Your Digital Strategy on a Page – for education providers and learning organisations.

What’s more important for an organisation’s success – culture or strategy?

Who is primarily responsible for developing and delivering on an organisation’s desired points of difference – marketing or management?

What about driving innovation? Is it about your HR strategies or your IT department?

The answer to all the above questions is simple: it’s both and more – no department in isolation can conquer your organisation’s strategic priorities. Same applies to external consultants. Everything has to work together and every team / individual should be accountable. Of course, it’s not always easy and discrepancies are common.

Let’s take a simple process like data collection as an example. Many organisations are still struggling to fine tune their data practices to ensure no time is wasted on collecting and storing data that is not fully aligned with what’s outlined in their strategy as ‘success factors’.

Same goes for software choices – purchase of which is often mistaken for a ‘digital transformation.’

If one of your strategic priorities is to be more customer-centric, do you fine tune your data collection, implement new software features or train your educators and LMS administrators to adhere to new, better practices? Again, the answer is all of the above and more.

Running a large enterprise organisation such as a University is a complex task requiring numerous strategic and tactical plans to work together, and your IT plan is no exception.

To deliver long term value to all stakeholders in the most efficient ways, you need a solid tech strategy. Not surprising, the successful Business Model Canvas has been adapted to Technology Strategy Canvas with companies recognising the importance of tech strategy in their overall business success.

At Catalyst, we assist our clients with various aspects of their digital transformations from providing strategic advice to offering ongoing technical support – whether it’s gathering the right data, developing analytics practices and tools, building custom plugins or implementing sustainable cloud management practices. From evaluation to innovation to enablement, it’s a rewarding experience to be able to help deliver on our client’s business goals.

Don’t forget the don’ts.

One of the common mistakes we are seeing in organisation’s digital strategy planning is not including the don’ts and only focusing on the dos. What you won’t do is an equally important part of your strategic planing as what you will do. Listing your don’ts will help achieve clarity for your key stakeholders and aid with decision making and efficient practices.

Whether it’s about your internal processes, software maintenance or programming language choices, or services that you decide to outsource or keep in-house, your don’ts matter.

Ask:

Are you spending enough resources on improving your teaching and learning practices, data analysis, staff training and so on?

Could you free yourself from routine upgrades and maintenance / infrastructure responsibilities?

Does everything you do align with the PURPOSE, PEOPLE and PROFIT pillars of your strategy?

Is everything you do good for your business? Good for community?

Having contributed to many education providers’ digital transformations over the last 25 years, we have pulled together a basic ‘digital strategy on a page’ checklist which you can download below, and have linked numerous useful blogs within the text above that expand on all these topics and will help you kick start your improved digital excellence.

While geared to higher education providers, these tips and tools can be utilised for any large or growing company looking to become a learning organisation, striving for continuous improvement.

Many of our team here at Catalyst have background in the Education sector. Having technical experts in-house who have worked on the client’s side of the business means we understand the key needs, challenges and common scenarios, and can help you plan accordingly.

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