A salient aspect of an information technology organization is the ability respond to the needs of their business quickly and effectively in order to drive a bottom line, especially in people-focused verticals, such as higher education. Lone Star College System in The Woodlands, Texas, is one learning institution that is taking its information technology efforts to a new level with turnkey solutions.

Link Alander (pictured), chief information officer and vice chancellor of Lone Star College, explained his strategy for meeting the needs of the school’s administrators. “The key is to always act as an enabler. We’re there to support them and help walk them through the business process changes. They don’t come to us and say, ‘We want this tool’; they come to us with their business problems and ask us to help them solve them it,” Alander said.

He continued by explaining the importance of being agile when delivering new services. “Old IT was locked; now, when you start talking about agility, you need the ability to address business needs quickly but yet still keep the same structure,” he said.

Alander spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this year’s ServiceNow Knowledge17 event in Orlando, Florida. (* Disclosure below.)

IT agility drives real value in education

Agility in an educational environment is historically difficult to attain due to the complexity of the organization, but when accomplished, its rewards can have real, meaningful impact on the lives of students, according to Alander.

“We’re very dynamic, we can address change in the industry and needs of the community. We’re able to introduce programs and activities very quickly when it comes down to students,” he said.

By staying agile, his organization was able to address a retention issue faced by the school administrators. “We were wondering, ‘Why are we losing these students?’ Our chancellor really thought about this a lot and looked at different pieces of the data and boosted our honors college, which then improved the retention of these 3.3 GPA students.”

A key strategy in maintaining agility is using turnkey, off-the-shelf solutions rather than customizing an application, Alander explained.

“On the ERP [enterprise resource planning] side we’re still less than 10 percent customized, and we’ve held that line. We can address the business problems without doing all of these massive customizations by understanding the true business process. …  There are things that you can switch on and off which aren’t custom modules, so our upgrades process faster,” Alander stated. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge17. (* Disclosure: ServiceNow Inc. sponsored this Knowledge17 segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither ServiceNow nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE