UBT Services Strategy
UBT has established several approaches to understand and respond to the needs and expectations of stakeholders. Leaders, both at senior and other levels, are fully involved in the initiation and operation of the associated processes. All UBT leaders are encouraged to network with stakeholders on a regular basis in order to keep abreast of changing needs and expectations. Given that UBT is an academic institutions, the main delivery chain of products and stakeholder involvement is paramount from initial product development, regular product reviews and through to the final performance of students in the labour market in order to ensure continuing alignement with evolving stakeholder needs. Specific activities in the project lifecycle process ensure full stakeholder involvement and these are supported by the provision of adequate funding for visits to stakeholder sites.
The leadership of UBT has developed a systematic approch for regular interaction with stekholder organisations in order to exchange views, understand the strategy and needs of stakeholders, explain UBT strategy and explore opportunities for collaboration. The core management as well as mid-level management follows both formal and informal communication channels in stakeholder engagement. Overall improvement actions are planned and implemented based on the results of the stakeholder survey. Senior management actively supports this process and fully participates in customising the questionnaire according to evolving needs and context.
The core management engages with stakeholders through regular monthly meetings and participation in stakeholder events. The purpose of this approach is to ensure stakeholder satisfaction with product delivery but also recieve inputs into UBT development strategy, strategy implementation and strategy review. This is a primary source of objective feedback that is used to gauge stakeholder needs and expectations, to assess alignement of strategy, to measure stakeholder satisfaction and to obtain information about stakeholder perception of UBT performance.
Partnership is of paramount importance to an academic organisation through all phases of delivery and an essential priority of UBT management in implementing the strategy. The management promotes and support partnerships with other academic and research organisations and universities to stimulate creativity, maximise synergy and optimise combined use of resources. UBT mid-level management is encouraged to functionalise programme boards where stakeholders are consulted in the programme content and delivery. The product boards include formal and informal communication methods. The boards are there to ensure that academic programmes undergo both periodic but also annual reviews. The leaders recieve inputs about product overall design but also annual reviews to ensure that product components (curriculum courses) are refreshed and up-to-date to meet stakeholder expectations.
Partnerships with industry and labour market organisations seeks to advance the student employment and accelerate operational deployment of research results. Partnerships with public institutions seek to maximise UBT impact in the society – UBT is a lead interlecutor in national education matters, active participant in civil society organisations in the area of business, public administration, ICT, local development, construction and spatial planning. Partnerships with international development institutions seeks to contribute to R&D efforts in the most efficient manner by making UBT resources and expertise available to joint research projects. UBT leaders play close attention to partnerships with student and alumni organisation in order to minitor their progress and recieve inputs into further development of strategy and products. The management of support services encourages the development of partnerships in the support activities in order to seek further improvements in business delivery, advanced practices in procurement, finance, information systems, infrastructure management and potential outsourcing partners.
UBT leadership has also formalised a management structure to support stakeholder involvement. In addition to overall UBT board where stakeholders have a formal say in the overall strategy, the internal management structure includes the External Cooperation Office with respective positions of International Cooperation Officer, Industry Cooperation office, Alumni Officer. Other important organs that support stakeholder enagagements are the Career Support Centre and Academic Programme Boards. Participation in conferences, joint-activities, contribution to important national commissions and stakeholder recognition events are some of the vehicles designed to support stakeholder engagement.