Transforming

Transformation
in Higher Education

1

“It’s never about the
technology! A succinct
readable exposition
of the dos and don’ts
to achieving digital
transformation in
higher education.”
Professor Jane den Hollander AO
Vice Chancellor, Deakin University
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Paul Hoskins,
Chairman and founder of Precedent
Introduction
At Precedent we have seen many waves of Over the following pages we have deployed
change pass through the further and higher our 25 years of experience as a strategic
education sectors. Digital transformation partner in the sector to help articulate the
is one that has dominated for some time, challenges faced by HE institutions. For
but is also one that continues to present each challenge we offer solutions in a way
significant challenges for universities. that will help you frame the right responses
Failure to understand these challenges within your own organisations. From the
leads to the same mistakes time and time inside it can often seem like nothing can or
again. Leadership teams are prone to will change, but genuine transformation with
following a direction established by product a real and lasting impact on people’s lives
vendors or competitors and fail to forge a is attainable. Taking an approach focused
vision that delivers digital and educational on the student experience and adopting
transformation agendas. Costly procurement some of the agile methods available is key.
exercises are embarked on, often with little to Most crucial, however, is breaking the cycle
show for large budgets. of procurement driven by the needs of the
technology vendors.
As the market evolves – with the push from
government regulatory change, demographic
shifts and the pull from students demanding
better – we are at a tipping point where
those that fail to address these challenges
will find themselves in an increasingly
perilous situation. At the same time, there
are significant opportunities for those who
get it right. Not just in terms of securing the
future of organisations, but in delivering the
education that can help citizens flourish in a
digital-first world.

Digital transformation is not a digital
problem. It’s about the whole product
Many universities now have a role for Head of Digital
or a digital transformation governance committee.
However, this approach to digital governance ignores
the fundamental change digital is bringing about, which
is about the affordances provided to revolutionise the
product and the experience, and the high-level vision
required to guide it.
2 3
We’re all familiar with the problem of This includes considerations such as course
organisations working in silos. However, this length, learning models and, crucially, price. As
problem escalates when digital staff are set learning platforms and ideas develop, factors
up within the same silos, or a new ‘digital’ silo such as price will become an increasingly
in of itself. The introduction of the Head of important point of contention and competition.
Digital heralded the arrival of digital into the Any attempt at digital transformation that
space. Now it signifies that the responsibility overlooks the non-technological aspects of
for digital sits with an individual, rather than the product and experience will soon find itself
with everybody within the organisation. Heads running to a standstill, leaving the institution
of digital are positioned within marketing lagging behind a nimbler, more digitally-aware
departments or IT departments, often competition. The trick is in combining a vision
responsible for websites and CRMs. At best, with achievable short- and medium-term goals.
digital departments or committees are in
separate verticals of governance with their
own budgets, and little or no influence on the
other major departments within the university. The Solution
At worst, it means that digital transformation,
and so the future direction of the institution,
is very often led from the middle. Vision is key, but a vision must place
the student experience at its heart. It
cuts across departmental lines and
Digital is fundamentally is an objective which can be shared.
Make sure conversations about
reshaping the product digital are not confined to specific
landscape and is part of departments or individuals and that
you work towards a digitally-aware
everything we do. working culture, rather than a digital
department. Mindful of the realities
of what technology can achieve,
Digital is fundamentally reshaping the consider the opportunities and
product landscape and is part of everything
we do. In education it has created the
possibility of new education products,
benefits from a platform-agnostic
perspective and keep an open mind
to the possibilities.
new pedagogies, smarter interactions with
students and streamlined administration.
There is a new expectation which goes with
digitisation: that products and services
provided by FE and HE institutions will
bring about a sea change in how people
learn, access their careers and continue to
develop. But just because the expectation
is there doesn’t mean it has to be met
immediately. A common mistake is trying to
solve everything at once. It’s important not
to overreach.
That doesn’t mean you don’t need a
guiding vision. No transformation will
be successful unless it can consider the
linked aspects of the student experience
and university product in its entirety.

