Technology Trends and Predictions for 2022

Vicki Tambellini, President and CEO of Tambellini Group kicks off this year’s Top of Mind podcast series. The current state of higher education, although hard to generalize, is very much institution-dependent. However, one universal fact that rings true is that institutions are working on a smarter, not faster, approach. Listen in as Vicki shares what she expects in the coming year and evaluates which predictions came true and evolved last year.

Transcript

Copy

Liz Farrell 0:15

Hello, and welcome to the Tambellini Group's January, Top of Mind podcast. Our guest this month is our founder and CEO , Vicki Tambellini. As many of our listeners may already know Vicki has been at the helm steering our company forward for the past 20 years. She served as a trusted advisor to hundreds of institutions, helping their leaders think through every facet and element of their technology strategy. Vicki also leads our entire team of analysts and advisors, which has doubled in the past year, which is quite a growth spurt. I think so. Welcome, V icki.

Vicki Tambellini 0:47

Thank you, Liz. It's a pleasure to be here today and I'm looking forward to our discussion.

Liz Farrell 0:52

Yes, I am as well, because this is as you know, an annual tradition. Fortini where we kick off the new year by sharing our biggest takeaways from the past 12 months and your boldest predictions for the coming year. So while times certainly does fly and no one would deny that the 12 months of 2021 felt like a lifetime. Last January, however, we were still in throws of the pandemic without a vaccine and higher ed had already spent nine months at that point, which is crazy to think about swiftly adapting to remote learning and operations. So, even though institutions were over the initial panic, when you did this podcast last year, the situations most campuses were contending with were still quite fluid. And it was premature to start talking about the true long-term impact. However, w e have seen now, some institutions have had to cut their fall semester short, amid rising Omnicon cases. So we can hardly say the pandemic is over at this point, but we have had another year to respond and adapt to changing circumstances. So we can begin to analyze what has worked and hasn't worked and see the emerging picture of its overall impact on technology adoption and applications in higher ed. So Vicki, I know it's hard to generalize across the diverse thousands of institutions in the US, but I think it would be useful for us to start our conversation by looking at some of the trends and predictions you highlighted last year and see which ones still ring true and how they've evolved and changed .

Vicki Tambellini 2:26

Okay . Well, that's always the challenge as you pointed out earlier to predict that you're ahead of time, but it sounds like a great idea.

Liz Farrell 2:35

Great. So let's get started then let's talk about the big issue that is always on every it leader's mind in this day and age, which is the cloud infrastructure. Um, at the beginning of 2021, you had said more institutions are going to be moving as much of their operations to the cloud as they possibly can. And the vast majority of institutions were a year ago running on-premises systems, which leave their campuses quite vulnerable to a host of risks. And you hadn't said this explicitly, but there was a lot of talk after that first year that institutions had finally seen the light and understood the importance of moving their core systems to a cloud-based infrastructure in the, after math and making those monumental shifts from, or rather to remote learning and operations. So a year later, where are we at? Is that urgency that everyone was talking about sparked a massive uptick in adoption of cloud based platforms?

Vicki Tambellini 3:34

Well, the answer is yes and no across the board. We can say institutions are committed to making these changes, but how far along they are in adopting them varies greatly depending on the institutions, it's really hard to generalize in higher education. So one of the things that we work hard to do is to make sure that we're explaining the nuances that we see in the research that we do. Um, our research shows the most recent selections of institutions are that 69% of all institutions have most recently selected on-premises applications for their core infrastructure. So their core systems of record applications like finance, human resources, payroll, student information systems, those systems that they're using for the primary infrastructure are most recently selected to be on-premises solutions. And in many cases, we find the, it, there is a , a tendency in higher ed for those institutions to be running systems without adequate backup and recovery systems in place to recover critical data in the event of disaster or cyber security attacks. And it's somewhat surprising given the increased visibility and frequency of cyber attacks that we still have so many institutions that are being caught vulnerable to that kind of issue. And one of the reasons I think we're seeing it is that institutions while they there's a recognition among it leaders , yet it can be very difficult to get not only the funding, but the, the staffing and resources that are required to , to make fundamental shifts of the magnitude that we're talking about at each institution to make major changes, like are required to move to the cloud.

Liz Farrell 5:40

I was going to say it's certainly an uphill battle. So when we're thinking about last year, as opposed to this year , um, it doesn't sound like you've seen a huge, this massive shift that everyone sort of expected was going to just be inevitable. Um, does that mean that higher ed isn't as focused on moving core operations to a cloud-based infrastructure, or have we seen a less of an emphasis than you expected at the beginning of 2021?

