Vicki Tambellini, President and CEO of Tambellini Group, kicks off the new year with her annual take on the top technology trends for 2022, along with her predictions of the drivers that will have the biggest impact on the higher education market in 2023. Listen in for Vicki’s insights on how factors including budget pressures and IT hiring staffing shortages will affect institutions going forward, and the innovative ways some colleges and universities are responding to changing market forces.
Vicki Tambellini, President and CEO of Tambellini Group, kicks off the new year with her annual take on the top technology trends for 2022, along with her predictions of the drivers that will have the biggest impact on the higher education market in 2023. Listen in for Vicki’s insights on how factors including budget pressures and IT hiring staffing shortages will affect institutions going forward, and the innovative ways some colleges and universities are responding to changing market forces.
Welcome to the January Tambellini Group Podcast. As per our annual tradition, our guest this month is our CEO and founder Vicki Tambellini, and she will be sharing with us her analysis of the major market trends and forces that shape higher education technology in 2022, along with her predictions for how those will change and evolve in 2023. Vicki has spent decades advising our hundreds of institutional and technology vendor members, as well as leading our research analyst team, which gives her an unrivaled view of the higher education tech landscape. That's why it may come as no surprise that her prediction shared here on our podcast in previous years have tended to be quite prescient. We look forward to getting the inside scoop from her on what's the common 2023. Welcome, Vicki.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Liz. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Vicki, it's certainly been a fascinating year of change in adaptation for higher ed and a tough market. We have so much to cover across numerous areas, but as we look at everything that has happened, I know you have identified four overarching trends and themes that stand out as being the most influential drivers moving forward. So before we dive into the particulars of each one, can you give our listeners an overview of what those four trend themes are?
Speaker 2:Sure, Liz. The first one is that change is still slow because change is challenging in higher ed. The second one is that IT staffing shortages have a big impact on higher ed. The third is the push and pull of budget pressures and escalating costs, and then finally, the drive to track and leverage data informing data governance policies.
Speaker 1:That covers quite a broad spectrum. So let's start with this idea that change is still slow because it's hard to do in higher ed. You know, despite the stress and uncertainty the pandemic prompted early on in 2020, there was also a lot of optimism at the same time regarding what it meant for the future pace of change and the willingness to embrace it in higher ed, especially when it came to leveraging technology, right? Because we had everyone quickly switching to online learning. People felt empowered by that, I mean, they were able to do things faster and embrace a lot of change. We had the internal resistance that had previously been a major barrier to change, magically dissolved just because of that immediate necessity to adapt to those exceptional circumstances. So now that we're three years out from the beginning of the pandemic, would you say those predictions have turned out to be true? Is change, especially with technology now happening at a faster pace?
Speaker 2:I would say we see some pockets of accelerated change, but overall, while the environment that higher ed operates in has shifted drastically, the culture at most traditional institutions has not, the pandemic was thought to have ushered in a new way of doing things, and some areas have notably improved. But when it comes to organizational structure and operations, most institutions haven't fundamentally changed in significant ways. Having said that, it's important to also note that since the beginning of the pandemic, and especially in the last year, we've seen that institutions have increased desire and recognition of both the need to modernize operations and the value that technology can have for the entire institutions, especially cloud-based platforms. There's still a lot of very smart tech leaders making remarkable progress and driving institutions forward. It's just that the optimistic predictions many had made in late 2020 and early 2021 overestimated how greatly the pandemic would shift the dynamics of large-scale technology changes on campuses. And that's because large-scale changes are fundamentally challenging, even when everyone wants them, especially in higher ed.
Speaker 1:Well, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, can you give our listeners a sense of why these changes are still so challenging to make in higher education?
Speaker 2:Well, they're legitimate reasons. It's difficult, and many of them have to do with the way traditional institutions work first. They're all, many are still very distributed organizations. They also require consensus building in decision making. And the third thing is that overall the governance structure can be very difficult to navigate. There's a natural misalignment between faculty and admin and administrators that has to be resolved when change is initiated, and that can make it very difficult to have change. The institutions that were effective in adapting quickly at scale were effective because they had proven successes to build on early on. They'd already done the hard work by devoting the time and strategic resources to change management before the pandemic hit.
Speaker 1:So what are some examples of these institutions?