Competing philosophies
When it comes to tackling digital transformation
initiatives universities not only have the problem
of being built on many different departments,
but also the fact that each of these departments
is founded on a different philosophy.
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The university product is distinct from many
commercial product offerings in that it is
experiential and made up of many facets,
some driven by the profit motive, some
not. Universities are the gatekeepers of
educational standards, knowledge-bases for
society, educators and – increasingly, as they
compete for students – brand managers and
marketeers. They are dependent on tuition
fees in a commercial fashion, yet funded at
the same time by the public purse. They are
required to compete both in the increasingly
international commercial marketplace for
students and in the academic space for
status, research funding and the capability to
project the required image of excellence.
In a university these different facets of the
experience are embedded within departments
which hold influence. Academic departments
each have their own voice – varying in
audibility depending on factors such as levels
of research funding, prestige of individuals or
sheer size – and are often mini-brands within
themselves. Star researchers are promoted
as individuals, departments and research
groups will have their own web pages and
identities. The former might be considered
draws to recruiting the right talented research
students in a subject, the latter a right and
proper representation of the devolved nature
of university governance.
The problem is that the aims of academics in
departments might be based around ethics,
pedagogy or a commitment to a particular
subject area. This will be fundamentally
distinct from, say, the overarching student
acquisition objectives of a recruiter university.
These differences in priorities are coupled with
differences in opinion on the use of online in
education and the value of examinations, i.e.
views on what’s ‘best’ for students. Multiply
this by the number of departments – and the
centrally run department of business analysts,
procurement and marketing teams – and the
picture becomes increasingly complicated.
The governance structures that sit upon
these departments are constructed to enable
these competing philosophies to coexist,
rather than to encourage the development
of a central vision that can be acted upon.
‘Digital’ or transformation committees are put
at the same level or below other departments
such as registry or learning, each of which
probably has its own digital initiatives or
favourite technologies.
Within this environment
it is incredibly difficult
for universities to
understand the what
and the why of their
transformation.
Within this environment it’s incredibly
difficult for universities to understand the
what and the why of their transformation.
Should they be aiming to develop their
online presences to support the recruitment
of students and maintain their revenue, or
should they be focusing on educational
outcomes built on new online platforms?
Or is it all insignificant when compared to a
particular department’s core outcomes?
Digital transformation demands real,
practical change and can’t be mandated from
the centre like a brand. It requires changes
in processes, systems, designs and even
ideas. The competing philosophies within a
university mean that too often initiatives only
ever grow in silos. Maybe they never even
get off the ground because the hurdles are
simply too high.
The Solution
Don’t think big. Think small. The
concepts might be big with terms like
AI and transformation, but in reality,
change is made up of hundreds
of smaller changes. Grasping this
will prevent you from reverting to
the default of a big system for big
unresolved problems.
 The digitisation of society and generational
changes in the use of technology, along
with the education start ups making waves,
are contributing to a growing sense that
digitisation is bringing about a shift in how
education will be delivered. Online, blended
and alternative models are all hinting at a
world in which digital is the great enabler that
will radically change education as we know
it. Legacy institutions don’t have the capacity
in terms of culture, resource and skills to
reinvent themselves like an agile start up.
But thinking is often captured by the radical,
digital disrupter mindset of the technology
vendors, and this leads to one of two things –
overreach or paralysis.
If it’s not overreach, then it’s paralysis. The
estate – university websites, systems and
databases – is too sprawling and too complex
to achieve anything. It’s certainly not possible
for any one individual, department or budget
to measure up to the digital revolution
we’ve all been promised. This results in a
series of repetitive research reports or vision
documents which restate the problems or
a noble aim, in a number of different ways,
skating around the issues but doing little to
achieve real and tangible change.
The Solution

The truth is that Most of the technologies and

techniques needed are already out
universities are far more there and are best used in smaller-
scale projects which connect to a
adept at transforming bigger picture. Projects don’t need
the industries and to be technological – it may be that
a change of content will have as
products they research, much of an impact as a change in
user interface, design or system. For
rather than their example, a social media campaign
own sectors. with the right tailored content might
communicate messages around

The temptations of technology Overreach is something to which universities

Digital technologies are constantly sold to the public using
terms like disruption, change and revolution – areas in
which universities are used to being at the forefront. The
reality is that most change within established organisations
is incremental. Trying too hard to revolutionise leads to
overreach or paralysis.
student welfare much better than
buying a new system.
are particularly susceptible due to their
tradition of moving beyond the state-of-the-
art in research. There is a feeling that they
should be the places in which the innovative,
disruptive changes occur. The truth is that
universities are far more adept at transforming
the industries and products they research,
rather than their own sector. What occurs
in practice are overambitious multi-million-
pound procurement exercises that seek
to radically reshape operating models. In
between the very few successful projects and
initiatives we see the majority, which either
achieve little and become bogged down in
departmental processes or are costly failures
that struggle to even get off the ground.

