As Higher Education institutions adapt to growing expectations from students and staff, they must leverage innovative technology to combat the pace of change and continue to monitor and modify these processes as needed. Many institutions have already begun implementing solutions such as cloud-based enterprise management platforms to stay competitive in the higher education landscape. In fact, a Gartner 2023 CIO Higher Education Agenda found that 51% of higher education institutions will spend more on cloud platforms in 2023 than in 2022.
Institutions must understand that digital transformation is a lasting investment in which post-deployment support can provide significant assistance. Deploying new software only goes as far as faculty, staff and students are willing and able to use it, and there should be continued efforts to optimize and improve processes as opportunities present themselves or new challenges arise. Having a defined support model is key to driving continuous value and meeting changing organizational needs following a digital transformation.
Benefits of Post-Deployment Support in Higher Education
As the higher education industry continues to modernize, large amounts of data are being collected quickly with increasing complexity, and many institutions have taken strides to adjust by implementing modern software. However, following an implementation, institutions must be making continuous improvements and enhancing processes with post-deployment support.
Here are some benefits of post-implementation support from a knowledgeable implementation partner:
Advisory and Optimization: Implementation partners can help higher education institutions perform important tasks such as creating an adoption strategy, obtaining a governance model, increasing user engagement, setting goals and metrics, and developing system efficiencies. Advisory services also offer the management and alignment of expectations between technology support teams and institutional leadership. As needs for tech support increase and decrease over time, having the guidance of an implementation partner can ensure strong performance, continued operational success, and better resource planning over the long term.
Increased Agility: Adapting quickly to change has become an important skill at all levels of higher education institutions. While cloud-based platforms provide a highly beneficial set of tools, it can take time to optimize and tailor these solutions to best fit your institution’s needs, and if the right steps are not taken, the technology investment may never realize its full potential. Creating agility across people, processes, and technology can be accomplished with post-deployment support activities such as creating automation, building reports and dashboards, and fine-tuning existing technology. These steps ensure that organizations can achieve the agility they need and don’t find themselves stuck with ineffective technology.
Continuous Support: Another pillar of post-deployment support that benefits institutions is continuous support after go-live, helping to quickly solve technical challenges and troubleshoot pain points before larger issues arise. This external support takes a significant weight off internal teams and provides insight from those who are highly knowledgeable in various systems. For example, using Application Managed Services (AMS) following a Workday deployment helps organizations lower maintenance costs and boost performance levels with reliable support from a Workday AMS provider. These specialists have the resources and experience to scale quickly and seamlessly as institutional needs change, helping ease growing pains, minimize disruption, and provide as much or as little support as needed.
Improved data: Data maintenance and management has always been crucial in the higher education landscape, but in the past, it involved faculty and staff performing repetitive, time-consuming manual tasks. Post-deployment services ensure that after a digital transformation, data continues to be collected and analyzed efficiently and accurately, while modifying processes where needed. As institutions adjust their long-term strategies or embark on new digital transformation projects with an implementation partner, they can benefit from the support of improved data collection and organization along the way. This also ensures that data is more centrally located, protected and secured.
Supporting Digital Transformation in Higher Education with Service Delivery Enablement
Optimizing operations consists of continuous improvements such as analyzing workflows, collecting feedback, pinpointing areas of improvement, and acting on any necessary changes. Higher Education system support teams have daily tasks and processes to oversee and manage, meaning they can often benefit from external support across the range of strategic and technical operations of ERP platforms.
Implementation partners such as Collaborative Solutions have extensive knowledge of the challenges that higher education institutions face and have built a flexible set of service offerings that can guide and support clients throughout their digital transformation journey. Our post-deployment offering allows us to act as an extension of internal service delivery teams within an institution, and we offer multiple packages to choose from based on the level of support the institution requires. These packages provide on-demand support, improve operational efficiency, and ensure employee adoption.
Overall, undertaking a digital transformation in higher education is a continuous process, and post-implementation support and the benefits provided help to ensure long-term success and adoption for higher ed institutions.
To learn more about Collaborative Solutions post-implementation support, check out our Continuous Value Services page.
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