As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I was asked to present at SAP UK’s Digital Transformation in Public Services event.
The topic?
The Impact of Digital Transformation on Higher Education.
Quite a broad topic you will no doubt agree, and only 40 minutes to discuss it as well!
As part of my day job at itelligence we have been working with a number of Higher Education and Research establishments in the UK and keep having similar conversations over and over. It seemed to make sense to use these themes as my start point in thinking about what do discuss. However when I did this, there was one particular challenge that kept coming to the front of the queue.
The growing commercialisation of the sector and the increasingly consumer style relationship with students creates a new set of pressures that many existing systems (both back and front office) are struggling to adapt to.
I decided to make this particular challenge, that of managing the changing relationship with the student, the focus of my presentation.
There is a huge amount of research that has been produced in relation to the behaviours of the so called "Millennials" and more specifically their relationship to technology and social platforms.
What is clear from this is that in order to be successful, the way in which Higher Education institutions interact with both existing and prospective students needs to change.
There is no doubt that we see a common set of challenges being faced by every University that we talk to. Not just in the UK either, this is a global marketplace and as a consequence the same pressures are found everywhere.
If we focus on the so called Student Lifecyle then it is clear that from early "prospecting" and application through study and on to post graduate alumni there are an increasing number of interactions within (and outside) the institution that generate "digital exhaust fumes" that can be captured and harnessed to improve experiences and outcomes.
To a degree (no pun intended) the leadership teams in the institutions we are engaged with are looking towards technology innovations that leverage this "big data" in order to fundamentally change the way they interact with their students.
You can view my full presentation including thoughts on how you can address these challenges here.
I will follow this post in the future with some more detailed cases from specific Higher Education establishments, but in the meantime if you want to know more about improving student recruitment, engagement, retainment and outcomes then please do not hesitate to get in touch.
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