University and K-12 chief information officers (CIOs) are increasingly aware of the urgency and power of digital transformation. There is a wide untapped opportunity to maximize efficiency, collaboration and reduce cost and errors in your operations. In this article, I'll showcase how a series of small steps can help bring about digital transformation.
Education Sector Ripe For Digital Transformation
From virtual classrooms to mobile learning apps, collaborative learning to regularly upgrading teacher skills, digital transformations have brought about unprecedented changes to the modern education system.
Unfortunately, most institutions have yet to transform the core administrative processes and tasks at the heart of their operations. The majority of these day-to-day tasks from student enrollment to purchase requisitions to absence requests are still performed using paper- or email-based processes that offer zero flexibility and an enormous amount of wasted time.
Modern digital tools and technologies such as visual, low-code platforms, can help schools easily automate internal processes, streamline routine activities and enhance communication between students, teachers and parents. We’re talking about large efficiency improvements that could change what employees do every day. It could make a fundamental difference by allowing educators to focus on students rather than paperwork.
Major Obstacles To Achieving Digital Transformation In Education
• Reluctance to adopt new technology and systems: People tend to get used to doing things in a certain way and are reluctant to leave their comfort zone. When we have to adopt a new technology or system, we are afraid of failure and reluctant to learn new skills or processes. The very first step is to ensure that your employees clearly understand the benefits of such changes.
• Talent gap: Skills are at the core of innovation. A lack of resources or expertise has emerged as the biggest challenge in digital transformation. Educational institutions must compete for increasingly scarce talent in a variety of areas from user experience to security to cloud.
• Legacy integration: Existing legacy systems are often crucial to processes in organizations; however, modern web-based business applications do not guarantee compatibility with them. That’s where organizations hit a roadblock and are forced to spend more for either an upgrade or custom integration.
• Getting started: This is the most crucial challenge when it comes to translating strategy into a concrete plan of action. “Where to start?” is the key factor for success. Identify a business process that’s not too simple or too complex and has reasonable volume, and be sure to understand the time and effort required to digitally transform it.
• Data accuracy: Like most organizations, data in educational institutions is siloed. Questions of accuracy and reliability really come into play. Which data did you use to implement new processes for the future? Which data set is used to make an impactful business decision? You need salient, timely and precise data to make informed decisions.
How To Harness Digital Transformation In Education
The future of technology in education has absolutely nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with leadership. It starts at the top -- it starts with the board of directors or the board of trustees understanding the value and urgency of digital transformation and how it can be leveraged. Leadership must champion the use of technology and almost insist or mandate that the institution leverage technology everywhere — from social media to the registrar’s office to the library.
There’s Gold In Your Back Office
There’s no doubt that e-learning, massive open online courses and one-to-one computing is impressive change. However, do not overlook your back office and the massive benefits of digitally transforming internal operations. Automating routine tasks can change what your faculty, staff and administrators do every single day, resulting in efficiency improvements and extra time to focus on the aforementioned initiatives.
Four Digital Transformation Initiatives
• Eliminate paper: Paper-based processes are ubiquitous throughout educational institutions. Schools and universities use a tremendous amount of paper that gets routed through numerous departments and stages. Going paperless has significant benefits and creates amazing new digital experiences for your constituents and is an easy first step.
• Automate your operations: Considering the speed with which technology is impacting organizations of all sizes in all verticals, it is evident that educational institutions that fail to embrace digital transformation will be left behind in the upcoming years. Skyrocketing costs, unaffordable tuition and constrained budgets are putting extreme pressure on the modern educational system to invest in operational excellence to compete in a digitally transformed environment. Workflow automation, development operations, cloud and maximum digitization with minimum infrastructure must be your mantra.
• Embrace mobile: Smartphones are the platform of choice of millennials. We live in an era where food, cabs and even homes can be ordered and booked using a mobile phone. Mobility is bringing about bigger changes than the internet revolution. As an educational institution, your constituents have grown up with their mobile phones and you had better prioritize mobility or you will be left behind.
• Harness the cloud: Cloud is a vital cog in the wheel of digital transformation; moreover, it lays a foundation for the digital revolution in an organization. Cloud-delivered processes are crucial to enable mobility, speed and to address the skills gap. Cloud vendors have now built up years of experience and significant investments in delivering solutions that are reliable, scalable and secure. If you are looking for agility, efficiency, elasticity and cost optimization then adopting cloud is a must.
Conclusion
It’s time for action. Effective leaders at educational institutions clearly see the impact and urgency of digital transformation. They understand that new, visual tools are available that address many of the challenges such as mobility, skills and cost. Most important of all, they realize that there is no choice -- educational institutions are not immune to being “Uberized” and adopting digital transformation for operational excellence has now moved to the top of their information technology (IT) initiatives rather than just being something to think about in the future.
