The explosion of cloud-based offerings has caused every CIO, CFO and President to question if “the cloud” is right for their institution’s enterprise administrative systems. Isn’t it?
Maybe so – but maybe no. We think “the cloud” represents a possible solution to technical and business challenges on campus, but institution leaders need to look deeper to understand if it’s right for them.
Let’s explore three strategies to examine whether a cloud-based enterprise administrative system makes sense for your institution:
Strategy #1: Let stakeholder needs drive the discussion.
Why? Many providers will tout a cloud-based solution simply because it’s a cloud-based solution. A more relevant selling point is: How will a cloud solution solve business problems at your institution?
Most IT leaders will tell you that they don’t have a cloud strategy – but rather that they have strategies to enable teaching and learning. So the focus needs to be on driving value to faculty and students – not on providing cloud services. According to the Campus Computing Survey, 63% of CIOs and senior IT officials acknowledge that “Cloud computing offers a viable strategy for campus ERP applications” and 66% agree that that “Cloud computing will play an increasingly important role in our campus ERP strategy”. However, less than a tenth of CIOs or senior campus IT officers believe that their institution will be running a “high value” application such as finance or student information systems in the Cloud in five years, by fall 2019.
Strategy #2: Examine indirect ROI.
Why? Adopting a cloud solution may not necessarily result in cost savings, so you need to consider the true cost-benefits. What will you gain by moving to the cloud?
Consider two indirect benefits your institution can experience in implementing a cloud-based administrative system:
- IT becomes a strategic partner. Cloud-based ERP offers IT the ability to move to a more strategic role, helping to improve your institution versus the ‘care and feeding’ of applications and servers.
- Improved governance. SaaS-based systems don’t provide the same flexibility for in-house customization that a traditional on-premise (or even hosted) system allows. Your institution need to be ready for the cultural change that goes along with the tighter governance controls and expectations to adopt best practices.
Strategy #3: Know your limitations.
Why? A SaaS or cloud-based solution comes with high user expectations for availability and performance. Do you have the infrastructure in place to enable a cloud solution to perform optimally?
There are two important considerations here:
- Bandwidth and Performance. A cloud-based application will likely bring increased traffic moving along the connection between your campus and your hosted/SaaS provider. You need to be ready to manage these capacity needs.
- Integration possibilities…and challenges. Cloud applications present opportunities to improve services to faculty, students, and staff – but getting your institution’s portfolio of systems to talk to one another is another challenge. You may be limited by the available interfaces your primary cloud solution provider offers, and your IT staff may be expected to develop new skillsets to support this.
As higher education leaders are being asked to better understand whether cloud solutions are right for their institution’s enterprise administrative systems, it is essential to look at all the appropriate questions from a number of angles. After all, “cloud” is a means to an end – it might be the end of the conversation, but shouldn’t be the beginning.
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