Vicki Tambellini 6:09

Not at all. We do see commitment. But what institutions have been able to do depends on the in institution size and the resources as well as where they are in their planning and budgeting processes. So we see that in many institutions, lack the staff and the budget to move critical infrastructure to the cloud. And the lack of staffing resources also means they don't know what they don't know. So speak . So in terms of what it means to be secure. Cloud computing is a very complex business compared to running systems on premises. And it's still a relatively new way of thinking conceptually in higher ed, although there have been some forms of cloud systems, email, for example, CRM systems, for example, departmental systems running in the cloud for many years on most campuses moving your primary infrastructure, the systems that are can be most vulnerable to attack in terms of security are moving. Those systems require a much different kind of thinking and much more advanced planning as well as budget and planning. So the nuances can be difficult for institutions to sort through. And when individual institutions attempt to address their infrastructure, it can be very difficult for one single institution to have the depth of knowledge they need to ensure that all of their priorities are covered. And as, as I said earlier, knowing what you don't know is sometimes the biggest issue when as we all would agree, I'm sure the idea of cloud computing or security in the cloud. That's not the primary business of higher education. The primary business of course, of higher ed is education. It's not cloud computing technology. So, at any individual institution, they may not be aware of the current business processes or the kinds of legal protection they may need, or they may not even be equipped to ask all the questions they need to understand if they have the most secure operating environment for their key data and systems. So for instance, they may have moved critical infrastructure to cloud vendors without understanding whether at particular vendor has the right infrastructure themselves. Again, not knowing what you don't know we saw in the last few weeks, a vendor that runs human resources and payroll systems, for example , for higher ed that had a major security breach and has been offline, or was offline for several weeks and how that could have been avoided, what could have been avoided. We're not talking about that today, but the point is that it happens , it can happen and preparing for the inevitable is, is something that can be very difficult for, for leadership to, to work through.

Liz Farrell 9:19

Yeah. And I think you had mentioned too, that, you know, sometimes institutions don't realize that just because they're the vendor services they use in the cloud , they aren't necessarily covered for those breaches those, those can still have breaches as well. I think it's a very enlightening example that you mentioned in terms of the vendor, having an attack, that paralyzed institutions, because you can have vendors that are in the cloud , but that doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't vulnerable when they get attacked. So , I know that you are often asked by institutional technology leaders when they're trying to get the political will and the financing to move forward with a huge cloud transformation. They're asking you, how do I sell that to top leadership in the board? And we know it's very expensive. So I, one of the first and most powerful reasons that you recommend that they cite is the benefit of increased security and how it helps to them to mitigate against the risk of data breaches. But there is another challenge here that higher education as a whole faces in working as an industry collectively to prevent breaches. Can you explain that?

Vicki Tambellini 10:35

Some of the best practice is when it comes to security may not be visible to institutions if they don't have internal resources to address them because they're not openly discussing security and security issues among each other. So for example, there's an idea that if you talk about what you're doing and how securing your operations, you're more vulnerable to attackers. So while in higher ed, we see a lot of sharing of information around many topics in administrative software and selects and best practices, and also in ed. And when it comes to security and infrastructure, it's not quite as open. The sharing is not quite as open. And so we know that it's also compounded by the fact that there's not enough staff in most cases to internally combat breaches when they do occur. And it certain is not unique to higher education. We see that across the board for various industries that sharing is not something that people are inclined to do, but the difference in higher ed is that in a large corporation, we might see as many as 3000 people dedicated to securities. For example, a large global corporation would, you know, have an IT department that is, you know , running infrastructure security, all separately, networking would be all these separate areas. Security would be funded completely separately from the other areas. And just in security, it's not unusual to see a staff in the thousands. We don't see that kind of staffing in higher ed in total and even in our very largest institutions. So it's impossible even for a very large R1 To have that kind of coverage for security, even, even at a very large institution, maybe there are five hundred, let's say, people in the IT department and in a small institution, which comprises the majority of higher ed in the United States, they may not have more than 50 or 75 staff in IT in total, it's in impossible task to put enough resources on IT security to cover all the risks. And of course those risks are accelerating and it's not that institutions need a cybersecurity staff, the size of a large corporation, but acknowledging the limited resources that institutions face, they have to be very careful about the decisions they make, vendors, they trust how they set up their infrastructure to best protect their investments. And more than that the data that they have and the cost of a security breach in the event that they do have one.

Liz Farrell 13:49

Yeah, I, it does sound like, as you say, an impossible task, but I'm wondering if there's a, any good news going forward? Are you seeing any promising trends in how the move to cloud infrastructure is improving despite these obstacles that you've cited?

