An IDC White Paper

SPONSORED BY:

THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Digital Transformation
is Critical to Learner
and Institution Success
RESEARCH BY:

Ruthbea Yesner
Vice President, Government Insights,
Education and Smart Cities, IDC

IDC Doc. #US46725220 | August 2020

 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Click on any section title or page number to navigate to each

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Table of Contents
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Accelerating Digital Transformation in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A Framework for DX Success. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
COVID-19 Highlights the Need for DX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Transforming from Digitally Distraught to Digitally Determined. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A Deeper Look at Key Challenges and Success Factors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Case Study: London School of Economics and Political Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Case Study: Arizona State University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Key Actions for Progress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Five Things You Can Do Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Case Study: Monash University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Case Study: BI Norwegian Business School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

About the Analyst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

About the Sponsor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Methodology
This white paper examines the process of digital transformation (DX) for higher education
as a response to current trends and market forces. It was developed using existing content
from ongoing research in IDC’s worldwide and regional Education Digital Transformation
Strategies practice, including several global surveys of educational institutions completed
in 2019 and 2020. In addition, IDC conducted phone interviews with key Salesforce
staff and the digital transformation leaders at Arizona State University (ASU), BI Norwegian
Business School, Monash University, and the London School of Economics and Political
Science (LSE).
Note: All numbers in this document may not be exact due to rounding.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Accelerating
Digital Transformation in
Higher Education
Market forces have shifted the expectations and needs of learners today.
Digital-native students expect a personalized and connected learning
experience that delivers value. They want their higher education experience
to give them the skills needed in the workplace. Nontraditional students,
those who may be employees or have family obligations, need flexible
options as they refresh existing skills or learn new skills to keep pace with
employment opportunities.

The existing business model of higher education has lacked midmarket, affordable
options and often relies on scarcity to drive value. Tier 1 universities are either
very expensive, especially for students studying abroad, or highly competitive,
while tier 2 and 3 universities have seen their costs rise dramatically as well.
This is a mismatch for the needs of upcoming digital-native and nontraditional
students, who question the high costs of education and the labor market, in which
employers place a premium on employees who have higher education degrees
or specialized certificates and training. At the same time, IDC surveys show that 70% of companies
70% of companies have difficulty sourcing digitally savvy workers. have difficulty
As a result, there has been a rapid growth in online learning, often provided by sourcing digital-
private, new market entrants. IDC predicts that without a change from existing savvy workers.
higher education institutions, over the next five years, tertiary institutions without
digital learning and online accreditation will lose 5% of their student enrollment
numbers each year to online learning platforms.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

The COVID-19 crisis has further exposed existing business model and services
delivery challenges, highlighting the need for greater flexibility in offering
remote or online services and the need for agility to respond quickly to a major
crisis. Higher education institutions need to reassess now how they can deliver
on their institutional mission in light of these new realities and continue to
impact the world.

There is a response to these pressures — accelerate the digital transformation

(DX) of higher education. IDC defines DX as “a means of applying new
technology to radically change processes, customer experience, and value.”
DX implies a journey of large-scale change that helps institutions become
enterprises that manage and embrace innovation and digital disruption,
as opposed to merely updating or enhancing existing processes, technologies,
and models.
“Higher education is
at a turning point.
First, we simply can’t
assume that the
A Framework for DX Success traditional models of
delivering education
DX in higher education is a fundamental way to ensure learner and are sustainable without
institutional success, as well as prepare for the future, in which adaptation. Second,
further change and disruption are certain. today’s students
DX incorporates changes to governance, staff and faculty skills, processes, are demanding an
the creation and improved use of data, and the implementation of new educational experience
technology. This includes addressing common challenges in higher education that is flexible,
operations, such as functional and departmental silos, and shifting to an personalized, and
enterprise-wide operating model. And while DX encompasses much more
real time. If we are to
than technology, technology is the underpinning of DX as new digital services
and products are developed. DX is a digital-first mentality but always keeps thrive and deliver
the student’s needs at the center of decision making. on our mission, we’ll
need to innovate.”
Donna Kidwell
CTO of EdPlus, ASU

COVID-19 Highlights
the Need for DX
The impact of COVID-19 is a defining moment for DX in higher
education, in which institutions have been forced into the rapid
delivery of online learning, remote work, and online processes.
Digitally determined institutions with some form of DX, especially cloud
platform capabilities, were able to respond faster and easier to provide
constituent service, help desk support, personalized communications, and
online tools. These capabilities go beyond the pandemic and offer a view

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

into how institutions can respond to emergencies such as public health crises and severe
weather events.

COVID-19 is a wake-up call. According to IDC’s COVID-19 Impact on IT Spending Survey,

conducted in April 2020, over 28% of education respondents indicated that their
2020 revenue would decrease by 10–20%, while 22% believed the impact on revenue
would be a 20–50% decrease. Not a single respondent indicated that revenue or
budgets would increase. These are staggering figures and demonstrate the deep impact
COVID-19 is having on higher education and the essential need for innovative responses
from institutions. Some areas, in fact, are not expected to return to how they were before,
leading to the “next normal.” What will the next normal look like? For higher education,
business models, customer engagement models, supply chains, and operations may
all be permanently changed (see Figure 1).