Speaker 2:Well, some of the most well-known and obvious ones are institutions like Arizona State University and Indiana University, where technology leadership was so tightly tied into institutional leadership and all leadership understood early on how they could leverage technology to drive strategic priorities. It's just as much about the culture of an institution, and we hear about those institutions often because they're written up in the press, so they're easy to point to and and note because of that. But there are many other institutions who've also done a great job who, who don't get called out in the news media. Another great example is Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. By the time the pandemic hit, they were already well on their way into moving everything into the cloud, they'd taken the initiative to develop an innovative partnership with their cloud services provider and important steps like retaining and reallocating technology team members. They'd built internal support and collaboration. They'd also been communicating expectations with various stakeholders for how and why they were making such large-scale changes. So when they had to suddenly switch to remote learning and working environment in mass in March, 2020, for them it was just a matter of accelerating the timeline for things they had already planned for. And so they were able to do that successfully and quickly because they'd already laid the proper foundation through effectively managing large-scale technology transformation initiatives prior to the pandemic. And we see this, you know, that's a great example. There were many other institutions who were all also well on their way, but by contrast, institutions who hadn't done this kind of advanced work had struggled a lot more. They were in triage mode. And for those institutions, they're they had to immediately go into making immediate changes that resulted in making ad hoc patchwork approaches that resulted in remote learning and work. And their cultures weren't fundamentally changed by the experience once the immediate urgency subsided. So for those institutions, they had temporary changes that did not become a permanent part of their culture, but they were able to get through the urgency and the immediacy of, of the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that also makes a lot of sense. I think there, there was that urgency and once that immediacy fades, definitely a lot of change fatigue and regrouping to do, you know, this was just so rushed for many institutions. There are some areas, however, I have heard you mention for more across the board that have been positive, large-scale, rapid improvement results that have stuck. Can you share any of those with us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. And some of these things are, are, are great examples. For example, automation of paper forms to digitized workflow. There are institutions that were forced to get rid of low-level processes that required students and staff and faculty to physically submit paper-based forms to offices for approval and processing. For example, on the student side, they may have had to submit a signed paper form for course approval, taking a leave of absence or changing majors processes for faculty related to submitting expenses. Payroll also required paper-based forms. Those were no longer feasible in a totally remote environment. So these paper processes were replaced with automated ones. And even after students and administrators returned to campus, these workflows, these automated workflows have been retained. There's no going back to the cumbersome paper-based processes that were in place before. So now these improved efficiencies have been retained by making low-cost, high-value transitions. And these, the pandemic created the right opportunity to make these improvements happen. And at the same time, it's important to remember that changes like that do not require transforming major processes through large-scale implementation projects. So there were significant benefits that were gained like that have had permanent lasting impacts.
Speaker 1:That's a great one. And I think it really illustrates a big thing where people would now say, why didn't we do this sooner? Moving onto our next theme you'd mentioned IT staffing shortages and their impact. So we've been hearing for a while definitely pre pandemic about the difficulties that higher education institutions are facing and finding and keeping those qualified technology team members and leaders with the relevant experience to take on these modernization projects. This is an issue that all industries are facing to some extent, but you said it became especially intensified over just the last year in higher education. So why was that the case for 2022?
Speaker 2:Well, there the standard reasons that impact every industry that are driving higher ed staffing shortages, including demographics of senior leadership who are hitting retirement ages in droves. The pipeline of available talent pales in comparison to the demand. But a bigger issue that we hear about a lot from our members that is specific to institutions is that they face a lot of internal resistance when they try to respond to competitive pressures in hiring, they're not able to respond and adapt to hiring practices in the ways that institutions view as necessary to recruit the people they need.
