Top of Mind with Tambellini Group
Top of Mind with Tambellini Group
Rethinking IT in the World of Cloud
If you’re busy trying to keep your old legacy system going and are in a perpetual state of adapting to meet your campus’s needs, you’re not alone. Colby College realized two years ago that things had to change. CIO Cindy Mitchell faced it head on. Her strategic plan includes “the things that eat our lunch” as her first course of business. Also, get Mitchell’s insight on changing IT roles, her view of data governance, and her gratitude to those propelling the project towards success.
Hello and welcome to our top of mind podcast. This program, we will sit down with a higher education technology thought leader and discuss the innovative projects they are working on now and into the future. I am your host, Katelyn Ilkani, vice president of client services and cybersecurity research at The Tambellini Group. I'm joined today by Cindy Mitchell, the chief information officer at Colby College. Over the next few minutes we're going to hear how Cindy is rethinking IT in the world of cloud. Let's get started. Welcome to the program, Cindy.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:We're glad you could join us today. One of the first things we'd like to talk about are the business drivers that you're seeing that are pushing your institution to a cloud first strategy. Can you describe some of those for us?
Speaker 2:Certainly the last few years have seen tremendous growth and focus for Colby in many areas and what we've learned is that our current and agent systems are not able to keep up with that, whether it be our financial systems that are over 30 years old, our homegrown human resources solutions. Our ability to recruit students. All of those things are critical for the college and its transition. Some of this actually started before I got here in sort of an unintentional way, whereas people began to acquire solutions that were cloud based to meet needs in a quick and important way. But at this point, what we're really focused on is how to change our fundamental approach in order for Colby to be more agile as it continues its mission-focused transformation. Okay.
Speaker 1:So as you look at this full transformation process, how do you see an IT strategic plan changing with a cloud first strategy?
Speaker 2:Well, the strategic plan that we developed two years ago as we were moving in this direction was focused on the functional needs of the people doing the work of the college and the data that they needed to do it. We were less focused on infrastructure, on servers and funding for that layer.—though certainly, as you can imagine, the network components are very important—but what we were focused on is a strategy that put the people in the functions of the college, whether they be academic, whether they be administrative, in more control of what they were trying to do as well as having the data available they needed to make decisions and analyze the effectiveness of the work that we're doing. So less focus on stuff, more focus on outcomes.
Speaker 1:When you're thinking about outcomes for your institution, how are you tying technology to those outcomes? How are you determining which systems to move to cloud first?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the issues that we've had here at Colby is we're on a 30 plus year old ERP system. Some parts home grown, many, many, many homegrown solutions internal to that product and it had become very, it's become very rigid when Colby wanted to actually get something done, they were held up behind it trying to figure out how to modify a heavily modified product. It was, it's a very rigid and really fragile environment and takes a lot of care and keeping, so we were, it was struggling to be a partner in the process and the focus of the college because we're so busy trying to keep re are still so busy trying to keep this old technology going while also doing whatever we can to adapt it to the needs that our functional users are trying to me. So when I think about outcomes, I think in terms of the day when our uh, functional users don't have to come to IT first. So given where we are, we made the decision, the it steering committee made the decision after a bunch of a assessment that we did that we would, um, transition our HR and finance systems first to the cloud. Since we were continuing to have such issues with HR and we were going to have to buy additional functionality and rather than do that, we decided we were going to move. At first the maturity of the cloud based student solutions weren't quite where we wanted them to be as we were making this assessment. So that seemed like a wise choice. Also a smaller population to work with and making this kind of change. So that's how we made the decision to go to HR and finance first. And then let the student cloud market mature. What kind of functional projects did your team undertake to prepare for this change? So this is one of my favorite things about our strategic plan. We have a goal or an area of focus that's called the things that eat our lunch. And what we did was assess all of the homegrown solutions that we and determine which of those the staff in IT we're spending. We too much time on in support of our various offices, the provost's office, the budget office, human resources, all of those. And some of the things that popped up were the voting solution for faculty to do their processes that they do as faculty organization or students to do their elections. We had, um, other projects related to course evaluations where it had to be so heavily involved in the course evaluation process and the list goes on and I'm, so we identified 10 or 12 areas in particular functions that we thought we could easily find a product to bring in that would allow those functional offices to be in control of their own work. And we've been working through those. And so far that has been a very positive experience. Our users aren't sitting there in a panic wondering if we're going to get what we need to get done in time. And they're finding these tools, these are friendly, they are the ones actually choosing the products in the end. So it's an excellent partnership between it and the functional offices and shows what can happen when we put the responsibility out to the functional users and the control and also frees up our bandwidth. And this was a huge part of the goal is to free up our bandwidth in order to be able to support and make these moves to other cloud services.