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 If you ask a senior leader, a student and an
edtech startup how technology will impact
HE in the future, you will quite likely get three
different answers. The startup will tell you that
the sector is ripe for disruption and the world
will look very different in five years’ time. If
you ask a student, you’ll find an expectation
that universities should provide an up-to-date,
joined-up experience underpinned by quality
digital technologies and interfaces. A pro-VC
in a university will probably be somewhere
between the two, trying to navigate the
upcoming technology wave without
abandoning the current model entirely, and
wrangling with the political and governance
constraints in the specific university context.
This middle ground is problematic. The current
marketplace demands a clear product vision
and associated brand in order for institutions
to stay relevant, with technology playing a key
role. Deploying digital in a half-hearted and
disconnected fashion does little to support the
experience, the product or the brand. It also
fails to target what’s important – the student
view. This means digital transformation
projects rarely deliver for those that matter
most – the students.
Losing control of the student agenda A reluctance to take
a student-centred
approach leads to
The common story given to explain failure is of
competing agendas between internal departments.
missed opportunities
The real story is the failure to consider the one that come from an
group that really matters – the students. understanding of the
fact that different
students may want
different things
from their education
and that there are
numerous ways for
digital to support them.
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A reluctance to take a student-centred
approach leads to missing opportunities that
come from an understanding of the fact that
different students may want different things
from their education and digital support. For
example, a student in Africa might want the
prestige of a UK degree without the resources
to afford it, in which case the online version
of the degree might be a more attractive
option. An investment in the online student
experience – not based entirely on promoting
online pedagogy, but also in promoting a form
of campus community experience – could
be of considerable value for expanding into
new markets. However, this investment will
only be relevant if elements such as price and
paths to employment are considered. If it’s too
expensive then the new digital offering won’t
be attractive enough and the opportunity will
be lost.
This gap in leadership and vision driven by
the student agenda is currently being filled
by a frenetic amount of business activity
from rival commercial providers, all vying to
offer platforms to support learning, student
interactions and the institutions themselves.
Until it’s proven that these platforms are a
benefit for students – from the perspective of
both reduced cost and improved education
– universities must ensure they remain at the
forefront of the sector, as custodians of the
digital domain for the benefit of students.
The Solution
Begin with a clearly articulated vision
of exactly what you are offering your
students, irrespective of technology.
Choose the technology (if any) to
support it, and then sell it to your staff
internally. Make sure you articulate
the reason and benefits to them, the
students and to society as a whole.

The wrong skills at all levels
A lack of digital skills in an organisation is often
given as the reason for failure of transformation
projects. What tends to be overlooked is that this is
as true for those in leadership positions as it is for
staff lower down.
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Digital transformation is not just about
changing technology, it’s about changing
culture. A successful digital organisation is
one that continues to evolve based on the
affordances of digital technology, rather than
just introducing new systems and expecting
the job to be done. This requires staff to
acquire the right skills across data, user
research, coding and product management
to keep researching, understanding and
evolving the offering, brand and marketing
of the organisation. This necessary change
in culture and skills is one of the hardest to
make when considering the move towards
digital. However, it’s not just at the coal face
– development, digital marketing, website
management – where the skills are needed.
The leadership team also need to understand
what technology can enable. Only then can
they set the agenda, lead the conversation
and assess the efficacy of what’s
being implemented.
The leadership team also
need to understand what
technology can enable.
Only then can they set
the agenda, lead the
conversation and assess
the efficacy of what’s
being implemented.
Failure of leadership is often cited as a reason
for the failure of transformation projects.
This is only partly true. Rather than a lack
of leadership in and of itself, this failure is
more often due to a lack of the right digital
skills amongst those at the top, which in turn
prevents the formulation of an effective digital
vision. A senior university leader doesn’t need
to be an expert in UX or data, but he or she
does need to be fluent in them and, crucially,
needs to be able to understand the limits
of what it is possible to achieve. Digital is
connected to product, to experience, to price,
to efficiency and to cost. Decisions about its
deployment can’t be taken in isolation, nor can
they be taken successfully without a proper
granular understanding of both the digital
and non-digital factors at play. Getting it right
requires senior leaders to be able to have the
right conversations with the domain experts
in order to deploy resource and energy in the
right way. In practice, there is often a lack of
understanding that delays action and delegates
digital thinking to those who are capable of
acting, but who lack the necessary authority.
This problem tends to manifest in two ways.
Firstly, technology is seen as a product,
subject to the same procurement processes
as any other, thereby reducing digital to a
choice between different vendors’ technology
solutions. Secondly, digital is relegated to
a subordinate department, far away from
the executive team. This removes both
responsibility and accountability for the
deployment of digital within an organisation,
and ultimately makes it incredibly difficult for
those responsible for transformation to
achieve their goals.
The Solution
Build a culture and a training offering
based around a digital-first organisa-
tion. Understand what’s on offer and
how it connects to what you need as
an organisation as a whole, then set
criteria against which you can measure
success. With this in place, it’s time
to delegate digital responsibilities in a
manner that empowers staff to deliver
against your vision.
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 Procurement teams and systems are set up
to buy goods and services, rather than what’s
really required – outcomes. A typical business
case requires the simultaneous identification
of a problem and its solution in the form of a
product or service. Given this approach, the
solution is almost inevitably one described
by a technology vendor or articulated by a
high-level consultancy. The problem is that
every supplier describes a solution(s) utilising
a specific set of technologies in which they
are experts. Such an approach does little to
promote the necessary vision setting, nor does
it work with digital transformation where there
is no immediate solution and the need is for a
shift in culture, methods and skills towards an
agile way of achieving shared objectives.
In strict adherence to their own governance
models, institutions end up with the wrong
partners fixing the wrong problems. It can go
one of two ways: too big – with an oversized
budget and an overgrown scope in an attempt
to achieve too radical a transformation – and
ultimately unmanageable and undeliverable;
or too small – with a limited scope that leads
nowhere in the long-term – meaning that any
change is quietly and effectively shelved. Both
tend to end in failure.
The Solution

