2001 to IBM, is given to institutions that demonstrate evidence of seven principles of quality: 1. Customer focus 2. Leadership 3. Engagement of people 4. Ensuring a process approach 5. Utilizing evidenced-based decisions making 6. Ongoing improvement 7. Relationship management (International Organization for Standardization). These principles resonated strongly with the SUNY Empire community and fit well with the long-standing commitment of SUNY Empire to provide the highest quality of education for its population of largely diverse adult learners. The question took hold in the subcommittee, that if a process improvement mechanism could be effectively established for software development cycles in a business, could it not also be established at an institution of higher learning to assist in the most effective delivery of quality education for students? The answer was: why not? The next step was to consider how to make it happen. Getting Started The Climate Committee was led by the provost, and with her support, key players from around the college were put in place to help the Process Change Subcommittee carry this idea to fruition. Without the commitment of these critical personnel resources, this idea would never have taken root. These players included: 1. The initiator to share the vision of building a process improvement mechanism in parallel with the Information Technology ticket process 2. The Interim Associate Provost for Administration who was a bridge to administration and who collected necessary resources for creating and implementing this mechanism 3. The Business Process Manager who documented the mechanism as it was created (with an eye to how it would parallel our existing Information Technology ticket process) 4. An Information Technology lead who oversaw the translation of the Business Process Model into a technically instantiated system 5. Members of the subcommittee who represented many areas of the college and included the different roles played by college employees. The role of this entire team is not to be underestimated. Each member had already established themselves as leaders in their areas, so their contributions were reflective, grounded, and constructive. One of the key personnel mentioned above included the Interim Associate Provost for Administration whose work as the committee’s administrative liaison kept the project focused, moving forward, and in line with college priorities. The administrative liaison also connected the committee to available www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 5 Published by SCHOLINK INC. resources and was able to brainstorm various ways that all members of the college community could interact with the committee. SUNY Empire, like most higher education institutions, is a complex organization. As a result of this complexity, the various members of the Process Improvement Committee did not always know about resources to improve or support the creation of a mechanism like this. An example of this occurred early in the project. As the initial team explored who needed to be on this committee, the administrative liaison suggested that a member of SUNY Empire’s project management team with business process mapping expertise join the committee. The early addition of the Business Process Manager proved to be beneficial in two distinct ways. First, it helped the committee to strategically examine the workflows needed to successfully implement this process. Second, given that the Business Process Manager had worked across the college with many different departments and offices, she, along with the administrative liaison, provided the committee with a holistic view of college processes and projects that could support or complement the process improvement request mechanism. Importantly, the administrative liaison also provided a critical feedback loop between the Process Improvement Committee’s work and upper administration. The administrative liaison reported directly to the provost and also sat on the President’s Cabinet. He was able to provide periodic reports to the provost and President’s Cabinet on the committee’s progress and shared any roadblocks. When roadblocks occurred, they were quickly addressed by upper administration, allowing the project to move forward with very little disruption. Developing the system by which improvements in processes could be suggested, reviewed, worked on, and then implemented, put on the back burner, or rejected, took a lot of discussion. Throughout many meetings, the Process Improvement Committee shared ideas, considered options for how to craft this kind of mechanism, and eventually come to consensus about a way to implement a system for moving forward. The effective, almost seamless, interactions across so many levels of the college towards this one goal was as elegant as a choreographed dance or a well-formed story. Each role was both necessary and effective for success. So how did this innovative program come into being so quickly and effectively? Envisioning a Process Improvement Request System SUNY Empire embraces the discipline of Business Process Management to develop and optimize our business processes. As noted above, the Process Improvement Committee brought the college’s Business Process Manager in at the very beginning to support the design and development of a Business Process Model for this project. The Business Process Manager and committee members met regularly to document everything from how suggestions would be submitted by the end user through how they were going to communicate out to the college community about the requests that the committee was facilitating. This work resulted in a comprehensive Business Process Model diagram of the entire process improvement request system as shown in Figure 1. The committee walked through and envisioned every step of the process and documented it on paper so that it could be built and then put into action. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 6 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Figure 1. Process Improvement Business Process Model Note. This diagram shows the steps taken from identifying a need for a process improvement through to reporting out a solution. The process improvement request system starts with any employee across the college identifying a gap in or an idea for an improvement in any given process. The employee submits a process improvement ticket via an online form. They can submit the request themselves or they can ask a member of the committee to submit it for them if they would like to remain anonymous. This supports confidentiality and gives employees who do not want to identify themselves a chance to be heard. Once they submit the form, the system automatically creates and assigns a ticket to our Process Improvement Committee and two notification emails are sent out from the system. One email notification goes directly to the submitter to let them know that their suggestion was submitted. The other notification goes to the committee alerting them that a new suggestion has been submitted and requires action. How the Process Improvement Committee Operates Each month, one member of the committee is assigned as the “group lead.” All committee members serve in this position, following a pre-determined schedule that extends to a year in advance. The group lead triages each ticket that is submitted that month, and, ideally within one business day, responds back to the ticket’s submitter with a short note thanking them for their suggestion and letting them know that the committee is working on it. Behind the scenes, though, there is a lot of work that goes into this triage step. The group lead claims ownership of the ticket and then reviews and researches the request for a change. If somebody outside of the group needs to be brought in to work on the ticket, the lead will add the additional stakeholders to the ticket so they can be involved early on and can be involved in replying to the ticket. If the committee or additional stakeholders have questions about the suggestion, the group lead sends those questions to the submitter through the ServiceNow system which, in turn, tracks all correspondence. The group lead updates the ticket with any additional information that the committee needs to know and identifies any additional offices or departments that www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 7 Published by SCHOLINK INC. might be impacted by the requested change or solution. Every time an update is made to the ticket, a notification goes out to the submitter letting them know that the committee is actively working on their suggestion. In the end, there is a final update that notifies the submitter and records for the committee if and how the ticket will be resolved. The recommended resolution is communicated out to the college in a variety of ways. If the suggestion is something very minor that does not actually result in a process change but instead, the submitter just needed a little information or knowledge transfer, then the group lead might simply share this information with the submitter directly via the ticketing system; this response is automatically documented in the system and the ticket is closed. However, if the suggestion resulted in a process change and the committee wanted to notify a larger audience, the college’s “All User” email group and/or a college news article are used in addition to notifying the submitter via the ticketing system. Quarterly, the committee sends a report to the provost about the tickets and this is shared with the community through the college’s Senate. The Process Improvement Committee is comprised of twelve members at one time, and as noted earlier, includes diverse representatives from around the college. Our goal is to roll membership over every two years, with six members rotating out each year. This will provide continuity of knowledge for the committee over time. As the committee has evolved, and due to the nature of the tickets that have been submitted, we have recognized the need for certain key departments to always have a representative on the committee, such as the Registrar’s Office and Information Technology Services. The committee meets bi-weekly to evaluate solutions, discuss ways we can improve our work, and discuss how we want to report out about improvement solutions to the community at large. We also support each other at these meetings to come up with the best possible path for handling each ticket. We talk through potential solutions and elicit the group’s feedback. With such a diverse group of college employees serving on the committee, we get a lot of different perspectives and input. The process group lead may also use the ticketing system’s “comments sections” (which then automatically sends email notifications to the committee) if they have questions for the team in between the bi-weekly meetings. This committee is truly a collaborative team working together to help improve the college’s process systems for our students and employees. Utilizing Existing Technology to Manage the Process Improvement Request System After the committee completed the Business Process Model and had a blueprint of the mechanism to share, Information Technology Services came on board and built the tool that is used to support the process. There were several considerations that went into the decision of what technology tool they wanted to use for the pilot. There was no budget for piloting this system, so cost was an immediate factor. It made sense, then, to look at the existing technology in our current enterprise technology stack as opposed to purchasing a new tool. After reviewing the Process Improvement Committee’s very comprehensive Business Process Model, our Information Technology Services colleagues recognized that the system aligned very nicely with the existing Information Technology Services management www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 8 Published by SCHOLINK INC. framework that is currently practiced at the college. This included the Information Technology Services management framework which uses Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards along with elements of