Vicki Tambellini 14:06

We do see some promising trends. There are more institutions, for example, that have broad support from leadership and more funding to look broadly at infrastructure and how to move , uh , critical systems into more secure operating environments. We've seen support increase across the board over the past year and expect it to, to continue to increase. I mean, for example, we we're hearing from institutional leaders that their boards are more cyber-curious board members are asking specific questions now at an increasing rate about infrastructure and cyber security awareness and protection. And this is giving the, it staffs the ability to be more proactive to, to look for, to wait for ways to improve and also to seek specific funding that has, in some cases not been available in the past. And of course, again, we have to be careful to say, this is not true for every institution across the board. Certainly , very large institutions have access to more funding and more people than institutions that are more resource constrained, but we also, and we'll talk about that. I know a little later that there's issues around staffing availability. So even for institutions that have staff funding, they may not necessarily be able to fill those positions. So I think the last point that is important to think about is that there's a , another awareness that institutions are gonna have to think about security as an increasing awareness because of insurance premiums and the cybersecurity or security insurance premiums are increasing at such a rapid rate, that those costs are increasing the expenses on the bottom line. And to the degree that institutions can show that they're cyberaware that they have cyber training, they have programs in place that is going to help offset some of the costs of the cyber premiums and but the more breaches we see in higher ed and the more payments that insurance companies have to pay the higher those costs of premiums are gonna be across the board. And I would also just note that there's a promising trend in higher ed for sharing of information among institutions within organizations like OmniSOC. So for example, if our listeners aren't aware of the OmniSOC organization, I know many will be , this was an organization launched in 2018 by several Big Ten schools. It's a subscription service. It's cybersecurity operations center that helps members avoid cyber attacks through threat detection and data sharing. So it's definitely unique approach, but it's a strong model and its service has expanded now to be available to institutions outside of the Big Ten . And we think it'll be a growing approach that institutions will adopt as they continue to lack resources at the individual institution level. And of course, many institutions have worked already and will continue to work with other organizations such as Interne2. And that's been an organization that has been a fundamental support for institutions across the board in a number of areas. And we think t hat Interne2 will continue to be a terrific resource for institutions in the cyber area as well.

Liz Farrell 18:07

So it's nice to hear that there are some glimmers of hope or beacons of progress out there with all these challenges still remaining. Speaking of which, we also know that change management—that oft-quoted phrase—is so important in making the switch to a cloud-based infrastructure. Uh, but institutions have had to make a lot of drastic changes since the pandemic began. And I know at the beginning of 2021, you were not alone in talking about the collective sense of change fatigue that had set in across higher ed , uh, another year out. How are things looking on that change-fatigue front? Are people still tired of it? Do they have the stamina needed to make these big changes? Are they just too exhausted with that and all the other hurdles that they face? I can't imagine then, in their role, I would have a lot of energy for that, but what are your thoughts?

Vicki Tambellini 19:05

Institutions in general—people are tired. They are tired. And I think we we've been working with an institution—I think is a great example—that for the last two years has been working toward a, a change in their core systems, making a decision to make a change in their core systems. And as they have been working toward a contract with the vendor that they've selected, the Omnicon variant of the virus has swept through the institution, leaving in the middle of our work to support them through their decision to contract with a vendor. They have three of the four key executives that they are necessary to make the decisions contractually are out. They're sick. They're not available to meet with us. And yet the one executive that that is able to work is moving forward. It because it's an institutional and, I think, it's an interesting dynamic to watch because the, the executive that we're working with is clearly exhausted. And it's a theme, I think, across institutions that they have to keep going. In this particular case, what part of this process is that they're going, but they've reached a more reasonable pace between what we saw a year ago, which was either , go fast and do it without , go fast because there felt this enormous urgency to do something in light of the pandemic, or, in some cases, postpone decisions indefinitely. And now what we're seeing is more in line with what I think i t is encompassed in the earlier example, which is this measured approach of we're moving forward. We're going to do it with caution. It's going to be with full thought and awareness of what we're getting into. We're not going to do things any faster than we have to because we wanna be successful. So what we're seeing is that institutions are still planning for change, but they're planning over longer periods of time. We are thinking that as a group, they're thinking we still need to make a decision as quickly as we can, but they're more inclined to take the time they need to prepare ahead of starting the project. And what we're finding I think is I think this is reflective of the fact that, of the fatigue that you mentioned, and this awareness on the part of leaders that people, the people that are required to make the changes on campus can only absorb so much at a time. And they need more time to not only prepare, but sustain the amount of effort and energy that it's going take to migrate systems. So they're trying to build more thought into their process. They're allowing more time on the front end, between the time they make a decision to move to another system. And the time that they start the configuration or the actual implementation. So I would say then that we agree that the institutions are actually starting their processes. They're just doing it in a , in a more measured way. And there's still, there's definitely still a , an urgency to make a decision. They're just not as interested in starting a deployment or an implementation or configuration until IT leadership feels very comfortable that the people that are involved have had adequate time to prepare and that they have the amount of staff and planning in place to be successful. And I think that's is a very important distinction between where we were a year ago and where we are now. And I believe that all of our analysts would agree that that's going to help everyone be more successful into the future.