The crisis also pushed institutions to consider where their need areas are for accelerated
transformation. In the same survey from April 2020, higher education institutions
responded that “strengthening software capabilities for digital innovation” was the first
priority, and “exploring new business models and growth areas” and “creating new remote
office and enterprise-wide collaboration systems” were the next priorities. These are key
areas to address in order to enable long-term resiliency to future crises. Furthermore, in
IDC’s May 2020 COVID-19 Impact on IT Spending Survey, education institutions indicated
that many of areas of operations will be permanently changed by the pandemic.

FIGURE 1
COVID-19 Changes Expected to Be Permanent
(% of respondents)
Q. Which of these areas will likely be permanently changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Business models 59.3%

Supply chains 57.9%

Customer engagement model 52.5%

Work-from-home/work-at-home policies 52.2%

Operating models 49.7%

Use of data/analytics/AI/ML 37.3%

Business continuity/disaster recovery 37.2%

n = 67 | Source: IDC’s COVID-19 Impact on IT Spending Survey, May 2020

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Transforming from Digitally Distraught

to Digitally Determined
IDC’s ongoing research has discovered that institutions can be grouped
into two categories: “digitally determined” and “digitally distraught”
(see Figure 2).
Digitally determined institutions have involved leadership, key staff, and stakeholders to
develop a DX vision and strategy, which they understand will involve changes in culture,
processes, and policies, as well as investment in new technical capabilities, such as
data management and analytics and digital skills. Digitally distraught institutions may try
one or two of these areas (such as upgrading to a new platform), but they don’t connect
data and/or process silos to bring together all the new digital capabilities needed to
deliver transformative value.

FIGURE 2
Key Areas to Address for DX Success:
Digitally Determined Versus Digitally Distraught Institutions

DX vision Lack DX strategy

Digitally Determined

Digitally Distraught
Cultural reboot Cultural standstill

New process and governance Legacy processes

DX KPIs ROI project by project

Enterprise platforms and Siloed data and innovation

tech innovation

Source: IDC, 2020

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Globally, 71% of higher education institutions can be considered digitally distraught,

according to IDC’s 2019 Global DX Leaders Survey. These institutions have DX initiatives,
but they are tactical, short term, and siloed, as opposed to a long-term commitment to
change management and enterprise-wide change (see Figure 3).

FIGURE 3
Approaches to DX in Higher Education
(% of respondents)
Q. What is your institution’s approach to DX efforts?

71%
Digitally
Distraught

29%
Digitally
Determined
30.0%

22.1%
19.0% 18.6%

10.2%

Long-term DX Long-term DX DX initiatives DX initiatives DX initiatives

investment plan commitment are tied to are at line-of- are tactical and
to create new to change enterprise business; disconnected
business management for strategy but some connection
models and enterprise-wide with short-term to enterprise
product/service innovation focus strategy
experiences and customer
experience

n = 150 higher education respondents | Source: IDC’s Global DX Leaders Survey, 2019

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Prepare Now for the Future of Continuous

Disruption and Innovation
What does the future look like for higher education? It is a hybrid model of campus based
and online, virtual experiences that students of all ages and types navigate seamlessly and
over the course of a lifelong relationship with an institution. This is likely the way tertiary
educational institutions — whether public or private, large or small — must operate to meet
their mission and stay solvent.

To do this, universities and colleges must become digitally determined and embrace the
development of new digital capabilities. Real results in key areas can be achieved, as
the case studies in this white paper demonstrate. Education institutions around the
world report benefits in revenue from new and existing products and services, increased
loyalty, retention and acquisition, and productivity improvements as a result of DX
strategy and investment (see Figure 4).

FIGURE 4
Benefits of DX in Higher Education
(% of respondents)
Q. Where have you achieved the biggest benefits from your current DX programs/projects?

44.0%

34.0%
31.0%
28.8%
25.6% 25.1%

Revenue Customer Productivity Process Organization’s Cost

generation retention and improvements cycle times agility efficiencies
from new acquisition
or existing
products/
services
n = 150 higher education respondents | Source: IDC’s Global DX Leaders Survey, 2019

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

A Deeper Look at Key Challenges

and Success Factors
Digital transformation requires a commitment to change over the long term and
resiliency to turn challenges into opportunities. Higher education institutions
face challenges on multiple fronts and will need to address them (see Figure 5).

FIGURE 5
DX Challenges in Higher Education

Siloed DX initiatives or organizational structure.

39% of higher education institutions treat DX as a special project or run it out of a special
department, which limits DX from being perceived as part of everyone’s job. A DX strategy
should have leadership involvement and a coordinating, central decision-making authority
that works across the institution.

Lack of digital integration.

43% of institutions reported that digital innovations have not been brought together across
the institution into a single platform. Higher education institutions have multiple systems;
these systems need to be connected or integrated into a platform with a consolidated
view of operations.

Short-term, tactical plans.

54% of institutions reported that the digital road map focuses on the short term and does
not factor in the long-term transformation of the higher education industry. The first step
is to create an explicit DX strategy that outlines initiatives over time (see the Create a
DX Strategy and Road Map section). This should provide a single digital road map for the
enterprise, centrally led with a clear mission and formal accountability.

Outdated KPIs.
28% of institutions reported that they are using the same KPIs to measure digital efforts
that are used for manual and paper-based processes. New KPIs for measuring DX success
are needed, such as targets for how much of revenue is platform driven, the percentage
of repetitive enterprise interactions that are augmented by AI each year, or the increase in
self-service processes.

