Q: Reorganization: Just as many Community Colleges, our Programmers do it all and I really want documentation and support for changing things to LERN’s structure: Operations, Programmers, Sales & Marketing. We are trying to reorganize and I would like as much support for this as possible. When I mentioned this to one of our Operations Staff, she gasped and said how can we take on more!? Well, the Programmers cannot bring in more revenue if we are stuck turning in work orders, setting up classes, working with repeat instructors, responding to questions on phone/email. I don’t know how to get everyone to buy into this concept. Again, I would appreciate your help in whatever documentation you can share.
A: 1.20-25% of your budget should be spent on staff salaries (not benefits).
2.When you divide total revenue by staff positions responsible for revenue generation (so if someone is responsible for grants, for example, they would not be included), your staff productivity number should be $125,000 or higher.
3.That does not mean each staff person generates $125,000 because not everyone is a revenue generator. Salespeople and programmers are revenue generators, while operations and marketing staff support revenue generators.
4.Revenue generators should be generating on average 12 times their salary in revenue (the range is 6-20 times) in order to ensure the staff productivity number is $125,000 or higher.
5.The best way to ensure the 12 times salary is generated is by centralizing as much operations (registration, logistics, reporting, customer service and any other tasks that stop revenue generators from generating revenue) as possible. Centralization cannot happen overnight, thus brainstorming and prioritizing tasks to centralize is the best strategy.
6.In order to handle the centralized tasks, a) the number of operations staff is normally larger than the number of programming or sales staff ("normally" 2 operations staff for 1 revenue generator) and b) the operations staff uses a software system built for continuing education where 50%+ of registrations are generated online and operations staff can collect the required data and run the critical reports, such as go/no-go.
7.In reorganizing to a this type of structure, you always focus on operations first. Make sure operations has the proper staffing (outsourcing for some tasks may be an option) and the "right" software system is being used. Just to push tasks on existing operations staff (unless they are underutilized) is not the best strategy.