Liz Farrell 24:19

Yeah. I couldn't agree more with what you're saying there. I mean, it sounds like it's certainly a smarter not faster approach . And we know that these changes take so much time and involve so many people. So getting that stuff done up front is a good buffer against that, that change fatigue, because the last thing you wanna do, and I know you've seen this happen on multiple occasions, you have an institution commit to a certain course and big change, and they get part along the journey and it's not working. And then when you give that up, trying to get people motivated to do something else, again becomes even harder. But moving onto, I think, one of the areas where no one would dispute, there was so much change in the past year, was in teaching and learning. Obviously , there was the abrupt shift to remote learning that happened in March, 2020. And now we're almost two years into the pandemic. And I think there's a corollary here with what we were talking about with the cloud, where when we're thinking of last year, at this time, there are a lot of extreme statements being made about this is the future and it's here to stay. Um, so I thought, you know, we have seen a lot of students go back to in-person learning. Um, there's definitely always going to be a strong interest in that, but I thought it would be helpful if we could go through some of the big areas in teaching and learning technologies. And you could tell us what you and the analyst team and advisors have seen. I know you mentioned to me that there were four areas of marked progress that the pandemic accelerated. So why don't we start with student services.

Vicki Tambellini 26:06

Outside of the classroom, we saw big changes with student services at many institutions prior to the pandemic. They hadn't had online capabilities at all to do things like renew IDs, change majors or virtual advising, and because the pandemic rendered, many of these things impossible to do in-person, institutions had to write policies and standards to allow for these things to happen virtually. And now that they can support these efforts virtually they're not going back because they've seen improvements in efficiencies and also value in this approach. So we think that's the first area that has been a marked progress for student services in an area that is going to help the student outcomes as well. The second area that we, that we've seen is that faculty tracking tools such as Interfolio and others are being adopted. We know that faculty are requesting more tools so that they can more easily document their contributions in teaching and scholarship. Tools like this will help manage and measure labor contributions or avoid cumbersome procedures for getting compensated for overtime . They also save time in compliance and in accreditation processes. So faculty tracking tools , faculty information systems, for example , are really taking off and, and also in modern cloud systems for, it's not just faculty information systems, but modern cloud solutions for human resources and payroll systems also help support making sure that labor costs are adequately trapped and help institutions stay in compliance. The third area is video technology adoption. And obviously during the pandemic, we were seeing everyone use video technologies for remote teaching and learning. And now that most people have returned to in-person learning, the increased use of video is still continuing. And we know that students appreciate the, to have courses available for replay. It's significantly different from pre-COVID because institutions are using it for supplemental tools. Faculty can drop quick instructional videos to explain particular assignments. This is really helpful for students that need to revisit instructional messages repeatedly in order to make sure that they have heard and understood instructions well, for example, and we expect to see offerings in the video space continue to mature. So that's, that's another area that is really exciting to see. And then in the learning management systems, I think is the third area that, that we agree is, is really important to think about. And during the pandemic we saw that learning management systems in general needed to adapt to support synchronous and a C synchronous learning before the pandemic, the learning management systems catered to asynchronous learning. And at this point, the LMS solutions providers are focused on being the best at integrating tools. For instance, they improve their video integration capabilities in response to the ongoing popularity of videos as a learning tool, they're also focused on integrating collaborative collaboration or collaborative technologies tools like Microsoft teams, for example, slack and even discord, because the use of these took off as well during the pandemic in response to the fact that LMSs didn't have these kinds of capabilities built in. And it may be that over time, we see more of that functionality embedded native in learning management systems. But for now just having the ability to have those tools integrated is, is highly desirable for institutions. We, we also see that every LMS vendor that has existing on-premises users is seeking to migrate those exist customers to their cloud architecture if they haven't already. So for example, Blackboard and Moodle are trying to move everyone off of their legacy on-premises solutions into some form of cloud architecture. And I would have to just mention that the one area that did not take off is virtual reality, augmented reality. And there's some really good reasons for that through the pandemic. We thought that it would be the perfect opportunity for virtual reality and augmented reality to expand. And it didn't, and that's because in order for that technology to work and to be successful for students, it requires expensive equipment like Oculus headsets, for example, and that's largely inaccessible to the average learner. And this creates a logistical hurdle as well as another gap for learners that are resource deficient. So for these technologies to be effective as experimental or experential learning tools, they have to be considered and incorporated into the curriculum and be, they'll have to be provided by the institution as part of what's given to the student in, in terms of, you know, included with tuition, for example. Because, if students are required to buy this equipment to participate, I think it will continue to be something that is not going to possible if students are required to purchase those headsets for example and will continue to be a barrier. The other thing that we note is that that technology would have to be incorporated as part of course design. And the pandemic did not give our faculty time to think about how to create thoughtful incorporation of VR and AR into their instructional planning. And so it , we're still in the very early days for that. So perhaps by the time faculty can figure out how to create thoughtful course design, including VR and AR, and institutions can figure out how to include the equipment that's required. We'll either see the cost of that equipment go down and institutions be able to provide the equipment, or there may be other options from a technology perspective that would enable students to have access. So I think we can see an overall theme here. There's a disconnect between the sophisticated new features and tools that ed tech is rolling out. And the needs of the average higher ed user. Ed tech has moved to a level of sophistication that is far beyond where mainstream academia is in terms of the sophisticated features and tools that they're rolling out. We're hearing some frustration from and leaders of centers for teaching and learning about this. They would rather focus on ways to improve access to basic functional features, rather than thinking about how to incorporate more sophisticated tools and technology into existing environments .

