Higher Education Institutions are faced with funding cuts. Senior management teams across the sector are looking across all spending areas for cost-reductions whilst students’ expectations will be higher due to their perception of linking increased tuition fees to the overall university experience.

Currently each of the UK’s higher education institutions provides most administrative services in-house; from finance, IT, human resources and administrative services. At the recent Universities UK annual conference David Willetts set out his belief that too many universities try to do too much in-house and that sharing services should be a priority.

The current drive for efficiency savings, together with growing uncertainty over future income and expenditure plans creates a major opportunity for new business development and sees for the first time a willingness in higher education to consider substantive changes.

This inaugural conference explored the opportunities for the strategic development of new models provision and how to capitalise on movements in the sector for greater integration and streamlining of administrative services.

This programme pack contains presentations of key speakers with experience in this area or who understand the policy area. We brought together high level speakers who shared their experience with shared services projects, who have been involved in feasibility studies, who are involved in projects and brought tips to the conference of the opportunities and pitfalls.