Speaker 1:So how so? I mean, can you provide some examples of that? Where are they not being flexible?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a big issue, for example, comes to flexibility in hybrid remote work environments. Many institutions lost valuable IT staff over the last year because they were recruited away by organizations that offered them not only higher salaries, but the ability to work from home or work from places that would have typically come with the higher cost of living. So the opening up of remote work for IT roles where it hadn't previously been available was a big driver. Though many campus IT leaders would've liked to responded to the trend by offering more hybrid roles and flexibility. Their institutions made it challenging or prevented them from doing so because they encountered internal resistance to making exceptions for IT departments or they had institution-wide policies. And the process for approval of these policies in many cases was overly bureaucratic, especially for public institutions in states like Virginia, where they're required to submit their remote work policies for approvals by the state. And furthermore, institutions lost the location per as an advantage in recruiting new team members. CIOs of institutions outside of big expensive metropolitan areas have told us that they can't recruit people away from bigger cities or retain existing employees with the advantage of you can live in a college town where there's affordable housing and it's a great place to raise a family. And then I think finally it's important to note that these challenges weren't even across the board. In general, smaller private institutions are typically more flexible due to their size and non-public status. So they didn't encounter the same roadblocks in offering remote and hybrid work. On the other hand institutions were the smaller institutions are more likely to struggle to compete on the compensation side as they face more significant financial constraints.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we know that some institutions have been more flexible around remote work and become that way, not just temporarily, but overall in it. Why do you think those ones were successful in bucking this overall trend? With the resistance to the flex location or higher salaries or other things?
Speaker 2:They were able to get remote work policies approved by making a compelling case for how those could help them resolve existing problems. So for instance, in some large universities in major metropolitan areas, they were able to justify hiring remote workers by showing internal leadership that they couldn't afford to pay competitive salaries to meet the cost of living in their home markets. So it was a choice between leaving positions unfilled for a long period of time or finding affordable qualified staff by recruiting and hiring outside of commuting distance. Another example we've heard of from some of our members is institutions where IT teams lost sufficient physical office space to accommodate their full-time staff needs by allowing for hybrid and remote team members, they avoided over capacity issues. So in both instances, these weren't situations where there, there was necessarily widespread support and enthusiasm for remote work, but a lack of resources forced the powers that be to overcome their hesitancy and allow for greater flexibility out of necessity. And those are another encouraging examples for positive change and flexibility brought about by challenging circumstances resulting from the pandemic's aftermath. So we've seen a, a number of these silver lining stories of the past year and expect to see more of these kinds of stories going forward in 2023.
Speaker 1:I mean, there definitely are those inspiring examples of how they are being resourceful on the institution end. Despite those, however, we'd be lying if we didn't say significant challenges remain. So on that note, how did you see these IT staffing shortages impact higher education in 2022, and how do you expect they will impact them going forward in 2023? Because not everybody's gonna be able to, you know, be flexible or innovate or make the case for it. So when you look at the landscape overall, where are you seeing the, the pain points or the strongest impact in the current environment?
Speaker 2:One of the biggest impacts that we've been seeing in the last few months is that institutions are having to adjust their expectations for timelines for completing major transformation projects. So the, not only are they having to adjust their expectations for timelines, they're also having to adjust their expectations for how much projects are gonna cost. So they can't expect that the same project will be because they don't, they don't have the enough staff at the institution. The vendors often also are having similar difficulties hiring, training, and retaining staff that by necessity means that the projects are gonna take longer to complete. So they institutions can't make up for all the people that that have to leave. And so if they can't recruit enough new team members, they can't expect accomplish the same things on the same timeline. When vendors have problems and that includes third-party implementation partners. By the way, in consulting firms, this compounds the challenge for institutions because they're relying more on external labor for projects. And the is because the issue now is on both sides, but the institution, the vendors, and implementation partners, if that applies to the situation, everyone is, impacted and we're seeing that institutions have to wait to begin projects until hiring can be completed, but that their institution at the, the re and at the related vendors. So it can be very, very frustrating, but also mean higher budgets need to be allocated.
Speaker 1:So you've mentioned these two interrelated things, the, the timelines and the costs and that those will both continue to increase because these talent shortages aren't going to be resolved anytime soon. To what extent do you expect both those timelines and the cost to be impacted in the coming year? Is there any way to quantify that based on what you're seeing?
Speaker 2:Well, when it comes to modernizing and thinking about the costs, the stopping and starting probably adds 10%, to third-party costs because during, during the time of the implementation we would estimate that you would, both from the institution perspective and from the vendor perspective, you would need to add a cushion or a contingency of, of that amount. And depending, it would also be very specific to each institution and the situation, but at least a 10% cost is being added to the projects.
Speaker 1:When you say the projects, are you talking about the major administrative systems like the finance, HCM and student, those administrative systems?
Speaker 2:Yes. Thank you.
Speaker 1:So what, why is there this, I mean, you mentioned there's like they take breaks and pause between various stages of these projects. What happens with that stopping and starting, why does that add, you said 10%, I mean, that's a fairly significant number when we're talking about multi-million dollar projects, what causes that additional cost?