The wrong partners
Existing methods of buying technology through a
procurement process push universities to think about
digital through the prism of vendor-driven solutions.
This prevents the necessary joined-up thinking and
agile delivery methods required for success.
Embark on an overhaul of
It is impossible for procurement processes in such a way
that they can support purchasing
an institution like a against desired outcomes, rather
than against predefined solutions
university to contain and specific systems. Develop
all the necessary procurement staff and systems with
capabilities in project management,
skills in-house to strategy and financial planning and
adopt an approach to selecting
achieve the necessary partners based on their holistic
capabilities in digital as opposed to
transformation.
their capabilities in implementing off-
the-shelf or bespoke technologies.
It is impossible for an institution like a
university to contain all the necessary skills in-
house to achieve a successful transformation.
This would require the necessary capacities
to connect high-level product and experiential
changes at the top to incremental granular
changes at the bottom. Reinforcing this
problem is the fact that business analysis and
procurement departments tend not to have the
necessary technical knowledge, understanding
or expertise in project management to procure
according to specific objectives, across
multiple vendors. They are even less likely
to buy services in a way which supports the
necessary agile approach for a thriving
digital culture.

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 Data
In summary – time to take it forward

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It’s likely that you’ll be reading this report from the

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it might therefore seem difficult to do much beyond

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hip
identifying the problems. However, progress can be Partners Vision

made by focusing on the key problem areas and taking

small, tangible steps.

The key is in viewing these problems outside of the Procurement Skills

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in g
normal ways universities are sliced, for example by
department or by course. Our holistic approach to

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Digital Backlog
transformation looks like the wheel of transformation

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in figure 1. The inner slices are what you need; the outer

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slices are the inputs you need to get there. Te
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Figure 1 Wheel of transformation. The inner

slices are what you need, the outer slices are
the inputs you need to get there.

