QI E-News
  November, 2003 QI: Making a Difference for the CSU VOL. 5, NO. 2  
Cost Savings Make a "Hit" at CSU San Marcos
By Katy Rees
Quality Improvement Facilitator

How do you solve your budget woes? The Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) division at Cal State San Marcos went to bat with a new program, called the "$100,000 Grand Slam." This program, inspired by a successful idea from UCSD, challenged the division's employees to brainstorm ideas for cutting costs, saving money, and reducing waste. The goal: to save $100,000 in our division during 2003/2004, using ideas from managers and staff. Often, the best thoughts of how to save money and cut costs come from front-line employees, and this program allows us the opportunity to be proactive and meet the budget challenge together as a division.

In Spring 2003, we introduced the program at several division meetings and used the "Grand Slam" baseball theme to help generate interest division-wide. FAS managers met with their departments to brainstorm potential cost-cutting ideas. They handed out Cracker Jack boxes during brainstorming meetings, and each person who submitted an idea received a 100 Grand candy bar. Employees are also able to submit their ideas via an online form on our Balanced Scorecard web site. To date, we have received 107 submissions! Our Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Leadership Team, a group of twenty FAS managers who meet regularly and oversee our BSC program, reviewed and responded to each Grand Slam idea. In addition, each submitter received a written response from Vice President Stephen Garcia. The Leadership Team approved approximately forty ideas for implementation, with another thirty ideas awaiting further research and coordination by assigned managers.

The $100,000 Grand Slam also links to our division's Balanced Scorecard objective, "Strategically plan and manage resources". We measure this program's success by logging the number of Grand Slam submissions, the number of suggestions implemented, total hours saved, and total dollars saved. We currently track the approved ideas for implementation to document the exact savings of hours and dollars during the 03/04 fiscal year. As we realize savings, we recognize employees by giving them baseball trophies (note: in the spirit of saving money, we use employee-donated baseball trophies and simply change the name plate for a mere $4). Jim Carr, our first trophy recipient, saved the division $20,000 per year through 2007 with his suggestion to eliminate leased warehouse space and move stored items back to campus. Some of our other implemented ideas include:
    1. Division "Swap Meet." An on-line site for FAS departments to offer surplus office furniture, equipment, and supplies to other FAS departments was developed to allow the division to make use of surplus items before making new purchases. An additional suggestion was made to ask employees to clean out their desks and return excess supplies periodically before submitting new supply orders.
    2. Telephone/cell phones. Each department reviewed its current telephone system and eliminated any added features that aren't being utilized. In addition, all cell phone plans were reviewed to ensure that they match approximate usage and don't include unnecessary features.
    3. Training consolidation. Departments are encouraged to send fewer employees to the same training or workshop, instead allowing one or two people to attend and have them bring back information to share with others.
    4. Reduce or share memberships and subscriptions. The Vice President's office developed a database of all current memberships and subscriptions in the division. This information is available by request and will allow departments to share publications and avoid unnecessary duplication.
    5. Turn off computers and printers at end of day. In order to generate savings in electricity, computers are now turned off at the end of the day Friday for the weekend. Printers and monitors are turned off at the end of each day.
    6. Savings on paper. In order to save paper, we encourage use of double-sided copies whenever possible.
    7. Share office equipment. When purchasing a copier, fax machine, or other piece of equipment, departments consider making the purchase jointly with another department.
    8. Cross train student assistants. Departments are encouraged to consider cross-training student assistants in order to increase flexibility within departments and share student assistant resources.
    9. Distribute flyers and newsletters electronically rather than using paper.

We celebrated the success of this program, along with our other division accomplishments, at our Summer Jam event. This baseball-themed event included refreshments, games and employee recognition. Overall, the $100,000 Grand Slam has proven to be a successful and well-received way to deal with our budget issues. For more information about this program and to view additional employee suggestions, you may visit our web site at www.csusm.edu/bsc.
Ideas, comments, questions? Have news or other QI-related information to share? Contact John Sanders at jsanders@calstate.edu. Let us know what information would be helpful to include in QI E-News.