Speaker 2:Well, we used to see institutions go from and depending oon the vendor and the solution and so forth, we would see institutions go, you know, implement finance HCM and student either concurrently or in succession. And what happens is the, the longer time period between each that it takes, the more opportunity there is for staff turnover, either at the institution or at the vendor. So the lack of, the lack of continuity in terms of the experience is requires more retraining and more potential for reconfiguring for an existing implementation. So that's why we see the increased c ost to have an implementation finally in, in go l ive position. So during the, the time that can evolve the finance and HCM system, for example, if you implement finance an d H CM and then wait to implement student, th e finance and HCM system may have evolved before you implement student, you have to go back and revisit configurations and make updates to match the configurability of the student system before you can start on that project. So the calculation doesn't necessarily, you know, 10% that doesn't necessarily include all the additional internal costs and the retraining and reeducation needed. The longer that the timeline gets extended, there's also more risk introduced as in terms of how many, how many more people will need to be trained, and how much more functionality will be added into cloud systems as has gone forward. So it's, it's very difficult to predict the, the ultimate cost. I think the best advice is once you start down a major transformation project, you want to get through the bulk of the implementation as quickly as possible, working with your, the vendor that you choose, and the implementa, however you choose to implement, you wanna work as quickly as possible to get through the initial implementation.
Speaker 1:So you've mentioned some of the risks in terms of turnover, which as we know can lead to a lack of continuity and leadership and staff losing experienced team members who understand institutional history and the context that are so important during these large scale change management efforts. But aside from those risks related to the forward momentum of these projects, what some of the others that you see?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest risk is that aside from those that it has historically been viewed as a service organization to the rest of the institution where everyone relies on them to fulfill requests for enhancements to existing applications and developing new applications as well and fulfilling those requests is on hold because staff just isn't there. And most projects have to wait until after implementations are complete. So most important projects have to be matched to available staff and what people can be expected to do on a realistic basis. So the longer the implementations drag on, the less other work can be completed for the rest of the institution.
Speaker 1:There's definitely some very clear and widespread drawbacks and risks to the IT staffing shortage that you've just outlined for us. But on a positive note, do you see any positive outcomes resulting from the slowdowns that are caused by the staffing shortages? And if so, were there any you can share with us?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that the positive part of slowing down approaches to implementations is that in institutions are taking a more strategic long-term view prior to starting new initiative and prioritizing various projects in the past. So prior to the last 18 to 24 months, there's been so much pressure for institutions to be competitive and be hyper focused on reaching specific milestones on very tight timeframes that oftentimes planning has fallen to the side. And the pandemic has provided the opportunity to reset and reevaluate giving institutions the chance to focus on prioritizing what's important. And by most important, I'm referring to assessing goals for alignment within organizational priorities that will allow institutions and individuals to succeed in the long term that will benefit everyone over a long period of time. It's not sustainable to live and work in a constant state of burnout. So in fact, we're seeing that in some areas by elongating timelines and being more intentional and realistic with expectations, institutions are providing better work environments and helping to positions themselves to thrive in sustained momentum going forward.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So maybe it's measure twice, cut once and that will be better. Even though they're facing those challenges now,
Speaker 2:They're much more, much more prepared. And dealing with things like making sure data is really ready for conversion, making sure that they've really thought through security, some of the security issues ahead of time and things that maybe weren't getting enough attention before that are, that they're thinking about more thoroughly. So it's good. They're very positive things can be happening by taking more time.
Speaker 1:Let's move now on to our third team. And we've got this push and pull. We've got budget pressures combined with escalating costs in it, but at the same time, you know, again, these were challenges higher ed was facing before the pandemic, and then they were only intensified. We've got the issues. Everyone's familiar with a decreasing tuition revenue and overall economic uncertainty, uncertainty, but nevertheless, they still need to modernize and upgrade their technology. And doing so as you mentioned earlier, has become more expensive at the same time that resources are becoming even more scarce. So which of these strong opposing forces is winning out? Are they still going to be prioritizing spending on technology despite having less funding because it doesn't seem that the funding's gonna go up anytime soon?
