Evaluating technology vendors creates strong opinions in higher education.
Spend enough time around conversations about Ellucian, Oracle, Workday, Blackboard, Salesforce, or a handful of other large providers, and eventually you will hear some version of this:
“I will never do business with them again.”
Usually, there is a story behind that statement.
A failed implementation. A difficult contract negotiation. Years of frustration with a product. Poor support. Leadership changes. Promises that did not materialize. A relationship that deteriorated. Sometimes the experience was not merely frustrating. It was expensive, disruptive, and deeply damaging to the institution.
Those experiences should not be dismissed.
But they also should not automatically become a permanent technology strategy.
There is an important difference between saying, “We had a very poor experience with this vendor, and they will need to demonstrate that the conditions that created it have changed,” and saying, “We will never consider this vendor again.”
The first is informed skepticism.
The second can become a source of bias.
One of the hardest things about a technology vendor evaluation is separating what we know from what we feel.
Our experiences shape our judgment. They should. An institution that has struggled with a provider would be irresponsible to simply forget that history the next time it enters the market.
But history needs to be examined alongside present reality.
Companies change leadership. Products change. Ownership changes. Implementation methodologies change. Partner ecosystems change. Customer success organizations change. Technical architectures change. Sometimes companies get better. Sometimes they get worse.
And sometimes the vendor you remember is simply not the vendor that exists today.
That does not mean giving anyone a clean slate. It means doing the work to determine what has actually changed.
If your institution enters a technology evaluation in 2026 with a conclusion formed primarily from what happened in 2018, the question should be whether that conclusion still holds.
Maybe it does.
But you should be able to demonstrate why.
This becomes particularly important in higher education because we rely heavily on our peers.
That is generally a strength of the industry. CIOs talk to CIOs. Registrars talk to registrars. Provosts talk to provosts. Institutions share implementation experiences, warn each other about problems, and help one another avoid mistakes. We are competitors on the football field but allies in strategy and support. It’s unique, and it’s beautiful.
Those conversations can be some of the most valuable inputs into an evaluation.
They can also become incredibly influential.
A respected peer saying, “Stay away from Vendor X,” carries weight. So does a conference conversation where several institutions describe similar frustrations.
Listen carefully to those stories. Then keep asking questions.
When did this happen?
Which product were they using?
Was the issue with the software, the implementation partner, the vendor team, the institution itself, or some combination of them?
Is the same leadership in place?
Is the same product architecture in place?
Have other institutions had the same experience recently?
Most importantly, is what happened to them predictive of what is likely to happen to you?
Peer experience is valuable evidence. It is not universal truth.
There absolutely are reasons to exclude a vendor from consideration.
An institution may determine that a provider cannot meet a critical functional requirement. The financial risk may be unacceptable. Security or compliance concerns may be unresolved. The vendor may lack the implementation capacity, market stability, technical architecture, or strategic alignment necessary for the institution.
Those are defensible conclusions.
“I hate that company” is not.
Neither is “We had a terrible experience with them ten years ago.”
If the evidence leads you to eliminate a provider, eliminate them. But the decision should survive scrutiny from someone who does not share your history with that vendor.
That is a useful test.
Could you explain the decision to your president, board, faculty, students, auditors, or future leadership team using current evidence rather than institutional memory or personal frustration?
If not, the evaluation may not be as objective as you think.
None of this means institutions should be naïve.
Past performance matters.
If a vendor damaged the relationship, the burden should be on that vendor to demonstrate what is different now. Ask hard questions. Require references that resemble your institution. Examine implementation outcomes. Look at leadership stability. Test the product. Validate the roadmap. Understand where responsibility sits when something goes wrong.
Forgiveness is not a procurement strategy either.
But neither is resentment.
The responsibility of institutional leaders is not to reward or punish vendors. It is to make the best available decision for the institution.
Sometimes that means choosing the company you have trusted for twenty years.
Sometimes it means leaving them.
And sometimes it means taking another look at a company you thought you would never consider again.
There is also a human dimension to this that I find difficult to ignore.
I hope no one evaluates my entire career based on my worst decision.
I hope a mistake I made years ago does not permanently define what someone believes I am capable of today.
I hope people consider whether I learned, changed, improved, and became better at what I do.
Organizations are not people, and technology decisions should not be sentimental. But the underlying principle is still useful.
Past behavior deserves consideration. It should not automatically eliminate the possibility of change.
Our job is to assess what is in front of us as honestly as we can.
Bring your experience to the table. Bring your skepticism. Bring the lessons from the implementation that went badly and the contract negotiation you never want to repeat.
Then bring evidence.
Ask what has changed.
Ask what has not.
And make the decision that is best for your institution today, not the decision that feels most satisfying because of what happened yesterday.
Originally posted by Matthew Winn on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow him there to catch all his great industry insights.
Share Article:
© Copyright 2026, The Tambellini Group. All Rights Reserved.
Get exclusive access to higher education analysts, rich research, premium publications, and advisory services.
