The Importance of Consolidating Your Technology Stack in Career Education
In this day and age, chances are, if you have a problem, there’s a tech solution out there to solve it.
Unfortunately, when you seek out a tech solution to solve problem after problem, you may end up with 20 different solutions—each with a fee, contract, and learning curve—to solve 20 different problems. Plus, they may not all talk to each other, requiring staff to transfer data between systems or into the SIS manually. Ultimately, you waste significant money and time when you look at your technology stack as piecemeal solutions instead of parts of a holistic stack.
Consolidating your tech stack allows you to:
- Lower your technology spend
- Manage fewer contracts and vendors
- Reduce manual data management through integration
- Standardize operations across every department
- Train new staff faster
In career education, data integration and standardization are particularly critical to operational excellence. Software integration ensures that your data is timely and accurate, helping your staff quickly identify at-risk students and get them back on track before it’s too late. Standardization helps career education programs in the face of compliance rules and regulations. By standardizing your tech stack, you can ensure that every department operates in compliance.
Read on for a step-by-step process on how to consolidate your tech stack.
1. Make a list of all your tech
First, list every technology tool you use, what problem it solves, how much it costs, and when your contract expires. At larger organizations, you may need to ask each department to go through this exercise to ensure you have a comprehensive list.
2. Identify overlap
Are you using two different surveying tools in two different departments?
In large organizations, it happens more than you may realize, particularly with free or low-cost tools. While using multiple solutions to solve one challenge may seem fine, standardizing tools across the organization promotes better collaboration, efficiency, and compliance.
3. Audit your vendors
Do they only provide the solution you’re currently using? Or do they provide additional solutions?
You can typically get a lower price per solution when you get multiple solutions from a single vendor. Plus, when you have multiple solutions from the same vendor, those solutions are designed to work together. For example, CourseKey offers digital skills tracking, attendance, and surveying tools in one platform. If you use all three of these tools, you can set up satisfaction surveys to send automatically when a student completes a certain number of hours or skills, removing the surveying burden from your team.
Additionally, consider whether or not each of your solutions integrate. If your SIS doesn’t integrate with your attendance solution or LMS, it may be worth switching to eliminate manual data entry and upkeep.
4. Consolidate vendors
Once you understand what each of your vendors offers, decide what stays, what goes, and if there’s any new technology you want to add.
If you have two vendors who offer the same or similar solutions, consider the following to determine which vendor you’d like to work with:
- Do they offer better pricing for multiple products?
- Are they responsive when you have questions or concerns?
- Do their tools integrate with other software systems?
- Do they regularly update their software?
- Are they actively building new tools and products that may benefit you in the future?
The relationship between your organization and your vendors should be a partnership, not a transaction. When choosing one vendor over another, select the vendor that demonstrates their commitment to your success and growth.
5. Create a rollout timeline
Your vendor contracts may expire at different times, and you don’t want to roll out new tech the same day as a start or right after a holiday.
Once you’ve decided what to keep and what to ditch, make a timeline of contract expirations and implementation dates to prevent service or operational disruptions.
Consolidating your tech stack with CourseKey
CourseKey offers many of the tools you’re already using—surveys, skills tracking, attendance, retention, etc.—in one platform. You get solutions for every department for one contract and payment.
We integrate with leading LMS and SIS to reduce manual data management and ensure your team gets the right data at the right time to improve student success.
Need help getting started? Request a demo and receive a complimentary technology audit from one of our software experts.
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