Liz Farrell 34:18

That's an interesting theme. I guess we see a lot of excitement over new shiny toys. Um, more so than over just getting those basic fundamentals down , um, which brings us to our next topic. I wanted to ask you about which is student system . So we know so much of T's research and advisory work, this focused on the growing need to make the student experience friction list . I know that's something you've talked about a lot in various columns that you've written for inside higher ed and others. Um, but at the same time, another prevalent trend we've seen continuing from previous years is there have been delayed timelines for the release of these modern student systems. So with there being all this interest from the institutions on having these seamless frictionless systems, do you think this means that more institutions will put off those decisions, knowing that these systems, some of the big vendors keep on delaying their timeline for delivery of fully functional ones? Or do you think this may be a year where they go ahead purchase it anyway, unlike they have done previously?

Vicki Tambellini 35:35

Well, we see both . We definitely see both. We see that institutions are continuing to make decisions for finance, HCM, payroll, and student systems from the same vendor for the most part. So 85%—our research shows —that 85% of institutions continue to select those systems from the same vendor. And there's some really good reasons for that, including ease of use, user experience, integration—lots of reasons. And given the fact that we've seen delays in terms of the planning and thoughtful approach and how to implement new systems, we're seeing that institutions are moving forward and making decisions and settling on the vendor that they wanna work with many times entering into contracts, taking advantage of pricing , options, locking in long -term discounts , setting on a vendor direction, and then taking more time, as we mentioned earlier, to plan for success in those vendor environments. So, for example, in the environment of rolling out a new administrative system, many other systems have to be considered. You have to focus on integrations and identity and access management and data migration, and it's not only , um, your core systems. Institutions may also have to look at other third-party applications that are connected to those core systems, or in some cases, institutions have written functionality or written modules to be part of their existing systems that will no longer function will with a new system. And they have to have adequate time either to make sure that a new system will provide the functionality that they need, or they have to plan for integrating another solution or writing another solution to work with the modern system that they're moving to. So we are, we're seeing that institutions are placing a much heavier weight on understanding how the people that they're going to be working with for that institutional transformation and the processes that they're going to be using. And the overall impact of that organizational change is going to impact the institution over time. They need a real understanding, for example, of exactly who is going to participate and what systems are are gonna be impacted so that they can understand how they're going to move to modern solutions. So in the event that for example, an institution does decide and it depends widely on the vendor that they've selected. So depending on the path that an institution may decide that they're going to go on the way that they would migrate to a new system is going to be different depending on the vendor path and the technology path., The path that an institution would take. For example, if they chose to go to a Workday decision, would mean that they have to replace finance, student, and human capital management in order to operate in that student environment. An institution today cannot just select a Workday student product. However, in all the other vendor scenarios, including Oracle, Jenzabar — and Jenzabar is going to deliver our modern system in 2022 later in fact next year—institutions can implement that student system standalone. So what we know that is that depending on the path that the institution takes, the processes that need to be in place, the people that need to be in place are going to be very different. So we recommend that institution look for their path first, and then think about all of the other the people and processes that are going to be impact so that they can implement that careful planning and having a real understanding of the people that are currently at the institution a nd where those deficits are. If there are any, in terms of backfill or, planning for institutional c hange is really important early in the project, we will continue, I think to see large four-year institutions make decisions as well as two-year institutions. Despite time -delayed timelines for delivery for full functionality in terms of modern cloud-based student systems. We, we know that for the vendors that are rolling out functionality for complex research 1 institutions, for example, it may be 20 26. At this point, before we see student systems that are fully featured enough for a large R1 to be comfortable that they have an option available in the market. That's fully featured across all aspects of the student life cycle . But despite the delayed timelines, institutions aren't deterred. We're not seeing significant delays in terms of institutions making their directional decisions because of the sheer amount of time and planning that's involved before those implementations. So you, even though it seems like between 2022 and 2026 are a really long time, the larger the institution is, a four-year planning and implementation cycle is really not very long at all. So