customer service management (implemented at the college approximately ten years ago). That framework and the newer ServiceNow business management system (implemented approximately five years ago) could both be used to support this new Process Improvement Request System. Due to the college community’s familiarity and comfort level with ServiceNow ticketing system to request technical assistance with computers, phones, etc., we felt that this would be a good tool for the Process Improvement Request System as well. The committee hoped that this familiarity would drive adoption by the college community and make it easier for them to participate in improving processes by submitting tickets. Also, many of our functional area offices who are involved in resolving process tickets, like the Registrar's Office and the Office of Academic Affairs, have actively participated in the system because of cross-collaboration with Information Technology Services on other tickets. This aided in reducing cost because these administrators were already licensed and familiar with the ticketing system, and they could use ServiceNow’s notifications and dashboards with minimal training. As Information Technology Services moved forward on this project, they consulted with the ServiceNow administrator and developer, and ended up cloning a version of the Information Technology Services incident management function noted above whereby members of the college community submit a ticket for technical issues and support. By taking this approach, they were able to simplify the customer user interaction and make it look just slightly different from what they see when they submit a ticket for technical issues. The interaction was also simplified on the “agent view,” which is the view that the Process Improvement Committee’s members work in when they interact with the tickets. So, even though it was a clone within the ServiceNow environment, we maintained all the advantages and key features of the platform. ServiceNow has robust reporting capability and the ability to build out extensive knowledge-based articles to drive “self-help” when possible. When a process improvement ticket is submitted, the system captures key information that the committee might consider relevant when pursuing a process improvement idea. This data can be converted into reports and allows us to identify trends. ServiceNow documents all ideas for improvements and provides the college with a single source of information about them. Finally, Information Technology Services developed a dashboard where the committee monitors each ticket’s activity. The dashboard itself is real time and it allows immediate interaction with tickets. As noted previously, the committee members receive an email notification when a new ticket is submitted and, at the same time, this notification appears in the dashboard. Therefore, committee members have the option to interact with a ticket either through email (where that correspondence will continue to be captured in the ticketing system) or through the dashboard. At the committee’s bi-weekly meetings, the committee reviews each ticket’s activity and takes steps to ensure the idea expressed in the ticket is being considered and responded to. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 9 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Getting Ready to Launch Once the modified ServiceNow tool was built, the Process Improvement Committee went through a rigorous “test and train” process. We used an intensive hands-on approach for the training where we met every week on Microsoft Teams and each committee member took on the role of the process group lead. The lead learned to use the technology tool and the committee learned how to work together as a team to analyze each request. Collaboratively, we would arrive at the best possible solution for our test tickets, whether that be an instant solution or recommending the request to the appropriate offices in the college for further consideration. We continued this approach until everyone felt comfortable with the tool and the process. Any college employee can go to the college’s portal website (MyESC.edu) where they will find a link to the Process Improvement Committee’s website. The Process Improvement Request System website includes the Process Improvement Request Intake Form for employees to submit new suggestions. It also includes a robust “Frequently Asked Questions” section that includes everything from what type of suggestion can and should be submitted to what to expect after submitting a suggestion. In July 2020, the administrative lead did a series of webinars about this new system and informed the college community about the collaborative and diverse nature of the committee while also demonstrating the Process Improvement Request System; the website provides a link to these webinars. The names of the committee members, the committee’s goals, monthly reports, and information about how to get involved on the committee are all shared on the website. Going Live! The Process Improvement Request System went live in July 2020 when the online form used for submitting process changes was shared with the college community. The entire development process took approximately a year and a half from concept to release. The cost of deploying this process was minimal. It took the committee member’s time to meet and design the process, human resources in Information Technology Services to build the tool, and then there was the licensing cost of $500 per license for Process Improvement Committee members that didn’t already have ServiceNow licenses. The general college community did not require any licenses as end users. Our Chief Information Officer agreed to absorb the licensing costs for the committee as part of the Information Technology Services initiatives of return on investment from our enterprise tools, so it worked well as a cooperative engagement with the different departments. Examples of Process Improvement Request Tickets Over the first year of the Process Improvement Committee’s work, approximately 65 tickets were submitted. These tickets ranged from improvements in the processes that govern how mentors and mentees work together, to how students and faculty interact with the bookstore, to making all sorts of communication paths more streamlined and robust. Before we delve into a few tickets more closely, here are some of the suggestions submitted this past year: www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 10 Published by SCHOLINK INC.  