Recently Completed Projects and Engagements

This project aimed to document general standards for design and data integration, setting a foundation for consistent application development and integration throughout campus. Two workgroups convened to develop these standards: User Experience (UX)/User Interface (UI) and Data/IAM. SPMO directly assisted with the development of the Data/IAM standards. Documented standards for Data and IAM were presented to and approved by the App Services Subcommittee on May 21, 2025.

The 2025 Business Excellence Symposium, held on February 4 at the I Hotel, received mainly positive feedback from attendees. Participants expressed appreciation for the well-organized event and the valuable content presented. There were 220 attendees at the symposium. Sixteen exhibitors participated from across the campus and system. The event featured breakout sessions led by Becky McNaught, Kristi Moore, and Stephen Kemp. The keynote speech was delivered by Robin Kaler, which was also well attended. The symposium was successful in terms of turnout and engagement. The SPMO plans to continue hosting the Business Excellence Symposium at the I Hotel in the future, building on the success of this year’s event. Plans may include expanding the range of topics covered, increasing exhibitors participation, and further improving attendee engagement.

Completed in February 2024, the Brand Guidelines Website project’s objective was to fully develop the brand guidelines for the Urbana campus and provide them in a format that all units could use in their day-to-day marketing and communications activities. The Strategic Communications and Marketing Office (StratCom) team worked with key campus communication and marketing stakeholders to codify brand standards and build a refreshed brand guidelines website, brand.illinois.edu, that provides the brand policy and resources for the university’s marketing and communications community.

As a part of the Operational Excellence recommendation to foster a community of data practitioners, the Data Explorers project set out to develop a program that increases data literacy and general awareness of data services and data related efforts. The program accomplished these goals by coordinating presentations that address a range of topics related to fundamental and advanced data concepts, data related programs and services available, and on-going projects that impact the data community. The Data Explorers Program was fully operationalized on 7/1/24. The program is now led by the Data Explorers Leadership Team with the support of the Data Explorers Coordinator Intern. The program has successfully hosted over 10 presentations and has built a consistent audience. It will continue to grow and develop increased engagement with the community.

The Data Mentorship Program project was established in April 2024 as a joint venture with IHR and Data to address the growing need for enhanced data literacy, proficiency, and privacy among data consumers across the Urbana campus. The project delivered a pilot framework for data mentorship, including program structure, mentor-mentee guidelines, onboarding and evaluation processes, a website, and means for participant feedback, program leadership objectives, training sessions, and pairing processes. The pilot launched with 10 participants in May of 2025. The Data Mentorship Program successfully provided a blueprint for a 3-month interaction with mentors/mentees. IHR will continue to monitor and evaluate participant engagement, satisfaction, and skill development through established processes and feedback mechanisms established by this project. The ownership of the Data Mentorship Program will be maintained by IHR.

The Data Resource Inventory project sought to gather information and produce an inventory of existing administrative data resources that are utilized in strategic decision making. This inventory will be leveraged for future projects that address OpEx recommendations and will ultimately improve the way the university community interacts with the available data resources. This project identified and documented over 90 data resources spanning across 16 administrative areas. The information collected has been captured in the Smartsheet tool that will be easy to expand upon and leverage as additional projects related to the creation of a data services catalog are executed.

The Defining Purchasing and Procurement Roles and Responsibilities project spanned much of 2025. During the year, procurement and purchasing professionals from across campus came together to work through who should own various steps in different procurement processes. This collaborative project resulted in an interactive web page (https://www.uiucpurchasing.illinois.edu/roles-responsibilities/) that guides working professionals through various purchasing and procurement processes and helps shed light on who is responsible for which area.

The FABPlus expansion project commenced in February 2024 and was finalized in September 2024. The project’s primary focus was to expand access to FABPlus by providing a collaborative tool for budget and resource planning for inventory managers for items less than $2,500. The FABPlus expansion highlights tracking items such as PCs, laptops, phones, and other items with memory storage. The project expanded access to FABPlus to the University of Springfield, Chicago, and the Urbana campus. The FABPlus expansion also improved inventory management training tools and created an onboarding structure for new inventory managers.