Limited DX capabilities.
30% of institutions reported that they have not developed the new capabilities required to
run a digital enterprise. For example, an institution with multiple, siloed CRM platforms
needs to consider platform capabilities to drive data-related IT investments and APIs to
reduce data acquisition and sharing costs.

n = 150 higher education respondents | Source: IDC’s Global DX Leaders Survey, 2019

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Become a Digitally Determined Institution

As higher education institutions become digitally determined and build new
business models and new sets of IT capabilities, those capabilities should center
around a culture of innovation and data use, which would enable the following:

Blending the digital and physical in student and constituent engagement.

This includes the student experience for a long-term relationship with an
institution for lifelong learning, including online classes, in-person events,
and engagement that is personal and convenient.

Using data to create new digital services and products that bolster a
new business model for universities. This includes understanding
what different learners need and how they define value. This requires
consolidated data for a holistic and detailed view of students and prospects
and a single version of data truth for analytics and dashboards. Data also
needs to be understood and used by staff and faculty in order to understand
how programs, courses, and faculty are meeting the learner’s needs.
“Think about where
Delivering personal and cost-effective services. This includes the ability
you want to go — 
to automate and scale personalization. It also relies on holistic data sets
of each learner and the ability to segment learners to understand their eyes on the horizon.
needs. It includes self-service tools such as chatbots or online forms for You don’t need
cost-effective services at scale. to know the exact
path to get there, or
We know that change will be a process made up of projects and initiatives.
It is important to consider each of these areas for each project and create exactly how it will
a DX road map that provides cohesion across projects. look, but you should
know where you
want to be.”
Create a DX Strategy and Road Map Mike Page, Head of
Enterprise CRM, LSE
DX cannot happen without a vision of where you want to go in your
transformation and what initiatives need to be modernized to fulfill your
institution’s mission and strategic priorities. This means that there has to be
a strategy that looks at the next 10 years with a road map that is modular,
scalable, and extensible.

Ask yourself the following questions:

How is the higher education industry going to change in the next
decade given what we know about market trends?

How will your institution adjust to the future and create the needed
new business models and services?

IDC has developed a DX taxonomy that provides a framework of use cases that
will be important for the future of higher education. This taxonomy identifies
the strategic priorities of higher education, the programs that are being
developed to meet these priorities, and the specific projects that are being
implemented within those programs (see Figure 6, next page).

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

FIGURE 6
Tie Initiatives to DX Strategy

Strategic Priorities Programs Use Cases

Modernized Virtual tours and Smart financial

Omni-channel Personalized Digital
recruitment and extended reality aid and
marketing recruitment admissions
admissions engagement compliance 

Student Self-service and

Communica- Onboarding
administrative Student portals crowdsourced
tions platforms services
tools student support

Online Virtualized
Modernized Digital inclusion Collaborative
Lifelong student learning
education student
and accessibility library
programs workspace
engagement
Integrated
Engagement Online and
Student success planning, Data-driven
tracking digital
tracking mentoring, and career services
and analysis proctoring
advising

Student health Digital behavior- Secure clinical

Telehealth Virtual care
and wellness al health therapy messaging

Passive student Embedded

Optimized Clinical mental health public health Proactive health Symptom
outcomes assessment and disaster education checker
student health monitoring guidelines

Research Research at Empowering

amplification scale collaboration

Optimized Optimized Research Grants and

Publications 
research admin- research fund publication funding
bibliometrics  
istration management  support  management 
Faculty Curriculum
empowerment Modernized Classroom of Maker spaces Teaching impact and class
Digital grading
and assessment
teaching the future  and virtual labs  analytics  development for
tools 
hybrid learning 

Integrated
Advanced hu- HR services Comprehensive DX technology Adaptive work-
employee
man resources delivery  onboarding literacy force planning
communications

Next-generation Enterprise
Data platform
Generative Predictive
Real estate
resource planning and supply chain
administration management
management 
budgeting  management
analytics 

Lifelong alumni Functional Alumnae Intelligent

and donor donor relationship alumni event
relationship intelligence  management management

Funding and Corporate

Corporate
Entrepreneurial
Extended
partnership and nonprofit
relationship
partnership
partnership
incubators/
student
enhancement enhancement
development 
COEs 
programs

Next-generation
Intelligent Secure facility
emergency
campus security access
management 

Intelligent Intelligent space Connected

Smart buildings
Campus of facilities planning maintenance 

the future Smart stadiums Intelligent event Smart

Smart parking
and arenas management concessions

Source: IDC, 2020

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

These projects need to be prioritized to scale across the institution rather than by
individual departments or functional areas. A use case road map helps an institution
see relationships between projects as well as determine an executable timeline
for implementation (see Figure 7). The key, too, is to understand the technology
capabilities currently available in the market. DX does not require developing one’s
own custom apps; it requires just the opposite — using an ecosystem that rests on
a common, enterprise-wide platform.

FIGURE 7
Time Horizon and Road Map for Initiatives
A digital road map should be aligned with the overall digital strategy and contain concrete goals in
Horizon 1 and more abstract and aspirational goals in Horizon 3.

Virtualized
labs

Alumni
relationship
participation
Personalized Donor
recruitment intelligence
Virtual
tours
Online
proctoring
Strategic
Goals
Horizon 3
Online Use cases that imagine
academic
the possibilities
Empowering programs Horizon 2
collaboration
Use cases that are
being incubated
Horizon 1
Use cases
deployed today

Source: IDC, 2020

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Track Success with Digital KPIs

Key factors for success in DX are measuring the right outcomes and using the right KPIs
to track progress. IDC research shows that almost 30% of institutions are using outdated
KPIs. While existing metrics such as recruitment, admission, and graduation rates will
remain important, some may be reliant on new digital processes. For example, as seen
with ASU, if you are looking to expand your recruitment and acceptance rates, you
may need to start measuring the level of personalization of communications, how many
channels you are using to reach prospective students, the open rate and click-through
rates of emails, and the time spent on web pages.