I would just point out that between selecting the right partner for implementation or being comfortable that—depending on again the size and type of institution—if you're choosing a system where the vendor is going to support the implementation, making sure that you have the right services that are aligned with the institution, both the culture, and also the needs, especially given the fact that institutions are so resource constrained, making sure that the vendor that's providing the services is prepared to support the institution in a way that's comfortable. And that you understand very clearly before you enter into a contract, what those staffing plans look like, been really surprised to see recently that some vendors still are still proposing to institutions implementation plans that don't fully outline for institutions, the amount of staffing that the institution needs to be prepared to bring to an implementation. And Liz, I can't tell you how frustrating that is when, when an institution gets a vendor proposal and a price for an implementation, and it doesn't come along with any outline of what the institution is going to have to step up to in terms of the amount of personnel resources or hours or timeline for the institution to know what they're gonna have to deliver in order for that implementation to be successful. Because we've seen time and time again, once that implementation starts, if the expectations of the institutions aren't aligned with the vendor, in terms of who the people are that are gonna be assigned to the project, and when they have to be available to support the vendor, then the vendor comes back and says, well, you weren't ready. You didn't have the people well, if that's not clearly defined in advance, it sets the institution up to fail. So we, we definitely want to make sure that institutions are clearly aware of the people that need to be involved. And I point out as well, that even with well known delays on major systems in higher ed, in this particular in the student areas, we do still expect to see go-lives on student systems that are hitting their milestones. I mean, for example , within the Workday environment, we're seeing small institutions go live private , not-for-profit four year institutions are hitting their milestones for go-lives and are going live on the product. We also see , in the Oracle environment, for example, in the financial aid area—what Oracle calls student financial planning—we're seeing those projects continue as planned with functionality rolling out as Oracle's timeline currently calls for. And we're seeing customers that have chosen the Jenzabar cloud solution, J1, continue to move along in a timeline that is within the expectations that Jenzabar has set . Within t he environment that we would c all out for Thesis, and I would just note that Thesis is the standalone student product that was formally known as Unit4. Unit4 sold their finance and HCM business last year to a private equity group. And the new owners did not buy the student management product. And so the remaining intellectual property and the customers that were using the Unit4 student management product, and then the former CAMS product, which was part of the Three River System, those customers have all been combined under a new company called Tthesis. And Thesis is bringing their US customers and their international customers live on their product. And we expect to see Thesis active in the US market again in mid 2022. We think that we'll see continued success in the Anthology space as they sell their modular approach, noting that it's a hosted cloud solution in the US. We think that they'll continue to have success in the public, two-year and private, not-for-profit space and note that they are continuing to sell their solution in the private, not-for-profit space as well. And the last point I wanna make is around the success that we've seen with the Ellucian environment, where we see selections this past year, both for Banner SaaS, which is a completely different approach to hosting Banner in the cloud, the Banner SaaS product, which is a best practices configuration of the Banner solution. We have seen some selections of the Banner SaaS student product, and then we've seen a number of the Banner institutions migrate their on-premises implementations to the cloud in either in a cloud-hosted environment or cloud-hosted managed services. So lots of activity in the student area, Liz , I think it will continue to be very key to the decisions institutions make. For many, it will lead or at least influence the decisions institutions make for many other areas because there's so many integrations and third-party applications that are connected to the core student system will continue to drive a lot of the activity that we see in 2022 .

Liz Farrell 48:59

It's definitely , um, another layer of complexity in already complex area. Speaking of which you had mentioned pro sometimes when people don't adequately plan for hours needed staffing needed what the budget will be. And I think that's an excellent segue into another trend that you highlighted last year, where you had mentioned that leaders were more focused on adopting sophisticated budgeting and planning tools you would mention, and I find this crazy, but t they still rely on Excel spreadsheets and that those are really insufficient to meet their complex needs. They require more sophisticated, predictive analytics and budgeting models, as you know, because of the competitive pressures for cost-cutting and underscore the need for these improve of efficiency . So all of that makes sense, and I know those factors still exist. Um, has anything changed in terms of this prediction from the last year, do you still expect to see, or are we continuing to see , um, mass interest in these areas?

