To achieve operational excellence within any company or institution is quite a challenge. But a well-oiled machine is one that’s maintained and worked on regularly. That said, how can you go about improving your institution’s operational efficiency? What are the key areas that deserve attention, and what needs to be put in place to achieve and maintain a steady level of effectiveness? Read on for the full rundown of all of this and more.
What is Operational Efficiency?
By definition and within the context of business, operational efficiency is measured by resource allocation and is identified as the ratio between the output gained from a business and the input for a business operation.
In simpler terms, operational efficiency is tracked by looking at the profit earned from operating costs. Typical performance indicators of a business correlate with the value, quality of product or level of efficiency at which business functions.

What are the Benefits of Operational Efficiency in Universities?
Being effective and efficient in your administrative efforts as well as providing sufficient support to your students and faculty are key elements of maintaining a well-run university or higher educational institution.
That said, operational efficiency that’s prioritized results in the following benefits:
- Student and faculty success
- Administrative tasks completed effectively and on-time
- Systemized and streamlined processes
- The provision of learning analytics for the consistent improvement of operations
- An overwhelming positive impact on your bottom line
How can Universities Improve their Operations?
Successful institutions and businesses all have one thing in common, a consistent and continued striving for innovation and growth. And a massive portion of growth can be attributed to making improvements where necessary on a regular basis. With this in mind, you might ask, how can your higher educational institution improve its operations? Here’s what we recommend:
1. Refining Processes to Improve Operational Efficiency
Administrative tasks and processes are often repetitive and time-consuming. With the right LSM solution in place, your higher education institution can work to automate these processes, and ultimately save time spent on repetitive tasks.
2. Supporting People
The management of facility staff’s time and contribution from a transparent standpoint can pose quite the challenge. With an LSM solution like ITS Integrator, you can support your staff to effectively manage their time and collaboration across departments.
3. Developing a Sound Financial Strategy
It’s an odd topic of conversation to talk about how universities can adjust their financial trajectory, but it is one that should be discussed. Universities and higher education institutions face several challenges that impact the area of finances, these include competition, complicated return on investment and reduced enrollments because of online and alternative education offerings.
With all of this in mind, universities need to up their planning and strategy game. That’s where LSMs like ITS Integrator come in. Scheduling maintenance operations, keeping track of staff schedules and improving fees and tuition management are a few of the ways that LSM tools work to benefit the financial strategies of higher education institutions.
4. Leveraging Technology
One of the biggest challenges universities face is the capacity to manage and measure operational efficiency. Through technology and software systems, universities will be able to remove barriers in data flow and analyze their operations to effectively make adjustments.
With software like ITS Integrator, universities get access to a fully integrated ERP solution that works to solve support issues, administrative hassles and allow for a core focus shift to the areas of student management.