IDC recommends a DX performance scorecard that covers the following

KPI categories:
Leadership: KPIs associated with innovation rates

Constituent engagement: KPIs focused on customer advocacy

Information monetization: KPIs focused on data capitalization by organizing,

maintaining, and refining data sets and data processes

Operating model: KPIs focused on business operations

Workforce transformation: KPIs focused on the skills, engagement, and experience

of the workforce

Develop a Digital Platform

The underlying technology that supports all of these metrics is a digital platform that can
connect back-end and front-end processes with common applications and shared data.
The platform can connect disparate applications, enable the creation of new applications,
integrate data sources for analytics and decision-making support, and offer new
capabilities via ecosystem partners. There are many approaches an institution can take,
but evolving toward an embedded digital model is key to maintaining digital transformation.

Figure 8 (next page) shows a digital platform. Data is at the center of the platform and
spans IT and departments. Start with an intelligent core that holds the code that enables
using data for insights and tools; this core is based on data management, analytics,
AI, and machine learning. Institutions will need to use cloud-based API strategies that
orchestrate data exchange across the ecosystem. Data by itself has limited value — it’s
what an institution does with the data that will be important. And while data is the core,
data and IT governance, architecture, integration, and development services are the
enablers of the platform.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

FIGURE 8
The Key Elements of a Digital Platform

INTEGRATION ECOSYSTEM
ENGAGEMENTS
SERVICES
DATA DATA
People Bot

Assets IoT
INTERNAL INTELLIGENT EXTERNAL
PROCESSES CORE PROCESSES
Connected
Processes AR/VR

API Mobile
A C TIO N S
IN S DEVELOPMENT
ENTERPRISE IG HTS
ENGAGEMENTS SERVICES

1 2 3 4
Cloud-based Agile application New customer An intelligent core
API strategies architectures experience based on data
that orchestrate on PaaS using technologies that management,
exchange of microservices fully support cognitive, artificial
data across your and containers customer- and intelligence, and
ecosystem ecosystem-facing machine learning
business models

Source: IDC, 2020

Proactive Institutional Change

A fundamental challenge of DX is the need to change legacy culture and processes, which
are embedded in the institutional structure. Academia is notoriously siloed with faculty
operating independently and schools and departments having autonomy. Siloed
technology and business structures often mean resistance to platforms enabling DX,
although IDC believes that many higher education institutions have a real desire to evolve
their culture and business model.

There are multiple areas of change management that are important for successful DX.
The first area is often a lack of internal capabilities and skills to develop a DX platform,
including initial architecture and design skills; other areas include application management,
development, and integration skills. Staff need to be able to manage the platform and
cloud vendor relationships, have the skills to adopt and take advantage of the platform,
and absorb the user specifications and help translate them into new service.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

“Build capabilities in-house by empowering your teams to grapple with

the problems. Give them the opportunity to learn and grow with the
new technology.”
Josh Teichman
Group Manager, Digital Transformation, Monash University

Investing in existing employees to teach them new skills can be a strategy that helps
by reducing the need to look for expensive and scarce outside hires and by offering
valuable employees, who have institutional knowledge and historical background
on legacy systems, a way to obtain new skills and work on cutting-edge projects.
Skills in DevOps and DevSecOps, data management, cybersecurity, and managing
hybrid cloud technologies are key areas of investment, as well as certifications on
specific solutions.

Change management is also important around process redesign and adoption. Separate
from technical skills, organizational design and communications skills are also needed
to help the entire institution learn and adapt to a new platform and understand its
capabilities. This requires a strong manager who can lead in governance and project
management to maintain momentum of DX initiatives over time. A DX platform is not
a one-shot implementation. Platforms will be continuously updated with new releases,
new functionalities, and new modules, so users and managers need to be constantly
trained as well. IDC surveys show that 70% of DX initiatives are led by the CIO, CTO,
chief digital officer, or head of digital transformation.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

CASE STUDY London School of Economics and Political Science

Salesforce Platform
Supports DX Strategy
Digital transformation is part of LSE’s 2030 strategy and LSE360 vision to improve Quick Stats:
services to constituents by making engagement with the institution easier and
Founded in 1895
more personalized. This includes replacing legacy technologies and workflows
with digital processes and technology that provide a better understanding of
students, prospects, alumni, donors, sponsors, and researchers. The DX strategy, 12,000 students
as defined by LSE360, uses the Salesforce platform to maintain a lifelong
relationship between LSE and its students and alumni. 140 countries
In 2016, the Student Marketing and Recruitment team upgraded its CRM system represented
to the Salesforce Education Cloud platform with the goals of understanding
prospective students more deeply and delivering a personalized applicant 150,000 alumni
experience via an easy-to-use, unified experience.