The GenAI Solutions Hub project completed Phase 1 on 8/30/2024. The project established a working group of IT professionals who focused on developing campus-specific generative AI best practices for administrative/business purposes. Part of the project was the pilot of MS Co-Pilot with early adopter departments and units for general testing and to help establish those best practices. Phase 2 focuses on operationalizing generative AI tools and resources at Illinois. Visit the GenAI website for more information.

Completed in early 2024, the goal of this project was to set up an interim board to serve the Urbana campus by providing guidance on the release and use of student-focused data.

The Keys Management System was successfully launched to pilot in November 2024. Small units will appreciate it’s simplified tracking system. Large units will likely leverage the added enhancement of the key request system, which allows those outside of the unit to request keys access to their spaces. The keys system will remain open to participating units after the pilot. However, other units will not be invited to use the tool until later in 2025 when Facilities has more bandwidth to onboard units. As Space management needs become more important, a dedicated space coordinator or developer (or both) will likely be needed.

The Master Brand Launch project was completed in June 2024. This project aimed to introduce the refreshed brand platform to the campus communication and marketing community and provide tools and training to implement it. Included in these efforts were an official launch event (in person and online), providing a library of written training and templates, an online training program through Canvas, and in-person and online workshops. The StratCom team also provided Office Hours for units to speak to a team member about questions about their department situation or need.

The PCMO Chatbot launched to the website on 10/29/2024. The chatbot will help guide users to necessary information, intending to reduce emails and calls to the PCMO team. The work on this bot will inform future chatbot projects.

During the Spring and Summer of 2025, the Purchasing and Contracts Management Office (PCMO) turned their attention to enhancing its communication strategy. The PCMO Communication Strategy Project established formal and consistent methods for the PCMO to communicate to various campus stakeholders on things like policy changes. They implemented a forum, office hours, and established a plan on what to communicate to key audiences like BAC and BMG.

Directly tied to the Operational Excellence recommendation calling for the proposal of a campus-level data governance structure, the Permanent Data Governance Recommendation Project successfully brought together stakeholders from across campus to evaluate potential, comprehensive solutions for data governance. From those evaluations and additional research this team composed a thorough recommendation for a proposed permanent data governance solution and presented it to executive leadership.

Part of Operational Excellence, this project mapped procurement approval processes within the Purchasing & Contracts Management Office (PCMO) and with in colleges/units across campus. We completed the project on March 12, 2024. The project produced 9 maps for the PCMO and Unit/College processes. The project flagged 10 opportunities for improvement in areas like transparency/tracking, training, and collaboration. Next steps will be to determine which opportunities the Procurement Advisory Governance Committee want to move forward on and to begin discovery and/or project set up for those items.

The Project Management Community of Practice was successfully completed on May 15, 2024. This project set out to establish a campus-wide community of project managers and those who do project management as part of their jobs. Over the course of a year, we collated more than 50 templates, trainings, and other resources. The community has 92 members, 78 are considered active members. We hosted 4 roundtables, the first one had 13 attendees, the second had 21, the third had 42, and the fourth had 32. The Community will continue being facilitated by the SPMO.

The Swanlund IT state analysis ran from May to September 2025. The final report offered key insights and actionable recommendations to improve their funding model, operational structure, and processes.  The project gathered data through previous projects, lessons learned, and departmental data, surveys, and meetings with staff and other IT departments. Swanlund IT will utilize the report to streamline operations, enhance funding management, and optimize workloads for improved future efficiency.

The Website Management Center of Expertise (Web COE) project, which began in the fall of 2023 and transitioned to a fully operationalized model in the fall of 2025, leveraged collaboration of university experts to help University departments with their various web needs, from web hosting and consulting services, to hosted Illinois-branded assets and themes, to website accessibility evaluation. The ongoing mission of the Web COE is to:

• Create efficient web processes
• Define best web practices
• Elevate existing university web resources
• Identify needed web resources
• Provide collective web knowledge and expertise

The 2026 Business Excellence Symposium was held on February 10^th at the I Hotel and received largely positive feedback for its organization and content. The event drew over 180 attendees and featured 17 vendors from across the campus and system. Breakout sessions were led by Becky McNaught, Kristie Nock, Stephen Kemp, and Julie Block with her HR team, and the keynote by Dr. Jennifer Nelson was well attended. Building on this success, the SPMO plans to continue hosting the symposium at the I Hotel, with potential enhancements including expanded topics, increased vendor and networking opportunities, and improved attendee exposure to breakout session content.