Speaker 2:Well, institutions still feel an urgency to modernize and to upgrade technology because the competitive pressures they face have intensified data from our 2022 market trends. And leaders report shows two things. Only 3% of the market have modernized cloud-based finance and HCM systems, and only 5% of the market has made a selection to modernize cloud-based student systems. But by the same token, there's been an increased interest from institutions as many are choosing to move forward on selecting these systems. So we know institutions are finding ways to invest in upgrading their tech stack because they realize they need to improve and provide modern, seamless user experiences to students employees, because they use these systems in every other aspect of their lives, they can't keep relying on outdated on-premise systems because of all the security risks and inefficiencies.
Speaker 1:So how are they managing to find the resources given the budget cuts if these projects are so expensive? And as you've mentioned, there are these staffing shortages that are elongating the timeline and the costs.
Speaker 2:One of the ways that they're finding to move forward is by being creative and resourceful with more shared service models for shared services in the public environment. Public institutions are working together to consolidate platforms and to minimize training and support requirements in the private institution sector. We're seeing institutions come together in small groups to share best practices, information and training decisions, or as much as running in the same data center in groups such as Agilitas being formed recently, where two institutions plan to implement the same solution and will offer services to others. The Green Mountain Consortium is another example that consortium was formed a number of years ago, and one that is often referred to as an example where institutions can join and share services. But you know, our prediction is that within the next 24 months, we expect to see more than 25% of institutions using some form of shared services model for covering technology expenses. This will allow them to reduce costs and risk in making major technology investments. And it's another example of a positive development brought about by challenging circumstances. We also anticipate continued maturity of shared services agreements and the increasing emergence of more informal collaborations among smaller groups. So for example, we've recently been seeing groups of small institutions, varied like-minded institutions work together through implementations of major projects. And sometimes they're just handshake agreements where they're sharing information. They're not becoming entwined legally, like I said, they're handshake agreements, but they're sharing insider information with each other on how they're being, how to be successful. So we know, so how's this different? Is what I'm thinking. You know, we know higher ed has always been very collaborative, but they're becoming even more willing to share very practical advice with each other on a much more detailed level about rue ways to be successful and the real secrets of how their organizations are operating successfully in as they go through major transformation experiences. Not just the high-level, you know, here's what we did, but the real day-to-day working experience to help each other be successful. And these kinds of opportunities to share giving institutions more environments to consider how they want to partner for sharing information. And in particular, private not-for-profit institutions have some of the best opportunities because they're, they're not as bogged down in the legal uncertainties or the legal ramifications of the public institutions that that, that are so heavily governed. But they do have a lot of flexibility in how they can work together in information sharing. And the last thing I've just note is that institutions are attempting to be extremely creative amongst themselves for their mutual benefit. They're very actively seeking out allies within their communities who are on the same, not only decision path, but the same timeline to gain efficiencies in their processes. And this is not just necessarily for contracting. There's always been good contracting vehicles, but it's more around lessons learned and, and avoiding mistakes that maybe they've seen others make that they want to make sure that they don't repeat.
Speaker 1:How are you thinking about these models? Are they are, would you say that they're going to be successful?
Speaker 2:Yes. I, I think institutions are gonna be successful with these models because they have to be successful. Defining success, of course is important. Success. What what does success mean to each institution is, is essential, but developing an understanding of what's realistic in terms of expectations and outcomes is gonna provide an, an opportunity for institutions to leverage any type of sharing of services. There. There's been many attempts over, I mean, probably the last 30 years for institutions to leverage things as simple as buying agreements and some, some kind of shared services in terms of con contractual share shared services. But this renewed interest is around cloud services and, and really understanding how to work together to be not only more efficient, but also overcome some of the staffing shortages that institutions are facing. Very large institutions, research institutions have had the benefit of, for example, internet too. And they've had the benefit of sharing information because of their size and their ability to buy into that group. Smaller institutions that haven't had the ability to buy into internet too are now looking for ways to collaborate and share information in the same way that that larger institutions have benefited from, from the internet to type of collaboration. So it can be challenging for many of the same reasons that it's hard for higher ed in general, especially, as it relates to distributed decision making. But we think that there are big changes in how institutions have to think about being successful. And we know that sharing information is one way to help excel not only accelerate change, but also as I mentioned, overcome some of the staffing shortages. So I, I do think that this will be successful because it's one of the few ways that staffing shortages can, can be overcome, and it's a very practical way to move forward.