LSE started with:

Personalized recruitment information for events, courses, and offerings

A better registration and attendee experience for 200+ events a year with
an ability to track student participation

Enhanced outreach for its Widening Participation program to reach

underrepresented populations in schools that send fewer students to college,
typically in lower income areas

Online applications review and admissions processing, with a

multidepartment dashboard for reviewing applications and graduate
admissions using a portal built on Salesforce Community Cloud

Training and Upskilling —

A Key Success Factor
LSE used a variety of methods to help train existing staff to use Salesforce to
maximum value and adopt new processes. The solution delivery itself was
mostly achieved using internal staff, including former students. Since no LSE staff
members had existing Salesforce experience, the university relied heavily
on Salesforce tools to train and upskill on the platform, learning via Trailhead
and other online materials. LSE also invests in courses, certifications, and events
for employees, and proactively leads and participates in Salesforce events.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

The Results and Impact

Online applications
Improved event and admissions
Personalized registration for widening
recruitment and attendance participation

Siloed event
LSE had a one-size-
registration and
fits-all method Manual application
tracking with a less
for contacting and processes and no
Legacy streamlined and
communicating personalized outreach to
system user-friendly
with students about schools from
experience. No
classes, events, lower income areas.
personalized
and offerings.
communications.

Event registrations,
Using Education Cloud’s Enhanced Widening
ticketing, and mobile
advanced Participation with
app to track attendance
segmentation online application
data provided a touch
capabilities, LSE forms that feed directly
With point with prospective
migrated data, email into Salesforce via
Salesforce students, executive
communications, AppExchange. Students
learners, and alums and
and events to the get automated email
an ability to feed data
Salesforce platform updates and can track
into a 360-degree stu-
for student recruiting. progress online.
dent view.

Attendees who rated

Personalized emails Widening Participation
the registration process
showed results going applications increased
“very good” rose from
from a 25% open rate by 200. With GDPR, stu-
Outcomes 61% to 75%. The rate of
to 40% and the click rate dent records
those registered who
rising from 2.9% are more secure and
attended the event grew
to 11–23%. protected.
from 75% to 89%.

Following the success of these initiatives, and after determining the business case, LSE
began to consolidate CRM functionality and CRM systems onto the enterprise platform.
Today, the Salesforce platform provides a set of core services using Education Cloud,
Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Community Cloud.

These services are available across the institution and include:

Platform deliverables — backup and architecture
Events
Service desks, including live chat
Contact management, including opportunity pipelines
Online forms and workflow, including online applications
Mass communications

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

There is also a program delivering across the following areas (with many already live):
Widening Participation, Student Marketing and Recruitment, Undergraduate and
Graduate degree online selection, Summer School, Student Services, Student
Fees, Research Ethics and Commercialization, Careers, and Philanthropy and Global
Engagement (including Alumni). Today, LSE has over 1,100 users and Community
licensing for external users and students.

Why Salesforce?
LSE chose Salesforce for:
Extensibility and the ability to create generic solutions for multiple areas
and uses
Rapid development of new features and functionality

AppExchange and the available apps in the broader ecosystem

A low-code/no-code environment

Data sharing features that allow granular options of what data is shared and what is not

Trailhead and the training materials and peer community

Next Steps
Salesforce has become a foundational element in LSE’s delivery on the 2030 strategy
by providing a lifelong connection with students that is personalized and proactive.
The use of the platform continues to develop as services expand across divisions,
offering the agility to provide services both onsite and online.

Next on the agenda is a focus on student health and well-being and alumni and
looking at how Salesforce Einstein Discovery can help uncover deeper insights into
the student journey.

Institutional Resilience in Response to COVID-19

The Salesforce platform plays a key role in LSE’s ability to quickly provide online student
services in response to COVID-19. The platform offered a form of business continuity
as everything moved remote and online. With digital processes rapidly put in place, the
summer assessment period could be conducted and supported off campus. LSE plans
to keep many of these support processes in perpetuity.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

CASE STUDY Arizona State University

Enterprise-wide Platform Creates

a Unified Student Experience
At Arizona State University, technology is viewed as the catalyst for access to Quick Stats:
education, and flexibility for learning options gives access to people who have
120,000 students
families or full-time jobs. This means the whole design of services is different.
For example, ASU offers six enrollment periods: two in the summer, two in
the fall, and two in the spring. ASU also tracks additional metrics beyond the EdPlus, the
traditional and uses deep analytics via its in-house Action Lab to track student university’s central
achievement and make constant improvements. enterprise unit
that serves 60,000
ASU’s mission to improve access and student success in higher education is online students
supported by EdPlus, the university’s central enterprise unit focused on with more than
the design and scalable delivery of digital teaching and learning models aimed 200 online degree
at increasing student success and reducing barriers to achievement in higher programs
education.

ASU works with Salesforce as a strategic partner to use Education Cloud as Ranked #1 for
a comprehensive set of solutions for the university. The Salesforce platform innovation by
integrates systems from over 32 colleges and departments to create U.S. News and
comprehensive constituent profiles. This enables ASU to provide unified World Report
students services, personalized messaging, scaled automation and self-service,
and a single view for deep analytics and performance tracking.

ASU uses a broad portfolio of Salesforce products, such as:

Service Cloud to provide unified student services via the My ASU portal

Marketing Cloud for email management and tailored communications

to students, alumni, and donors

Einstein Analytics for performance analytics

Heroku and Salesforce Lightning for application development

Commerce Cloud, which connects marketing information with payment

pages that can process online transactions

Change Management Is Critical for Success

Donna Kidwell, CTO of EdPlus at ASU, is “very intentional” about designing teams
for DX. Kidwell said that managing DX at a university is like ultimate frisbee, where
there is no referee and growth happens by doing. Teams are created to include

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

experts in the tools and data along with functional and business staff to break down silos.
The teams collaborate without a heavy top-down structure, similar to how agile software
development teams work.