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 You need to know your audiences,
so go out and get the data.
Nothing is as effective in achieving
transformation as a shared understanding
of what your students and researchers need
and want. There is no universal truth that
applies to all students, so segmentation is
crucial. However, to achieve buy-in within the
organisation this needs to be backed up by
data. This can come from traditional market
research metrics, website analytics or primary
qualitative research. Any information is useful
information – the key is in collating and
understanding it collectively to construct a
shared view of your user needs. Conversations
backed up by evidence will always go further
than those that stand alone.
You need a vision, so take heed
and provide the leadership to
create it.
It’s difficult to make progress without a
shared vision. Faced with the difficulties
of decision-making within the confines of
university structures and governance, this
often takes the form of a document. Real
progress requires leadership to own and
drive this vision – and to persuade people of
its value. This isn’t necessarily the preserve
of the senior management or one individual.
Anyone in the organisation can provide
this leadership if they have the supporting
culture. When individuals within departments,
or at the top, take it upon themselves to
provide leadership, things can often move
quickly – provided it ties back to the shared
institutional vision.
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Precedent Offers
Qualitative user research
User segmentation
Persona development
Social media analytics
Online sentiment analysis
Precedent Offers
Digital strategy
Digital transformation roadmaps
Customer experience mapping
Vision setting workshops
Expert advice retainers
You need the right skills, so
come up with the training plan.
Digital skills aren’t necessarily technical Precedent Offers
coding skills. They cover the whole gamut:
from creating the right content to collating, Digital maturity audits
cleansing and visualising data in the right
way. Take a look at your departmental staff, Skills audits
see what objective they could achieve
given the right skills and devise a means of User-centred content training
enabling them to acquire those skills and
capabilities. It doesn’t necessarily mean CMS and technical training
bringing in external providers to educate;
it could be as simple a matter as making
sure everyone understands the capabilities
of the systems that you have, or ensuring
academics know what content about
their research output needs to look like
to perform well on your social channels.
Be honest about what you don’t know.
Understand how much of the process you
want to own in-house and be realistic about
sustainability of skills and resource in the
long-term.
You need to understand the
state of play, which means
the right kind of audit and
scoping exercises.
Just as it’s difficult to make the right decisions Precedent Offers
without truly understanding your user groups,
it’s equally difficult to do so without a shared Technology audits
understanding of the institutional state of play.
Such an understanding covers knowledge of Content audits
systems, interfaces, content and data, along
with a granular map of the pain points and Impact assessments
opportunities associated with them. A lack
of this understanding is often what drives Strategic backlogs
universities towards large procurements as
they try to fix everything at the same time,
instead of incrementally in agile fashion. Build
a backlog of capabilities in your departments
and connect it to the university as a whole.
Identify the small changes that could make a
difference, as well as the big opportunities –
a bible and roadmap for change.
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 Procurement needs to deliver
against objectives, so give
them some.
Interactions with procurement processes
are frustrating affairs. Think from your own
perspective which objectives you need to
achieve and work with your procurement teams
and senior leaders to explore the boundaries
between operational budgets and capital
expenditure budgets. Iterative approaches
to transformation are almost invariably
more successful than big bangs. Redefining
your business-as-usual spending and your
operational budgets can have a huge impact on
your capabilities. Just make sure they’re in line
with specific, relevant objectives.
You need partners as you
can’t do it all, so build
relationships with the people
who can help you.
External suppliers are often treated as
vendors only capable of responding to
specific systems problems, or as companies
who deliver little of real intellectual value. The
truth is often that the skills you need only
exist in agencies. The trick is in deploying
them in a way that is complimentary to what
you do, so that you can learn at the same time
as benefiting from expertise. However, make
sure that you recruit specialists, ensure they
understand the HE operating environment,
and hire based on your objectives and project
backlog, rather than their own.
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About us
Precedent Offers
Brief writing support
Technical strategy
UX strategy
Brand strategy Digital isn’t ultimately about digital – it’s about No single agency – no matter their size –
people and products. At Precedent, we’ve can deliver all the necessary capabilities to
Media planning learned to focus on the opportunities that the highest level required. This is why the
digital and technology bring on a human level. Precedent Alliance was formed. Through the
We solve problems and identify opportunities Alliance, we have established relationships
for our clients to use digital to grow – be this with specialist partners across multiple
through better understanding their customers, industries. It provides greater depth and
or exploiting digital tools to enhance and breadth to Precedent’s expertise, enabling us
develop existing products and services, and to to combine the best in breed across branding,
introduce new ones. strategy, CX, build, CRM, content, training
and media planning. We can even help you
No one can really predict what effect build your own internal team – all without the
technology will have on the future of anything. hassle of multiple suppliers.
However, on our long journey of helping clients
through all this technology transformation,
we’ve learned a few simple truths, and have
honed our approach to guiding organisations
Precedent Offers towards digital maturity.
UX design Our approach begins with an understanding
of what makes us human. Combining this
Creative direction understanding with technology, we establish
context, use insight, and apply empathy
Full-stack development
to create experiences that provide a
competitive advantage.
Third-party platform integration
Prototyping We have worked with over 50 higher education
institutions across the globe, and many
international education organisations.
There’s no one better placed to help you
navigate the rapidly changing and evolving
education market.
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 “Clarity of purpose, leadership
and a real understanding of
what is desired from digital
transformation across the
entire university underpin
success. Isolating digital
leadership among a few in the
organisation is destined to
result in failure - the lessons
could not be clearer”
Iain Martin
Vice Chancellor, Anglia Ruskin University

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