Addressing Pain Points in HigherEd

Advancing the higher education ecosystem is a challenge faced by administrators and educators all over the world. Higher education institutions today are responsible for many critical outcomes. In addition to student success, there is a renewed focus on the recruitment and retention of faculty, as well as the setup and administration of organizational systems powering human capital management.

These pressures in higher education create dysfunctional systems and processes causing a mission gap and lack of alignment among teams, leadership, and the overall institution.   

The entire process can create the following challenges: 

  1. Technology Silos – 64% of administrators, HR, and IT professionals in higher education have concerns about technology silos, while 88% agree not having a unified ecosystem prevents them from realizing their full potential. Not all data systems work together, and administrators struggle to identify the core source of truth when it comes to staff and faculty data, resulting in a lot of time spent reconciling discrepancies between their systemsMost do not offer seamless and accessible integrations, creating a hurdle when building a comprehensive process.  
  2. Missing data for critical decisions – 27% of colleges regularly use data to identify areas of improvement to strategically drive most of their decision-making process. Without a connected system to measure and track data, objective evidence-based decisions become difficult to make. Having updated data “at your fingertips” is the growing expectation of executives across public and private sectors. When human capital data spreads through multiple systems and paper-based files, this task becomes onerous, if not impossible.  
  3. High cost of manual entry – Only 10% of faculty use university supported systems for their data and activity management. Keeping data consistent across multiple systems requires high levels of repetitive, manual entry when there is not an easy, efficient and reliable technical solution in place. Integrations are expensive to build and maintain and are often outside the reach of individual institutions. 26 % of IT Departments expect to reduce their overall technology budget in the upcoming fiscal year, making a connected platform necessary.   
  4. Reliance on paper in a modern world – 48% of provost offices report a predominantly paper-driven process for Promotion and Tenure for their faculty. People turn back to paper when systems are complex and difficult to work with and they don’t understand how to leverage the power of systems. This becomes worse when different, disconnected systems are required for each business function, and people fall back to paper to fill the gaps. It is inefficient, expensive, and can bog down the progress of highly trained faculty from other areas of impact.   
  5. Usability is a barrier – In today’s world, many non-technical professionals are forced to learn how to use information systems and leverage data outputs allowing them to do their jobs. Old and outdated user interfaces designed for IT specialists make it difficult for others to participate. Instead, many Higher Ed professionals skip the data entry or reset to paper-based processes instead. 

Enter the PeopleAdmin Marketplace of Connectors. The Marketplace of Connectors revolutionizes the operations and administration in Higher Ed institutions by providing the missing link. Our integrations create a seamless experience by providing important data connectors between PeopleAdmin’s human capital management modules and your other core administrative systems. 
The user-friendly design of the core platform enables all higher education professionals to harness the powerful integrations to your HRIS, ERP, or other systems. Our tools package the data to drive informed decisions and engage faculty, staff, and administrators on a deep level for increased insight and innovation.  

Sources:
Inside HigherEd 2019
NCBI, National Center of Biotechnology Information
Ithaca S+R US Faculty Survey 2015 (New York: Ithaca S+R, April 4, 2016)
PeopleAdmin, Talent Index 2017
Harvard Business Review, 2016

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