Implementing LGBTQ welcoming campus pronouns  Streamlining course developer payment approvals  Convert printable forms needing signatures to digital forms that can be digitally signed  More efficient ways for mentees to monitor student registrations  Improvements to the Prior Learning Assessment Planner tracking system  Improve communication with supervisors of the support staff involved in the “Transcript Entry” project  Assure support for students to access printed copies of Open Educational Resources in our new bookstore  Streamline mentor reassignment process  Create an Adjunct Liaison to support all adjunct faculty at the college  Make it easier to check on a student’s graduation status; perhaps create an automated system for mentors and students to check on a student’s steps through the graduation process  Create a system to alert faculty when students enroll in their courses after add/drop  Improve SUNY Empire website navigation so users can click on a button to go back to the MyESC.edu homepage from any page or after submitting any online forms  Clarify the scope of and the first steps in the mentor/mentee relationship as described in the email assigning a new mentee to a mentor  Streamline the process for mentors to send group emails to all their mentees  Add a “key” to the online worksheet mentees use to track their SUNY General Education courses and credits so it is easier for mentees to understand the worksheet  Add functionality so mentees and mentors can search the Term Guide and Catalog by department rather than just by subject code  Add guidance in Learning Contracts and syllabi to help students understand what the grade of ZW means (administrative withdrawal) and what they should do if they receive an “Incomplete” in a course In this section below, we’ll take a closer look at a few of these ideas and how they were managed by the Process Improvement Committee. 1. Electronic Forms: One of the tickets above addresses forms that both faculty and students need to sign such as the Accounting Disclaimer form, the Repeat Study/Course Approval form, and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Final Project Proposal form. These forms had, in the past, all required printing, signing, and faxing or scanning/emailing the form to each of the signatories. The person submitting the ticket asked for the forms to be converted so they could be signed electronically by all parties. The offices that manage these various forms were consulted and everyone agreed that moving to electronic signatures would be a great idea. Steps towards this had already been discussed due to COVID-19 and the college is now in the process of converting those forms. In the meantime, the college is now accepting email approvals of the forms. This www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 11 Published by SCHOLINK INC. ticket has been closed, but it will be reviewed periodically to make sure that the electronic forms are working as expected. 2. Mentor/Mentee Expectations: At SUNY Empire, all faculty members serve as primary mentors to students. The mentoring relationship is designed to give students an academic guide from the moment they are accepted into the college until they graduate (and often beyond). Since the mentoring model at SUNY Empire is so exhaustive, mentors are often looking for ways to serve their mentees better. In one of the tickets above, “clarify the scope of the mentor/mentee relationship in the email assigning a mentor to a new mentee,” the faculty member was asking to have the email indicate if the assignment is short-term (due to a sabbatical, illness, etc.) or long-term, and, if it is a long-term assignment, to indicate if the student is new, returning to SUNY Empire after a hiatus, or is being re-assigned from another primary mentor. These pieces of information would help a mentor know how to begin a conversation with the student about his/her/their immediate academic needs and goals. When this ticket came in, the committee discussed it and looked at the standard emails that were being sent out to mentors and mentees upon the assignment of working together. We then brainstormed some ideas for how additional information could be included quickly and easily in that email. The next step involved reaching out to the Director of Mentor Services and the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs for their input. In our discussion with them, the Director of Mentor Services expressed that she felt her office’s current process worked well. She indicated that when a student is returning to the college after being dismissed, she alerts the mentor that this is the case. She also said that when a mentee is reassigned to a new mentee, both the former and new mentor are included in the email. Due to her limited staff and the office’s overwhelming workload, she did not feel that the other requests included in this person’s idea could be accommodated at this time. She noted that, instead, the faculty member could look up the history of each new mentee upon assignment and prepare for their work with the mentee accordingly. This response was then shared with the faculty member who put in the ticket. This person decided to accept this response and the ticket was closed. This raised an interesting conundrum for our committee, though. What do we do with a ticket that has been closed but wasn’t able to be fully addressed? We knew when we created this Process Improvement Request System that we wouldn’t be able to fully resolve every issue. We wanted to make sure that all necessary parties were at the table to discuss each ticket and that the college (as a whole) would collectively decide how to move forward, with administrative approval where needed. In this situation, the issue hinges on who should take the extra steps to help the mentor accurately serve the mentee: The Office of Mentor Services or the mentor? For now, the answer is the mentor. The way the mechanism was built, however, allows the committee to periodically review tickets like this to see if any further improvements could or should be made. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 12 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 3. Website Navigation: Some process improvement requests were easier to resolve completely, and the request was fully implemented. For example, one person noted that when navigating our website, there were a handful of times that the navigation ended on an error page rather than sending the user back to the MyESC homepage. This particularly happened after submitting online forms such as a Tech Ticket. This request was brought to Information Technology Services. They agreed to look at the errors and then fixed them. The ticket was closed and does not need further review. Looking Back, Planning Forward In July 2020, when the committee’s administration liaison first presented the Process Improvement Request System to the college in the form of a webinar, there was considerable interest. Now, after a year of working in the system, significant improvements have been made to processes around the college and, equally important, college employees know that they have a dedicated committee of colleagues who truly want to address pain points and make positive improvements at the college. The Climate Committee is in the process of planning another climate survey and the committee is hopeful that the work of this system will be positively reflected in that survey. The continued participation and support of the existing Process Improvement Committee team has been key to this project’s success. New members who have been attracted to the committee and who have joined in its efforts have augmented the initial vision with their insights and energy. Over the past year, subcommittees of the Process Improvement Committee were set up to address ongoing concerns and needs such as how tickets are categorized, and best practices for reporting out to the community. As we have worked through each ticket, we have refined our internal process as a committee and updated the Business Process Model accordingly. In the coming year, the Process Improvement Committee will continue to refine its process to better help employees around the college identify improvements for our systems while also continuing to improve the climate of the college. We also look forward to discussions about how this process might be cloned so it has a more direct student facing element, rather than only having student suggestions come forward through college employees. We are also looking forward to having ServiceNow generate automated surveys to ticket submitters so we can continue to assess the impact that the Process Improvement Request System is having within the college community and so the committee can make any needed adjustments. The dashboard used by the committee will also continue to evolve to meet the needs of the committee and the tickets being submitted. At SUNY Empire, the success of launching this project is due to many factors discussed in greater detail above. We had a clear concept, supportive management, a committed and effective initiating team including a diverse range of employees from across the college, explicit documentation of the process through a Business Process Model, and an existing parallel process for Institutional Technology issues that was already well-established. Each of these elements contributed to the success of launching this work. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/asir Applied Science and Innovative Research Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022 13 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Summary Our goal in writing this article has been to help other institutions envision how they might create a “process for process management”. IBM had done it in one way, using the existing structures to achieve the goal for ISO 9001 Quality Management Certification. SUNY Empire created its structures to craft its own version of process management. The goal of both institutions was much the same, but the path was different. Any institution interested in this idea would need to do an evaluation of their structures and key players to determine the most effective path for success. Our hope, though, is that by sharing the work we have done, we might trigger ideas in our SUNY and other educational colleagues who might also want to implement a process management mechanism in their colleges. Acknowledgements Additional Process Improvement Committee Members 2019-2021: Teal Abel, Cynthia Burgher, Pamela Enser, Cynthia Flynn, Thomas Kerr, Robin Oliver, Sarah McMichael, Julie Milner, and Laura Wait. References About Us. SUNY Empire State College. (n.d.). Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.esc.edu/about/ College Mission and Vision. SUNY Empire State College. (n.d.). Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.esc.edu/about/college-mission/ IBM. (n.d.). Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/iso-9001-quality-management-system International Organization for Standardization. (2015). Quality Management System Certification (ISO Standard No. 9001). Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.iso.org/iso-9001-quality-management.html Sung, W., & Kim, C. (2021). A Study on the Effect of Change Management on Organizational Innovation: Focusing on the Mediating Effect of Members’ Innovative Behavior. Sustainability, 13(2079), 2, 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042079 https://www.esc.edu/about/ https://www.esc.edu/about/college-mission/ https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/iso-9001-quality-management-system https://www.iso.org/iso-9001-quality-management.html https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042079