Speaker 1:So what associated solutions have you seen implemented?
Speaker 2:So one of the areas that ate our lunch where all the many integrations we had. Uh, I think I mentioned before that sort of the cloud strategy started in an unplanned way before I came to Colby with many valuable solutions popping up that were point solutions. Example of Teradata, we had slate. Um, teradata is um, study abroad package slate. There are just any number of those that were popping up and we were doing flat file pushes of data, all kinds of different sort of unmanaged approaches to data integration, which led to data quality issues. So one of our very first, um, things that we tackled was finding a integration platform enterprise and a collaboration platform. The one we chose also solved another problem for us, which was um, extraction, transformation and load for moving data for reporting purposes so that we have spent the better part of a year leading up to our upcoming cloud-based implementation of HCM and finance in order to be prepared for all of the integration that will go on there as well as get some of the work off of our plate of all the management of data movement that we had up now. So that was one. The other one we're implementing now is an identity and access management solution. This fits in the things that eat our lunch category because so much of that is homegrown, but we also really needed to move to a identity and a secure and a trusted identity and access management solution. As we had more products in the cloud. Right now we're stuck with our, our services being on campus. So if our services are down, our cloud based services don't do us much good as it any time, anywhere solution. So that's an important move for us.
Speaker 1:As you see your were solutions changing so much and more responsibility being put on the functional areas. How were your it roles changing now? These could include things like job titles and staffing but also skills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's probably the, uh, one of the more significant areas of how people's lives change in this world. Um, we had an open position, we had a developer leave and we repurposed that position is something we're calling a solutions analyst, somebody that will work with our functional users who understands what the functions are trying to accomplish from the business side and can facilitate and support the work that these functional users are doing within these cloud solutions. They also become an internal voice on behalf of these customers, uh, as it relates to integration as it relates to reporting. So there is a shift, uh, away from people who write code that provides a solution, a point business solution, to people who are in support of our customers and customers probably not the right word, but not by our constituents in the, um, uh, enablement and use of their tools help us bring them all together in the synergy across them as they happen. So there's that area and the other two key areas are in integration and in business analytics and data quality and management. So, um, these are areas that we're focusing more on and helping some of our folks to transition. We'll still need developers for a while to come, but, um, as we move forward, those will be the areas that we focus our hiring on more.
Speaker 1:Are you seeing any differences within the infrastructure skills that you need as well? Or is that just saying the same?
Speaker 2:Well, we still are so heavy here, uh, as for the next few years until we're fully out of our ERP, we're clearly be focused on that. There are other areas like cloud backup that we're looking at and, um, starting a transition in that area. One, um, project that we're doing this summer will allow us to eventually not have a secondary backup site because we'll be using the cloud for that. Uh, we are also relying more less on what we're hoping to rely less on is more of this application administrator area, that person that has to be dedicated to um, moving, creating test environments to move new versions of software that takes forever to test. And because we'd modify things, reconcile the issues. So that's more that, that's on the application administrative side. We still will have probably a significant amount of system administration for a while to come and some of that is related to our onsite research computing and some of that is just related to how much we still will have on campus for a while to come.
Speaker 1:Are you experiencing any resistance to change?
