Modernizing a University's Operating Model for Its Next Chapter
A respected university with more than 150 years of history entered a period of significant growth. As enrollment increased and philanthropic giving expanded, the institution's operating model faced new demands. Acquis partnered with university leadership to identify where changes would have the greatest impact and develop an operating model to support the university's next phase.
When ambition demands modernization
Philanthropic giving was increasing, enrollment was climbing, and research and programmatic ambitions were expanding. But the university's growth created new demands on the administrative structures supporting its work.
Larger philanthropic gifts required effective processes for allocating funds to their intended purposes. Research centers and institutes needed operational support suited to their individual needs. Meanwhile, the institution's core enterprise technology required a more coordinated approach to change as its operations evolved.
These pressures revealed opportunities to improve how the university managed resources, supported its research centers, and governed its technology. Leadership established a mandate to modernize operations and strengthen the way functions worked together. The university partnered with Acquis to translate that mandate into a practical operating model that could support continued growth.
Designing the operating model
Acquis first needed to understand how the university functioned. The team conducted dozens of working sessions and stakeholder interviews across functional units, examining existing processes and exploring where operational challenges originated.
Working closely with university leadership and key stakeholders, Acquis mapped dependencies across the institution and evaluated opportunities for improvement. The discovery process revealed how decisions in one area could affect processes elsewhere, helping the team distinguish isolated issues from broader opportunities to improve the operating model.
Acquis and university leadership used these findings to establish three priorities for the engagement.
Improve the flow of philanthropic funding
The university needed a more effective way to move philanthropic gifts into usable funding. Acquis designed a process to clarify the operational steps between receiving a gift and making its resources available to support students, research, and academic programs.
The proposed process gives the university a clearer framework for managing philanthropic funds and connecting them to their intended purposes.
Establish shared services for specialized centers
Research centers and institutes have distinct administrative needs, shaped in part by their size and maturity. Acquis designed a shared service model to provide consistent operational support while accommodating those differences.
Newer centers can receive help with launch and stabilization, while established centers can access targeted support to resolve administrative friction and fulfill requests. The model gives the university a scalable approach to supporting its centers as their needs evolve.
The design also preserves the authority of center leadership and the functional teams responsible for approvals. Clearer processes and defined responsibilities provide a consistent framework for administrative support while allowing leaders to retain ownership of their decisions.
Strengthen technology governance
The university's expanding operations increased the need for a consistent approach to changes across its core enterprise technology. Acquis developed a governance framework that defines how teams propose changes, evaluate their value, and determine priorities.
The framework clarifies how technology decisions move forward and connects those decisions to the university's broader operational needs. It also establishes a more consistent basis for evaluating requests as the institution continues to grow.
Together, these priorities formed a coordinated operating model. The team considered their dependencies as part of the overall design, giving leadership a view of how changes across the institution could work together.
From blueprint to implementation
Acquis consolidated the work into a single operating blueprint covering each priority. The blueprint includes 37 recommendations spanning foundational policy and ownership decisions, process redesign, and technology changes to support the new model.
Each recommendation follows its own path to implementation. Some can be approved and advanced within a single planning cycle, while others require larger structural commitments and a longer implementation horizon.
To help leadership navigate those differences, Acquis assessed each recommendation for effort, impact, and readiness. These ratings give the university a consistent basis for evaluating which opportunities it can pursue immediately and which require additional planning. They also help leadership understand the dependencies that shape the sequence of work across the broader operating model.
The blueprint connects the university's modernization mandate to the decisions required to put the new model into practice and gives leadership a prioritized set of recommendations and phased roadmap for advancing the work.
Continuing the partnership
As implementation progresses, Acquis continues to support the institution while it works to adopt the new operating model. Because the design reflects the priorities leadership set and the stakeholders helped shape, the university carries this work forward on a foundation it helped build, ready to meet the ambitions driving its next chapter.
Is your operating model build for what's next?
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