Making Platform Capabilities Central to Modernization Decisions
Modern cloud administrative solutions, including finance, HCM, and student, have delivered one clear set of outcomes: standardized, configurable processes where customers cannot customize the core application. That’s real progress, based on the critical weakness of legacy on-premises solutions —expensive customization and the need for massively disruptive upgrades. But it also created a very different data […]
Your AI Isn’t a Tool. It’s an Intern.
For the last few years, professionals have asked if AI would take their jobs. Now, in early 2026, we are seeing the first clear signals. While the long-term future of work remains unwritten, current data suggests that for now, AI is not replacing most roles. Instead, it is fundamentally transforming them. The right question to […]
Reimagining ERP Starts by Letting Go of the Past
Stop Replacing Systems. Start Reimagining Outcomes. In many ERP replacement initiatives across higher education, institutions say they want reimagination. But what often shows up in practice is something else entirely: a deep, almost gravitational pull toward requirements. Pages and pages of requirements. Detailed mappings of legacy processes. Endless conversations about how the old system worked […]
Design Principles: The Missing Link Between Strategy and Technology in Higher Ed
Most institutions don’t fail because they picked the “wrong” system. They struggle because the technology decisions made along the way are not anchored in shared, strategic guardrails. That is the role of design principles. Design principles are short, durable statements that describe how your institution will make technology decisions across selection, implementation, and operations. When […]
Oracle’s Vision Comes Together: The Company That Now Builds AI from Silicon to Service
There comes a point when a company stops talking about what it wants to become and starts proving what it already is. That was Oracle this week at AI World 2025 in Las Vegas, a company now emerging as a unified force rather than a collection of disconnected ambitions. For years, Oracle’s story has been […]
From Anxiety to Action: Your 90-Day AI Upskilling Roadmap
A significant gap is opening between those who can leverage AI and those who can’t. This guide is a practical roadmap to ensure you’re on the right side of that divide. Why This Matters (And Why It’s Not All Doom) Over the past year, I’ve had countless conversations with colleagues and clients who are excited […]
New Delivery Models Open Doors to Modernization
One of the most exciting shifts we’re seeing in the higher education administrative technology industry is the service implementation partners’ role in reshaping access and opening modernization opportunities to new market segments. Partnering closely with software providers and offering long-term engagement models, firms are creating new deployment and support systems that promise to lower costs […]
Identity in the AI Age: SailPoint Navigate 2025 Conference Update
At Navigate 2025 in beautiful Austin, Texas, SailPoint took the opportunity to launch several meaningful products, focusing on the emerging threats in a rapidly evolving security ecosystem. The products are created through the lens that identity has become the new control plane for enterprise security. That vision makes sense. However, it also reveals some harsh […]
Anthology’s Strategic Shift: A Retreat from the All-in-One Bet
Anthology’s recent announcement of a “strategic transformation” signals a significant course correction. The company plans to divest its student, finance, and HCM products, with Ellucian named as the stalking horse bidder and Encoura also taking on part of the portfolio. At the same time, Anthology will restructure itself around its Teaching and Learning portfolio and […]
Is There a Better Way? How Higher Ed Can Finally Adapt
For too long, higher education has wrestled with inefficiency, silos, and structures that resist change. Now, in 2025, the cracks are impossible to ignore. Yet amid the dysfunction lies a chance to do things differently. Dynamic Work Design offers institutions a pathway to cut through complexity, connect people and processes, and build the resilience needed […]