Vicki Tambellini 50:11

We've seen an increase in the selections for budget and planning tools in 2021, and expect that to continue into 2022 and institutions need sophisticated tools for many of the same reasons you needed them before the pandemic number of staff changes and reallocation of head count that continue, that need to understand various scenarios. For example, what would happen if we increase salaries in one area and substituted contingent labor in another area. And with interesting to me in terms of how this trend has evolved and will continue in 2022, is that the sequence for implementing budget and planning is different institutions tended to take an approach where they would focus on replacing core systems first, and then maybe as a second wave, they would add budget and planning tools. And that has changed so that they're implementing standalone budget and planning tools ahead of core systems. So going forward, we expect to see more of the same. It still is true that many institutions are using spreadsheets, but there's at least a, a acknowledgement that not going to be sufficient anymore. And they're going to prioritize implementing sophisticated tools going forward,

Liz Farrell 51:36

Which is obviously much needed, especially with so many downward pressures on budgets. At the beginning of 2021, you also point to a trend where there were a lot of conversations taking place among thoughtful institutional leaders about how they could combine operations. One of those areas we know is shared services. So what have those conversations led to, if anything?

Vicki Tambellini 52:05

We've seen some significant movement in the overarching concept of shared services in 2021. For example, we saw the University of Maryland System moving to a shared service model with their smaller institutions. We've seen multiple RFPs for public university systems and even groups of private, not-for-profit institutions that are trying to figure out how to work in a shared service model together. We saw the HESS Consortium make a selection this year for Oracle. We saw the nonprofit Collaborative for Higher Education Shared Services—that's CHESS—in New Mexico make a decision to select Workday for finance , human capital management, and student, and also OmniSAC, which I mentioned before, is part of this trend in cybersecurity.

Liz Farrell 53:05

So given all that progress, what do you expect will happen in the next year in terms of shared services?

Vicki Tambellini 53:11

We see that there are multiple ways to approach shared services, and the institutions are beginning to think about different types of shared services models. Overall, I expect this , see them grow in adoption based on what we've seen in the RFP volume. The main thing I would say is that institutions have to make sure that they have alignment in terms of their needs and timing. When they're looking to start the same project across multiple institutions, and that they have to be aware of the risks they're for example, if they form an Alliance, is it an Alliance? Are they forming a new legal entity? How will decisions be made? What is the governance process? How far does shared services go? For example, are we just all selecting the same platform and sharing guest practices, or are we really trying to operate in a shared services model? The green map and consortium for example, is a , is a terrific example of an ins is an organization that was formed to support private, not for profit institutions. And they've been successful in rolling out finance and HCM in an Oracle environment. However, it's been, I think admittedly, they would say much more complex than they thought it would be. It's taken longer to roll out. They've had , uh , governance issues to, to think about and all those things are to be expected, but there are some lessons that can be learned there. And the other thing that has to be considered is what happens if you enter into a legal agreement, a vendor or vendors, and then one institution wants out of the agreement or for having sakes forbid that they fold or no longer a viable operation. What happens to the expenses that are incurred on behalf of the consortium? And we've been working with an organization for the last several years that had multiple agreements with vendors. And I can tell you that it depends very much on the type of agreement you sign and the vendor you signed it with as to what happens with that agreement. In some cases, the rest of the institution will end up bearing the cost of whatever the agreement was with the vendor across all the institutions for the one institution that failed. And in other situations, the vendor or vendors may negotiate the agreement so that the remaining institutions are responsible only for their share. And sometimes it costs the individual institutions more to do that. So it's complex and something that institutions should consider very carefully and with probably with a lot of guidance from people that have been there and done that before.

Liz Farrell 56:05

Yeah. I've definitely, especially , with all the downward pressures on budgets. I'm sure that's driving a lot of this interest in, in the shared services because the ideas of course that you can save money through it. And speaking of that , um, let's turn now to institutional it budgets. Now I know that there are surveys often done asking people, do you feel that you get enough money for your tasks that need to be done? But can we say anything on what we've seen in the past year in IT spending and maybe what your outlook is for the coming year?