This includes actively encouraging staff to learn new skills by taking advantage of
ASU’s own programs, as well as codeveloping solutions with Salesforce. ASU
works to provide unique work opportunities to compensate for a lower pay scale
compared with the private sector for skilled Salesforce developers and helps
existing staff develop new skills using Trailhead.

The Results and Impact

Streamlined Enterprise Personal Marketing
Services and Recruitment

Fragmented systems for student

ASU sent 91 generic emails per year
services were difficult to navigate
via 13 mass email systems. 14 separate
Legacy without robust self-service. Difficulty
colleges managed recruitment
system in real-time tracking and analysis
differently and without a complete
meant that service improvements
view of each prospective student.
were delayed.

Over 32 colleges, departments, and

Email systems were migrated to
offices use one system to provide
Marketing Cloud for current and
unified students services through
prospective students, parents, alumni,
With the “My ASU” portal via its Service
and other partners. 14 colleges
Salesforce Center of Service Cloud. It provides
and schools were migrated to track
self-service articles and phone
1.1 million leads for recruiters with
and online chat support, with all
one view of all communications.
interactions tracked in a single system.

There was a 1.3 percentage point

increase in the student retention rate in
The total number of emails to
the first year. Over 1 million cases were
students was reduced by 16%.
solved in Salesforce, and over 1,000
Outcomes Email open rates increased by 7%
knowledge articles were published.
and nonsubscriber rates decreased
Real-time service adjustments were
by 90%.
made by tracking and analyzing service
goals and metrics by department.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Why Salesforce?
Salesforce has supported ASU in realizing its mission and goals through iterative teamwork.
The partnership is driven by the customized innovation that Salesforce supports. For
example, the teams are working on blockchain and education credentialing so that ASU
can reduce barriers to communicate with community colleges about shared students.

Next Steps
Salesforce is integral to ASU, and there are many next steps for the partnership. The
university is looking to use Salesforce to manage events, support students in career
advancement, and foster closer corporate relationships in the near future.

Navigating a New Reality with COVID-19

ASU was in a strong position to help its students navigate changes because of COVID-19,
and the university had a very clear understanding of the student issues and behaviors
during the crisis. ASU teams could see which students were engaged, logged on,
and completing learning modules, and the teams could engage if there were issues or
flags. Their success coaches used real-time information from the Salesforce platform
to help students navigate tough decisions during COVID-19.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Key Actions for

Progress

While this white paper provides a framework for DX in higher education, this is
just the first step in a long-term effort to radically change institutions. Given
that, it is important to begin right. The following is a summary of initial key actions
for the first phases of a digital transformation journey:

Spend time on strategic planning to ensure digital platforms and new use cases are
aligned around a common, enterprise-wide vision that has executive support.
This includes understanding what is possible; many institutions don’t fully realize the
capabilities of solutions and may not fully scope out how capabilities can be used
to transform the institution.

Invest in design and architecture planning to save time and money. There are important
architectural components and principles to consider, especially for enterprise-level
platforms across multiple business units. Use outside resources if you have to, but do
invest time and energy in architecture design.

Don’t move existing problems to the cloud. Now is the time to address long-standing
challenges from legacy environment and fix them.

Define needs areas and how you are measuring success. Develop new KPIs for measuring
DX impact in financials, business, and operations.

Prioritize scaling. Islands of innovation don’t scale, and they don’t provide the needed
functionality for the future of higher education.

checklist continues on next page…

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

Take a unified platform approach. This is important, even if you start small and not with a
full, enterprise-wide deployment.

Recognize that data is key. Data management and data governance set the foundation for
advanced analytics and insights for transformative decision making.

Use tools to scale innovation. Platforms are about scaling innovation. Part of this is
automation to use new tools, such as blockchain and chatbots, to manage processes that
are difficult to scale.

Incorporate change management as part of DX. This involves not only reskilling and
upskilling employees on technologies but also creating and adopting new business
processes by many different stakeholders such as faculty, staff, students, alumni, and
corporate donors.

Include continuous improvement plans with regular reviews of evolution and progress.
As discussed throughout this white paper, DX is a journey and a process. The course will
need to be adjusted and corrected along the way to account for new trends, innovations,
and market disruptions.

“Don’t be scared to start experimenting with technology solutions.

Seek support from those who will help you achieve your
institution’s digital goals.”
Mike Page
Head of Enterprise CRM, LSE

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

5 Things You Can Do Now

Digital transformation takes time and persistence, and the key is to start
somewhere and start now.

Educate yourself and your institution on what is possible with digital platform capabilities
today. Talk with peers in online communities and events to gain a deeper understanding
of how technology can support the institutional mission. Personal conversations can uncover
important details and lessons learned.

Get buy-in from leadership and ensure there is a clear lead who can oversee platform
development. Create an internal team of staff, from across the institution, who will
help push DX and associated governance and institutional changes. Start work with people
you know who can help evangelize DX and amplify the message.

Get community input on initiatives. Set up a process to ensure there is input from key user
groups over time, and collect information about needed services and how users
want to access services and their key concerns about DX.

Include continuous improvement plans with regular reviews of evolution and progress. As
discussed throughout this white paper, DX is a journey and a process. The course
will need to be adjusted and corrected along the way to account for new trends, innovations,
and market disruptions.

Embed security, privacy, accessibility, and inclusion into all aspects of DX decision making
to ensure your institution has digital trust with staff, faculty, learners, and alumni.

