The Top 20 (x3) Tambellini Resources from 2021
Each year, Tambellini Group delivers expert research and resources relevant to CIOs and IT leaders in higher education. As 2021 comes to an end, Tambellini Group is grateful for another successful year. However, success would not be possible without you, our members. With current and prospective members in mind, we’ve highlighted our top 20 resources […]
Why Is Change So Hard for Higher Education?
I have heard this question for decades. Why can’t higher ed modernize, become more efficient, or run more like a business? It is important to recognize that some of the reasons why change is so difficult in this industry are inherent to higher education’s mission and collaborative and collegial structure. Since the mid-1980s, institutions have […]
Change Is Hard: Humanizing Post-COVID Technology Transformation in Higher Education
Change is hard. Tambellini analysts hear a version of this statement from almost every higher education institution considering a significant technology change. As a recent Harvard Business Review article pointed out, “At the heart of any radical change in higher education is a willingness by the administration and faculty to embrace new governance, processes, structures, […]
How Higher Ed CIOs Can Support Student Success Initiatives
Although many higher education institutions have for years sought to improve student success (increasingly known as student experience), the visible struggle of many students during COVID-19 renewed the urgency around institutions getting it right—right now. More schools are professionalizing advising, creating new student success divisions, and restructuring student and academic affairs to streamline oversight and […]
What Did I Forget?! Top 5 Non-Implementation Issues to Think About During a Cloud Application Transition
After living through three generations of technology that have swept through higher education administrative systems over the last 30+ years, I have added the unique experience of stepping out of the institutions and into my role as an industry analyst. Thinking about my own experiences as I listen to many of you talk about what’s […]
The Deployment Journey: Learning from the Past to Shape the Future
We learned about project management and change management at enterprise scale. We learned about conversion for very large systems. And we learned that customizing systems to meet our needs led to disastrous long-term costs, locked us into decades-old decisions, and prevented business innovation. The experiences from those years inform the work we do today in […]
Pandemic: Navigating Transformative Change
The year 2020 is like no other we’ve seen in our lifetime. When normality has fallen by the wayside and systemic change is necessary, questions abound. How will campus reopen in the fall? What changes are necessary to support students, staff, and faculty on campus throughout a pandemic? Transformative change has distinct challenges, regardless of […]
Business Process Optimization Before an ERP Project?
For many, the idea that software would drive business processes is problematic. The thinking is that software should support good processes, not drive their design. This made great sense when software was designed to meet the need from scratch or could easily be customized to meet the process design. The result, however, was custom software […]
Communicating During an ERP Implementation
Would it be surprising to say that change management is important in an ERP system implementation? The problem is that we think about change and communication as normal, everyday occurrences. Catch phrases like “Change is constant” and “You can’t over communicate” don’t have much meaning, and we take ideas like these for granted. An ERP […]
Redefining Work Roles and What’s Important, Part 1
In times of disruption, it is helpful to focus on the goal. For the higher education community, the goals are deeply rooted in teaching, learning, and supporting the community served by the institutions. Although the way we approach these goals has changed rapidly since the start of 2020 and is changing daily, higher education at […]
