CASE DRIVE 2023: A Critical Forum for Advancement Technology Practitioners

The annual CASE DRIVE conference convenes higher education advancement practitioners to discuss their daily work and the technology they use to support it. The 2023 event was back in person with a sold-out attendance, and it was energizing to come together to share ideas, discuss issues, brainstorm, and talk to colleagues in a safe environment. […]
What Salesforce Education Cloud Means for Higher Education

Salesforce has launched its new Education Cloud industry platform, providing higher education with an integrated student-centric enterprise-wide CRM solution suite. The company is aligning its Education Cloud product strategy with the same approach that has brought it success across 11 other industries by leveraging the core Salesforce CRM platform and horizontal applications combined with innovations […]
Ellucian Live 2023: Ellucian Calls on Institutions to Join Them on Their SaaS Journey.

For the first time since 2019, thousands of participants met in person for the Ellucian Live conference in New Orleans. It was a memorable event with keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell and a host of major announcements from Ellucian. Attendees filed into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where they heard about Ellucian’s unapologetic plan to […]
Evisions Conference: Evisions Digs in Deep with Customers About the Future

With about 200 attendees, Evisions Conference 2023 was an intimate event packed with useful information. This year’s conference was the first in-person event for Evisions since the pandemic, with many attendees from previous years in attendance. My first impression of the event was how close the Evisions team is with its customers and how open […]
Getting the Most Out of Your Technology

During my time as a university professor in a college of education, I taught several courses on integrating technology into teaching. One of the frameworks discussed often was the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) model, which categorizes technology according to its transformative power. Each level within the model represents increased sophistication and ability to make […]
Workday AI/ML Innovation Summit 2023: AI, ML, and Energy

With the topics of AI and ML being top of mind across all industries, it was timely that Workday focused its 2023 Innovation Summit for analysts on the topic, highlighting how the company is using AI and ML across its solution suite today and how it envisions the future of its use. Attendees had an […]
The Future of Recruitment and Admissions CRM

While Tambellini research shows that approximately 70 percent of US higher education institutions have either selected a leading recruitment and admissions (R&A) CRM packaged application or developed their own custom CRM application (primarily R1 and R2 institutions), the mostly mature offerings in this space continue to innovate and broaden their functionality to maximize their impact […]
Micro-Credentials vs. The College Degree: The Case for “And” Instead of “Or”

As I study higher education and pay attention to the news media, I’ve been intrigued by comparisons of what some might consider two competing products: the micro-credential and the college degree. Popular narratives could lead some to believe that they’re competing for the future of postsecondary education, and it’s easy to get caught up in […]
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 […]
The Use of ChatGPT in Higher Education Advancement

ChatGPT buzz has recently extended to advancement with debates about the pros and cons of using the public chatbot to support higher education advancement efforts. As many of you already know, ChatGPT, launched by OpenAI, leverages a machine language learning model to converse with humans, answer complex questions, and even write content and application code. […]