Vicki Tambellini 56:48

Well , sure. First, all IT budgets are not the same for institutions where enrollment has declined. Some have had commensurate declines in IT budgets, but if the IT budget has stayed constant institutions were able to maintain that by taking budgets often from faculty and other administrative areas. And this has caused a lot of angst and sometimes bad feelings between faculty and staff and IT. It can also depend on the board, if IT is viewed as a strategic priority or as a strategic area for the institution, the IT department is more likely to be well funded. If it's considered a burden on the infrastructure, then IT is likely to receive less funding. We'll definitely find is that where IT is considered strategic, the budgets aren't decreasing in some cases are increasing. Computer costs certainly gone down, but ITstaffing costs have increased. So we want to make sure that there's at least an awareness among institutions that the cost of staffing in IT is going to continue to increase. It's gonna be more difficult for institutions to compete for staffing. The older systems get on campus, the more difficult it's going to be to recruit and retain staff to support those systems. And the more modern the systems are, the more , difficult it's gonna be to recruit into higher ed, because in general, we see that salaries are lower and the environment is not as desirable as it used to be in terms of working in higher education. And that's unfortunate because it's impacting us as an industry in pretty significant ways right now.

Liz Farrell 58:56

Yeah. That's a great point in terms of the workforce. Is there anything else that you're seeing? We know across all industries in all fields , here's this great retirement going on, and I'm wondering, given those forces, what do you , how is this gonna impact higher ed specifically in the it area?

Vicki Tambellini 59:20

Well, like everything else, I don't think there's any one answer that's gonna be the same for every institution, but I think we would agree that the irony of what we're finding in higher ed is that higher ed has been an attractive place to work for many, many years because it's traditionally offered a terrific work-life balance. And after the initial phase of the pandemic, when everybody was able to work from home, we now see a patchwork of policies across higher ed. So it's hard to see a trend that we would say is consistent in higher ed, because it depends very much on institutional policies. And sometimes even is impacted by state government policies. We know that some institutions have had great success in remote work, especially within IT, but then they went back to requiring IT to be back on campus, full-time with no flexibility. And they lost valuable leaders as a result in other institutions, we've seen that both for IT leadership and staff, they're willing to have more positions, fully remote, including for example, chief information security officers. So the reality is that a lot of the cloud deployment work institutions focused on can be done remotely, but until they get infrastructure that is fully cloud operational, they still have to have staff physically on campus to maintain and transition on-premises systems. So overall institutions that don't enable more work flex are going see much bigger impact than it has in the past, on their ability to hire and retain it. And it leadership teams, it could be the one thing that will prevent institutions from achieving their goals for modernization. By the time there's this convergence of technology and willing for process change. There may not be enough people to do the work. We can see this on the horizon, maybe not for next year, but not very far out before we think institutional priorities will not be achieved because we won't have staff available to operationalize those priorities. And so it's absolutely a, in our mind, call to urgency or creative thinking that needs to be done in higher education.

Liz Farrell 1:01:59

Yes. And I think you'd mentioned, you know, shared services is one model of that. And I know we have covered so much here today, and I'm very grateful for all your time on these trends and topics. So I thought in starting the new year for 2022, do you have any advice that you've given based on what you've seen over the last year and changes you expect?

Vicki Tambellini 1:02:22

Well , we're living in a time where change made in technology use and application, especially as more things move to the cloud or prompting fundamental shifts in the way our institutions operate. And that means there are two big things that institutional it leaders and teams and all institutional stakeholders need to bear in mind if they adapt and change the way they use technology. The first one is that big technology projects can no longer be thought of as having a beginning, a middle and an end cloud native platform mean that updates are continually made by external providers that includes added functionality and decisions that have to be made on a continual basis. We have to begin thinking or continue thinking about our technology deployment and use efforts as an ongoing process of continuous incremental improvement that never ends. And there's no longer this direct bright line between what is considered it work and business functions within higher education. So collaboration is critical because whether we're considering budgeting, payroll, staff, or student success teams, those groups are required to take more ownership and accountability for the tools they use in their daily work and reporting requirements. We're no longer talking about it serving as an entire support system for every facet of operations, the business units and their staff have to be critically involved and engaged on a daily basis. So I think with these two factors taking together, it's important to remember that sustainable change happens gradually. It happens over time and it's tangible, it's worthwhile, and the impact for the institution is all for the better.

Liz Farrell 1:04:20

I think that's a great positive note to end on Vicki. We thank you so much for your time today.

Vicki Tambellini 1:04:27

Thank you, Liz. It's always a pleasure to talk with you and look forward to 2022. And if some of the things we predict are right then we'll be, we'll be perfect. So thank you very much for asking me to join you today.

Liz Farrell 1:04:43

And that concludes this month's Top of Mind Podcast. Don't forget to check out our resource center for more podcasts, blogs, and videos at thetambellinigroup .com .