I had an interesting conversation with folks from Handshake, which our Career Education department chose and we are thrilled to support. It was all about “Why Handshake, how did you decide” etc. You take the word “Handshake” out and replace it with “Workday” or some other product and the same applies. I want to talk about how we do it at Wellesley with the hope that this will be useful for others. I am keenly aware that no two institutions are the same in our space and therefore the applicability may be limited!

“It’s the strategy, stupid!” – Having a strong strategy for the near term is essential for any organization. Strategic plans are excellent starting point, but unless they are updated on a regular basis, they are yet another document that we created for the sake of creation. Translating what we all say in the strategic planning document into actionable and consistent message to your own organization and then to the community is important.

Early on, we created a strategic planning document  (we are in the process of creating a new one for the next few years) and it captured the essence that our goals are to promote the effective use of technologies in teaching, learning, research and improve efficiencies in administrative areas. And to achieve this goal, we needed to get out of worrying about touchy feely hardware on campus as well as systems and software that are being a deterrent to progress. Moving to the cloud and seeking systems and software that helps achieve this overarching goal then become our actionable goals.

Act on the strategy – Committing to executing a strategy is very important and having some early victories are even more important. As circular as it may sound, when you create a strategic plan, rather than some pie in the sky idea, pay attention to the successful execution of strategy. If you did that, there must be some “low hanging fruits” or “early wins”. This is how you gain the trust of the community, which you badly need.

It’s about the institution and not you – As subject matter experts, we all have certain biases (Mac vs PC, iOS vs Android, physical vs electronic resources etc.). We should not let that take over our strategy. Always think institutionally and also for the long haul, so that some of these decisions are transferable to whoever follows and is likely to serve the institution well in the long run.

Cloud or Not Cloud – If you are not aware of the Higher Ed Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (fairly recent) from EDUCAUSE, you should check it out. It is fairly comprehensive and is a great starting point. We all differ in the way we evaluate products. Generally speaking, we attach a lot of significance to security compliance, which depends on the data that will be stored elsewhere. For example, the level of vetting needed when you are sharing PII data vs FERPA data are very different. For some institutions HIPPA compliance is critically important. For a few others whether the data is stored within the confines of USA is important.

Exit strategies are important and so are data ownership. So, having a comprehensive view of all of this is critical and it should not be cloud for the sake of cloud that should drive the decision. Sometimes, you need to say No or push hard on the vendor to agree to what you need! We should not be afraid to seek legal counsel to vet the contracts and push back on vendors.

Feature Assessment – Again, develop a clear understanding of what is important. Some institutions spend way too much time in documenting every single thing that they currently do that they want in a new system and others are pretty casual about it. The reality is, there is no system out there that will give you everything you need exactly the way you want it. Sales people will always tell you that everything is possible. So, assess what is critical. Also, depending on your institution, this is great opportunity to rethink.

It may really be a blessing that the new product does not support some of the bad practices you follow today! Grab them! We pay a lot of attention to functionality that are essential, we are not afraid to challenge our functional offices to rethink their workflows and offer support to manage changes; we like mobile first approach; Usability and User Interface design are critical and so are integrations through API. Other things such as SSO through established standards, ability to quickly resolve any issues go without saying.

For us, going to cloud has been part of our strategy and the community feels comfortable with the approach so far. I am proud to say that this has continued to help us reallocate our resources to support areas where we can make a difference.