For decades, academia has operated on its own time frame, focused on the art of learning,
research, and thought leadership. While these are still fundamental tenets of higher
education, the global learning environment is rapidly changing as digital-native students
enter universities with expectations for a connected campus experience, as technology
innovations disrupt markets and skill sets are in constant need of upgrades, and as
access to tertiary degrees becomes essential for upward mobility. It is time for higher
education to embrace and accelerate digital transformation as a necessary process for its
survival and relevance.

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

CASE STUDY Monash University

Breaking Down Silos to

Maximize Impact
Digital transformation at Monash University is improving operational efficiencies Quick Stats:
and student experience by consolidating platforms and breaking down data silos Over 80,000
to maximize the impact of technology investments. This has enabled a shift in students from
organizational digital maturity to better support the university’s mission to focus 100 countries
on solving the grand global challenges of the day.

Monash has been on its digital transformation journey with the goal of maximizing Campuses in
return on relationships through personalized engagement with prospective and Australia,
current students, alumni, and industry and government partners using modern China, Malaysia,
tools, streamlined processes, and emerging capabilities. Since its implementation, and Italy
the Salesforce platform has been a strategic enabler at the core of Monash’s
business operations and transformation.
Ranked as a
global top
100 university
by Times Higher
Salesforce Accelerates Monash’s Digital Maturity Education
Monash built the Salesforce platform as a centralized engagement layer integrated
with a range of core business-critical applications that power the student journey.
A deliberate decision was made to use a single Salesforce environment across
the university for all departments, from Human Resources (HR) to Alumni Relations
to Admissions and Student Service, to ensure staff are working together and
able to effectively share data.

New architecture brings disparate solutions together. Monash worked

with architects from the Success Cloud team to develop a new Person360
architecture, which includes an application network built using MuleSoft’s
API-led connectivity approach.

There is a complete and unified view of constituents. Monash uses Sales

Cloud across the student life cycle for student recruitment and admissions,
marketing, lead management, and philanthropy. The university uses Marketing
Cloud to personalize and automate experiences and to manage Monash’s
complex global preference center, an important part of the university’s data
privacy strategy. Service Cloud is used for multichannel customer service
at the university’s “one-stop shop” contact center.

The enterprise admissions portal provides access to course applications

and digital offer acceptance, including via mobile devices. Community Cloud
underpins this streamlined and paperless application process, which includes
fewer steps and dynamically tailored questions. It also significantly streamlines

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 The Future of Higher Education: Digital Transformation Is Critical to Learner and Institution Success

internal processes such as moving applications between departments for faster review
cycle times. This solution combines Salesforce AppExchange offerings from Conga
and DocuSign as well as the use of Salesforce CPQ for product bundling.

Customer support innovation provides personalized support. Once students are

enrolled, all service requests and inquiries are managed through Service Cloud.
Monash has developed deeply integrated intelligent chatbots to answer high-volume
FAQs across multiple channels such as Apple Business and enable self-service
transactions through chatbot such as purchasing official copies of university documents.

Departmental use goes beyond the student experience. Human resources manages
all staff tier 1 inquiries related to common questions such as payroll, leave, and the
HR contact center on Service Cloud with Salesforce Knowledge. The alumni portal
services 300,000+ alumni and manages upwards of $40 million a year in donations
online via Salesforce Communities.

The Results and Impact

Monash’s investments in internal Salesforce capability have resulted in dramatic
improvements in delivering new services, tools, customer experiences, and capabilities
with increased speed, agility, quality, reliability, and productivity. For example, Monash has
improved its delivery processes for production-ready new applications and application
enhancements using Selective Apex unit testing and automation of release management.
Monash has reduced the time for developer tasks to realize an increase in application
releases by 85.7%.

The university’s response to the COVID-19 global health pandemic also demonstrated
Monash’s transformation in operations and a culture of cross-department collaboration,
leveraging the Salesforce platform. Monash demonstrated that the university can
be hyper-agile. As a result of improved release management capabilities, projects
that once would have taken 7-14 weeks were able to be completed in 48 hours while
maintaining quality.

Hyper-Agility in Response to COVID-19

With the COVID-19 crisis, Monash quickly moved its entire operations online to enable
students to continue their studies online and staff to work from home. Monash was able
to stand up a new dedicated contact center to handle COVID-19-related inquiries using
Service Cloud in 48 hours. The university launched specific financial grants with an
online application process for application forms, review, and approval — all integrated
with the finance system for processing. A dedicated task force was passed, which used
personalized campaigns in Salesforce and Marketing Cloud to manage over 10,000
outbound welfare checks and track sentiment and impact in real time.

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Why Salesforce?
With a centralized IT department and IT procurement policy, Monash is very strategic and
deliberate at the platform level. As such, it was important the CRM platform of choice
was the market leader with a highly mature suite of solutions and rapidly expanding vision
of innovation.

The key qualities Monash found in Salesforce were:

Innovative and collaborative partner

Powerful platform with depth of configurability and code

Strong ecosystem in terms of talent availability and training

Next Steps
Monash has transformed large portions of student engagement for prospects, current
students, and alumni. Now the university is looking to transform and provide line-of-sight
visibility into its industry relationships (e.g., what boards an individual may serve on,
major partnership opportunities, contract research opportunities, education partnerships,
and industry-based learning). In addition, Monash is rolling out Einstein Analytics to
apply predictive intelligence to continue to uplift service and engagement outcomes.

