Details of the plan were outlined by Wagner at a Service Excellence Assembly on Nov. 11. The bi-monthly meetings are held to update staff in University Services on new initiatives within the division and at UB.

Wagner noted that the streamlining efforts are being made to align UB's business operations with changes that have been occurring at UB and in SUNY.

"We have a very lean administrative cadre if you compare ourselves to our peer institutions, yet we have one of the most complex administrative structures in which we operate," Wagner said.

That administrative complexity, he added, is "not by design, but by evolution of 50 years as a state university."

To be implemented in phases

The new organizational structure for UB's business operations will be implemented in phases, Wagner said, and will involve a significant amount of change.

Under the plan, which was outlined in a recent memorandum from Kevin R. Seitz, associate vice president for university services and controller, over the next few months the current Research Foundation and state business offices will be integrated into three functional organizations-Procurement Services, Human Resource Services and Financial Services-designed to cluster related processes, regardless of funding source, into a single organization.

The objective is to provide the university with "beginning-to-end" transaction processing, according to the memo.

Duties of services units

Procurement Services will be headed by Judith Miller, director of purchasing, and will incorporate the Research Foundation and state purchasing and accounts payable functions, with the exception of travel services, as well as property control.

Human Resource Services, which will not be formed until early next year, will be headed by Ellen McNamara, assistant vice president for human resources. The unit will include the personnel and payroll functions for both the Research Foundation and the state.

Financial Services will integrate the Research Foundation's grants and contracts operation with the state's accounting and budget operations. Formation of this unit also will begin early next year. Plans for the development of the unit will be led by Elizabeth Kopra, assistant vice president for sponsored programs; John Bell, director of accounting and payroll services, and Peter Klumpp, budget control officer.

In addition, a Continuous Quality Improvement unit has been formed to create a customer-service focal point. Headed by Roger McGill, assistant vice president for university services and director of campus services, the unit will focus on customer communication and feedback and continuous efforts to improve quality service.

The streamlining also will affect Campus Services, which includes Campus Mail, University Print and Mail Services and Trademarks and Licensing. Those units will continue to report to McGill, who will begin the process of identifying the best organizational location for them.

Feedback from a variety of university constituents has been and will continue to be an important part of the process as the streamlining of UB's business operations proceeds, Wagner noted.

"We're not going to deal simply with administrative processing but all university systems," he said. "We will involve those staffs and administrators to talk this through."