Speaker 2:So a month we did a readiness assessment and early in May, may of 2017 with our core administrative users as those, the ones we were most concerned about in, in proposing any kind of a change. And what we found that group was just ready to go. It would be very positive, um, readiness assessment. Clearly people were on board, you know, it was going to be a lot of work to get there, but really recognized it was time to move. I think we'll ultimately see some change, uh, resistance as people learn what self service means and what they need to do. There are still people that like to be able to walk over a piece of paper somewhere. So I suspect we'll see some of that. But for the most part, the input from the campus has been upbeat. On the IT side, I think we really need to think about the hearts and minds of these folks and help them with a vision for how their skills can be used in those areas that we need to focus on. A developer is a really valuable resource when we think about business intelligence and data availability and, and reporting. Um, so I think it's, there's, there's, while I, I'm not saying that we have resistance at this point, there's certainly concern for people who, who have, uh, uh, history and development and creating these applications and what this means for them.
Speaker 1:That's something that that hear a lot about is overall change management. Getting the people ready really for these big technology transformations can be a huge obstacle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can be. And I think, you know, I, we've spent a lot of time thinking about change management lately. Yes, we're about to embark on this HCM and finance project and I think some of this is taking some stock as it's really not something we're just planning to do, but it actually kicks off. We'll have to take some stock and really get a sense of where people are as we start to roll out the value and what will actually happen. Um, you know, there, there will always be pockets of resistance but there are ways to manage that with um, excellent people that you bring in to help with that type of messaging unless you've got a great change manager on your campus and then you could use that person as well.
Speaker 1:Well, in addition to change management, another topic that comes up a lot is data governance. How are you tackling data governance and when does this become a critical factor in moving to cloud?
Speaker 2:So data governance. We started a day, the governance project a little over a year ago and actually one of the things we acquired as a, uh, is a cloud based solution that helps you manage your data definitions, ownership and things like that. In order to do this work, we started with HR because, uh, it didn't take long for us to figure out that even how you define them as an employee. We did not have agreement on campus and since we knew that HR would be happening first, we focused our energy there to really start to get our human resources data defined. As you're thinking about a large transition, you're going to have to convert data and you're going to have to agree when you go in this new system, what kind of, what is an employee, what kind of employees you have. And so that's a critical aspect of the work and should start as it should start before you're even ready to do a project. Because if you're focused on reporting, you really should be engaged in data governance. Would that being said, it's not easy. And, um, we have been stuttering a bit with it. It's the, what we're finding is people don't know if you always feel like they're the ones that should say what something is and so we're have to work on, we're having to work on that idea of stewardship and ownership and, and the process of actually talking about what fields mean and understanding how they're used. But um, my assessment of the world of data governance is that we're not unusual. Um, I hear story after story of data governance being on their third iteration trying to start. It's a new world for us to think about and really about the data as the first thing and understanding how we define it. My advice would be if you're even thinking about this or if you were thinking about your next report and data quality started data governance process immediately.
Speaker 1:We've touched on a lot of interesting topics today. Cindy, do you have any last thoughts for your peers on anything we've talked about?
Speaker 2:I think the thing that stands out in my mind the most is I've been on this journey now, I guess I could say in the over two and a half years since I've been at Colby, but really intensely in the last almost 1920 months. And there is an incredible wealth of knowledge amongst my peers, uh, people who have gone before us, people from different types of institutions that help you have different perspectives. And um, I could not have gotten through this the way I had without the collective knowledge of my colleagues, whether it's been in a group or individually. So I would just say that those relationships are invaluable. I know that I would step up and help anyone that starting to think about this and what I've learned. There's been so much to learn, but those are my parting thoughts, is how very thankful I am for a, our higher ed environment and in our willingness to share and work with each other so that we're all not starting from ground zero every time.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. Thank you so much for participating today, Cindy. Thanks for inviting me. Yes. It's been a great conversation and you've provided a lot of food for thought as you have moved through this process. I'm sure your peers are going to really appreciate all of the lessons learned that you've provided today.
Speaker 3:Okay,
Speaker 1:that's it for this month's top of my podcast. Thank you so much for listening and please stay tuned for information on the Tamblyn he cloud transformation summit, which will be exclusively for higher education it leaders and the Greater Boston area, December 4th fifth and sixth.