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CASE STUDY BI Norwegian Business School

Gaining a Complete View

of Students
BI Norwegian Business School has worked on digitization for many years to provide Quick Stats:
more competitive, relevant, and modern digital services to its students, faculty,
and staff. Within the past decade, an initiative internally referred to as “Project Front BI Norwegian
Office” focused on integrating siloed systems into a custom portal solution called Business
@BI. This portal provided a digital solution for students to find necessary information, School is an
including classroom and online education information. Over time, the school independent,
developed additional custom solutions for applications and admissions, digital not-for-profit
exams, and CRM. foundation
and the main
As solution offerings matured, BI shifted its mindset from building and maintaining provider of
custom solutions to looking at which solutions could meet their needs. This led research-based
to a strategic goal for BI to move to a unified, enterprise-wide platform for the student knowledge
experience, replacing its current CRM system. In early 2019, BI chose Salesforce of business and
Education Cloud as its platform to establish and develop a complete ecosystem of management
services that would engage its students and staff with personalized services. disciplines in
Norway:

Largest business
Solutions and Technologies school in Europe

BI went in on day one with large ambitions for an enterprise engagement platform,
and the first year was focused on the architecture that would scale to its ambitions. 20,000 students
Working with an implementation partner specializing in higher education, in early
2020, BI rolled out the three core Salesforce clouds: Service Cloud to provide 1,000 staff
rapid, multichannel support to students and staff; Sales Cloud to manage and build
lasting constituent relationships; and Marketing Cloud to engage students with 4 campuses
personalized communications and marketing. located
Change management was key to successfully implementing Salesforce across the throughout
school. Part of this change management led to centralizing the school’s customer Norway and 1
service into a department called InfoHub, which handles all inquiries from students. campus in China
InfoHub also manages the Salesforce call center, which handles communications
with both internal staff and students. BI continues to centralize more functions,
using InfoHub as the core.

The Results and Impact

With full launch of Salesforce in early 2020, BI reported improvements in the first few
months, such as better customer service, with 87% of 11,000 service requests being
resolved before getting escalated.

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Shortly after the Salesforce implementation, the pandemic hit. According to BI, Salesforce
enabled the institution to cope with the school shutdown in response to COVID-19 in multiple
ways that would not have been possible without the platform.

The Salesforce solutions made it much easier to work from home. The single enterprise
solution helped staff work remotely right away, which enabled BI to continue its operations
with less disruption.

With Salesforce, the school went from 80 different email addresses to manage student
support, contact schemes, and personal chat to a single version of contact information. This
single point of contact became extremely valuable in sending out timely, relevant information
via email and SMS. It was also valuable in helping answer student questions about end-of-
year exams and the school closure. Because BI students prefer text and chat to calls or emails,
it is important that the school is able to provide information to students in their preferred
engagement method.

Why Salesforce?
BI selected Salesforce based on the rich capabilities of the platform but was also impressed
with the level of presales process support it received. After implementation, BI found the
Salesforce customer success team to be proactive and very focused on helping BI meet its
goals. “We’ve worked with many American companies and have never experienced the level
of customer service from a technology partner as we have with Salesforce,” said Amund
Bergan, Head of Digital Development at BI Norwegian Business School.

Next Steps: Higher Ambitions for the Future

BI continues to have big ambitions to scale and expand services on the Salesforce platform.

Four focus areas for the future are:

Revamping the recruitment and student journey. BI wants to revamp processes for an
even more holistic experience; for example, changing the application process so that
it isn’t detached from other key processes. In addition, BI wants to enable a complete view
of the student from recruitment and admissions as well as alumni and B2B engagement.

Marketing and using automated solutions. BI wants to use more tools to automate and
personalize communications with students and market to them more effectively. This would
include growing the use of Interaction Studio to track experiences and deliver relevant
offers in real time.

Developing student self-service. BI plans to develop self-service capabilities for students

using Salesforce Community.

Engaging alumni. BI would like to use Salesforce Community as a way to engage alumni
more often and more effectively.

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About the Analyst

Ruthbea Yesner
Vice President, Government Insights, Education, and Smart Cities, IDC
Ms. Yesner manages the US Federal Government, Education, and the Worldwide
Smart Cities and Communities Global practices. Ms. Yesner’s research discusses
the strategies and execution of relevant technologies and best practice areas,
such as governance, innovation, partnerships and business models, essential
for government and education transformation. Ms. Yesner’s research includes
analytics, artificial intelligence, Open data and data exchanges, digital twins,
artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and mobile
solutions in the areas of economic development and civic engagement, urban
planning and administration, smart campus, transportation, and energy and
infrastructure. Ms. Yesner contributes to consulting engagements to support K-12
and higher education institutions, state and local governments and IT vendors’
overall Smart City market strategies.
More about Ruthbea Yesner

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About the Sponsor

Salesforce.org, the social impact center of Salesforce,
provides technology that empowers changemakers
to build a better world.
We are dedicated to creating solutions for nonprofit, education, and
philanthropic organizations so they can have greater impact.
Operating within Salesforce, a for-profit entity, increases our capacity
to innovate on top of the world’s #1 CRM platform, to channel the
pro-bono power of more than 45,000 Salesforce employees,
and to inspire Salesforce customers and partners to join our global
movement for good.

To learn more, visit salesforce.org

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About IDC
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory
services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology
markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make
fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,100 IDC analysts
provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends
in over 110 countries worldwide. For 50 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients
achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology
media, research, and events company.

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