Speaker 1:It definitely sounds promising to hear how many institutions as, as you have characterized it, you know, they've always had this sort of collaborative mentality, but really getting into the more sharing information on lessons learned and other things that can save that time that so many of them have in such short supply. So moving on our, our last theme is leveraging data and data governance policies. So we hear so much about the importance of data-driven decision making in higher ed and about pressures for more accountability and reporting, the tracking of incomes. Those all involve having rich, reliable data sets that are consistently tracked and reported and shared across the appropriate levels are, do you see institutions writ large? Are you seeing a lot of progress towards these goals in terms of the data governance?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. There's an increasing recognition that institutions need better data hygiene and governance. They want to get better at collecting and analyzing data while keeping it secure and accessible. But as things stand now, most institutions do not have the data processes structure or technologies in place to provide data analysis at the pace they require to, to tackle big issues like curriculum planning and financial planning, while also focusing on student and employee retention. It's definitely a priority, but in many cases they're still struggling to figure it out. There are contentious debates about what we should track and how we should track it. And these discussions and attempts have been happening for the last 20 years, but very few institutions have had much success. One of the main reasons for this is because institutions has been focused on adding and adapting applications to improve specific business processes, while often ignoring the data that those processes produce. This has led to an even more highly fractured data environment that involves scores of applications. So reporting conversations often come at the end of a design process for technology implementation rather than at the beginning. And they're generally operational discussions.
Speaker 1:So aside from recognizing that they need to improve their data processes and governance and recognizing the issues you've just mentioned, do you see any trends that point to success?
Speaker 2:Yes, we see some institutions, both small private ones and large public institutions that are moving forward successfully in advancing their data programs. They have three common threads in their approaches and execution. The first one is executive recognition and involvement in improving the broad set of practices required and not becoming enamored and focused just on acquiring a product or in a single position like a chief data officer. And I, I would have to say that executive recognition and involvement in I is key no matter what kind of program we're talking about. We tend to come back to that every single time. Without executive sponsorship and executive support for any kind of major initiative, things tend to not go, go well or as you would hope in, in higher ed. So that, that is also true here. The second thing is that business plus data, plus IT leadership in whatever form makes sense for the institutions. So have to have all three to be successful. And then the final thing is that taking the long view, in other words, the data has to be a program, not a project. We're also seeing that as vendors scramble to monetize the data market the summer, filling a real need for institutions by providing with them with the expertise to look at their data holistically, offering what could be essentially described as data scientists as a service.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So we're seeing, we are seeing some examples of successful practices and we're also seeing some positive adaptations by the vendor market that are serving a real need, least in the initial phases here. So I'd like to end on a few things. First, let's play a little game and we're gonna call this one to marry and one to dump. So when you're looking at things that have gone well over the past year and things that have gone poorly in the past year, let's start with one that you'd like to marry as in a trend you'd like to see more of and like higher eds a commit to overall in perpetuity for richer rapport going forward.
Speaker 2:Well, despite the challenges, there are many encouraging examples of institutions that are finding ways to move forward and making strong cases to leadership to find the money, to devote the resources needed to modernize operations in ways that are helping them in the long term. So that's, that's the one to marry, find the ways to make the case to move forward.
Speaker 1:Great. I like that one. Because it definitely speaks to some of the things that we've seen happen that are positive. They've been able to defy these odds, but they've gotta make that strong case for it. And as you mentioned, having that executive leadership support. So when it comes to dump is, what is the trend that you hope won't continue? If you could just banish from the higher ed landscape forever, what would you choose?
Speaker 2:I would choose dumping the idea that we should be inflexible in higher ed and that remote work will never work. And, I would say let's dump that idea and find a way to make that go away forever. So I would figure out how to get rid of that concept and get rid of the assumptions that remote workers are less productive because that's just not true.
Speaker 1:I like that one. It's definitely a good one to dump. And when you look at everything you've seen over the past year, do you have any advice or motivational words to close on that can help institutional technology leaders as they kick off 2023 here?
Speaker 2:Well, imagine the possible. The people in your organization want to move forward and they'll support new initiatives. Technology is an enabler and people are the key to success.
Speaker 1:That's a great note to end on. Vicki, thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Liz. It's always a pleasure to start the new year talking to you,
Speaker 1:Likewise, don't forget to check out our Tambellini Podcast and other resources on our blog at thetaminigroup.com.