A Five-Part Series

Part 01: Why Student Implementations Never Meet Expectations

“Transformation!” “Modernization!” “Flexible!” “Saves Time and Money!” “Allows you to do what you need to do!” 

You’ve heard all of these promises and more from SIS vendors who meet us at conferences, send us their videos, and respond to our RFIs. You sign on the dotted line, get millions of dollars worth of funding, and find an implementation partner who promises to transform your world. You get excited to start your SIS transformation initiative. 

Fast forward to two years later.

Your implementation is nearly out of funds, and you are nowhere near going live on schedule. Even if you do go live, the new software will take years of modifications before you will even be able to support many of the critical processes you were doing in your legacy system on the day you held your first kick-off meeting. As a result, time, money, and careers are all wasted and broken, and your institution is less able to operate than it was 24 months ago.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way! So, what happened? 

Based on over 20 years of observing and studying the maker, we have identified five common reasons SIS implementations never meet expectations:

Reason 1: The Expected Transformation Is Not Clearly Defined

Reason 2: Lack of Leadership

Reason 3: Poor Decision-making 

Reason 4: Pseudo Investments 

Reason 5: SIS Implementation Driven by External Players

Over the next few days, we will dive deeper into these five reasons and some preventative steps you can take. We will close out the series with guidance on how to generate uncomfortable conversations with your SIS teams and hopefully set you on a new path toward true student-centric transformation. 

Don’t like to wait? Neither does innovation. Download the full five-part article here: