Enabling operational excellence through good technology and data

We were really pleased to support the Institute of Business Leadership (ISBL) research into operational excellence (OpEx) in trusts, which was presented to an audience of trust leaders on the 3rd October. 

The study was led by the impressive Chris Hallmark and a team of education leaders, whose objective was to explore the applicability of the OpEx approach in the education sector. The discipline, familiar to most of the commercial sector and many public sector organisations, including the NHS, holds some exciting opportunities for schools and trusts, big or small.

Whether it’s finance, HR, procurement, technology, data, catering, cleaning, estates, marketing or PR, the report, and its framework, gives trusts the opportunity to radically improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The net result will be the creation of capacity within stretched resources, improved operational risk management, and culture change - but there will very likely be a positive influence on educational outcomes too. 

For trusts who are choosing to embrace the framework ISBL has produced, there is a lot of work to do. It requires overcoming cultural barriers (the report identifies 14 of them), and a likely change in behaviour, from the Board down to every employee working in operational roles, whether physically in the “central team” or working in back offices in schools. But with trusts such as E-ACT (38 schools) committing to include this way of working as a key strategy in their 2024/25 business plan, it’s clear that this has the potential to be transformative for the sector, if done properly. 

The OpEx research team: Chris Hallmark (second left), Andrew Hamilton, Dr Paula Holbrook, Rebecca Beaver, Helen Wetherall and Mark O'Brien, flanked by Stephen Morales (far left), CEO of ISBL, and Nicola West Jones (far right), of The Key Group

The Key Group’s CEO, Chris Kenyon, offered some thoughts in the report itself (p.37) about ways in which EdTech companies can build products to enable OpEx in schools and trusts. Have a read below, or download the executive abstract, OpEx framework, or full report here (note that you need to register with ISBL to access it, by clicking “log in”, which takes less than a minute). 

Working with the right tools

As with any job in life, working with good tools makes a critical difference to output. When we’re thinking about the enablers for operational excellence in MATs, we should, as a starting point, ensure that central teams and the schools they support are working with good, usable systems and technology. 

User-focused technology

Suppliers of this tech need to have a fanatical focus on the end user (their workflows, their needs, their pain points) when developing software tools. Such tools are used multiple times a day, every day, in a climate where workload and stress is high, and quick decisions matter. Attention to detail, administratively speaking, can be the difference between a pupil picked up for being absent without authorisation, or not. It can be the difference between a teacher being made aware, in a critical moment, of a safeguarding concern raised by a colleague, or not. 

Retaining staff through better technology

In a climate where staff are leaving the sector for better work-life balance, providers have a responsibility to ensure that their daily experience of using tech is as good as in alternative sectors. We can prevent a scenario where staff are suffering a thousand paper cuts every day, because their tools and systems are painful to use.  

Data visualisation and centralisation

In addition, MATs should be demanding good centralised systems, which allow central teams to monitor data through clear visualisation. But it shouldn’t stop with having visibility. Really impactful, modern technology should give MATs the ability to “push down” actions to schools, to create uniformity where needed. Let’s take, for example, a policy that MATs might want embedded in all their schools, such as a common behaviour policy for its secondaries. Using centralised technology to “push down” that policy to school level, so all schools are recording behaviour incidents against the same metrics in the same way on a shared system, is key to a both successful implementation and a central team’s ability to monitor impact. Governance too, will be able to see the effect of policies they’ve signed off. 

Bridging the gap between policy and practice

The result is that MATs can close the gap between the theory - addressed via written, “static” policies-  and the practical reality, by using common metrics that are spun out and implemented from the policy. 

From data to stories

Running underneath this, operational excellence relies on the democratisation of access to data. Good technology allows staff to move from stats to stories at speed. Technology should allow staff (at the right levels) to drill down from the metrics to the real human story beneath the data. Clear triangulation of standardised data from multiple sources is just the starting point - layering in on-the-ground knowledge from staff, collected in a systematic way, is what gives leaders the whole picture about a child, a family, a class, a member of staff, an incident. In turn, having the whole picture, accessed at speed, allows teams to move from hindsight to foresight, and then to make better decisions on what to focus their limited time on.  

Redesigning processes with new technology

Finally, MATS should be using the opportunity of changing suppliers to redesign processes, to solve the intractable problems and achieve operational excellence.  If MATs are buying timetabling software, they should be asking: how does this technology solve problems around staff wanting to work flexibly, or to job share? If they’re buying HR systems, ask: how does this help us to track whether our new induction programme is leading to good staff staying longer? If they’re buying an MIS, ask how it supports the TAs, to communicate behaviour incidents happening in the playground to class teachers. Coming full circle - start with the user problems, and look for technology that will help you to solve them.