EXAMPLES OF HOW INSTITUTIONS WORK AT INTEGRATING TEACHING, LEARNING AND ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEMS THROUGH OUTSOURCING

EXAMPLES OF HOW INSTITUTIONS WORK AT INTEGRATING TEACHING, LEARNING AND ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEMS THROUGH OUTSOURCING

CollegisEduprise (CE) is a growing company that offers technological, management and educational services strictly to higher education. CE executives spend a great deal of their time talking with higher education presidents and trustee board members, particularly at community colleges and at small, private institutions - the "sweet spots" of the company’s primary markets, according to CE Senior Vice President Rob Abel. CE’s pitch revolves around convincing higher education decision-makers to outsource their administrative technology services (to the Collegis unit) as well as their learning technologies and academic support services (to the Eduprise unit).

Operational Efficiencies

"They (upper-level, higher-education executives) are concerned about the overall cost of technology and what it costs to provide technical support services," says Abel. "They see themselves making large investments in technology, and a lot of them don’t see the payoff. So, we talk to them about how we can come in and improve their operational efficiencies around technology. . . One of the things we can do is provide them, through e-education, a way to serve more students than they serve today."

CE renders many of its services by partnering with leading higher education technology vendors, and CE claims to take a product-neutral approach when advising their clients on which vendor products and services they decide to buy. CE is also led by an experienced management staff that has roots in higher education though a long-time affiliation with William Graves, founder of Eduprise and co-chairman of the board of CE. Graves was a professor, dean and CIO at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and a group of colleagues from UNC’s Institute for Academic Technology, which was an IBM-supported applied instructional technology research center, formed Eduprise in 1997.

Integrative Function and ROI

Abel uses terms such as "integrative function" and "return on investment (ROI)" when he talks about CE’s capabilities. Integrative function is "the use of technology across the board," Abel says. Looking singularly at an institution’s distance education department is not a big enough focus for the president and board of trustees to get excited about, so you have to "look at technology as a way to attract and retain students in general and improve the reputation of the institution," he adds. "Another way to think about it is in pure technical terms. You can say you want to increase your enrollments in distance learning courses, and that is great, but what is the ramification on the campus network overall. There’s an integration here that’s really important, that’s really the next phase for many institutions."

When talking about ROI, Abel explains that distance education programs play a vital role in serving new students and bringing in new revenues. However, there has to be "operational improvement," whereby institutions must provide "the right set of support services for faculty and the right set of end-user services for students."

Additionally, CE has a strategic- services group that is currently developing "key performance indicators," which, Abel says, are "ways to measure how an institution is doing in their overall technical areas versus the national average. It’s one way that an institution can measure the value they are getting from a services company like us. They (key performance indicators) are different from client to client, and we are trying to figure out if there is some kind of commonality and some kind of systematic approach. It’s going to take a little while to figure it all out, but we are determined to do it. This is the way to really get it clear about return on investment for our clients."