6 Tips to Ensure Shared Services Success at Your Institution

What has changed in shared services for higher education institutions over the last few decades? The need to create a financially viable, stable, and successful shared services organization (SSO). Institutions need to be highly strategic and deliberate with their approach to shared services to see a return on their investment. This blog post will outline […]
The Evolution of the Chatbot: Introducing Generative AI

To meet expectations around timely, relevant, and personalized communications amid budget cuts, staffing shortages, and other pressures, many higher education institutions are turning to chatbots—more recently, generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. Institutions have been using chatbots for years now. However, recent solution advancements that utilize generative AI have profound implications for higher education, which has […]
Beyond Spreadsheets: It’s Time to Rethink Budget and Planning Tools

Over the last three years, pandemic-induced stresses on higher education have uncovered the impacts of an outdated budget planning process that’s still prevalent throughout higher education. While most colleges and universities quickly pivoted to offer new learning modalities and ensure the continuation of operations remotely in response to COVID-19, financial planning analysts had a more […]
Why Strategic Alignment Matters More Than Budget Size

An Interview with Karen Boudreau-Shea, Vice President, Advisory Services The impact of financial strains is top of mind for higher education technology stakeholders: Respondents to Campus Technology’s 2022 Digital Transformation Survey cited “budget restrictions” as the top obstacle thwarting their progress toward digital transformation, and 41 percent of respondents to Educause’s 2021 Dx QuickPoll cited […]
Why Is Modernization Planning Urgent?

Over the last several years, we have heard much about digital transformation (DX) being important to higher education. However, DX is not a goal for every institution, as one of our clients recently reminded me. DX addresses fundamental change in an institution’s approach to delivering on its core mission areas: education, research, and service. […]
Capturing the Rewards of Modernization

When establishing a modernization program, how can you focus your projects, teams, and executives on outcomes that matter? Most major software projects have tactical goals, such as completing the implementation on time and on budget, without establishing the outcome-related goals that focus on the impact of the change. One way to create and track these […]