It's really exciting just to be part of that, and know that the work that we're doing is actually going to make a difference in the lives of people that come to our campus every day.

Welcome to Focus, a podcast dedicated to the business of higher education. I'm your host, Heather Richmond, and we will be exploring the challenges and opportunities facing today's higher learning institutions. In this episode, I spoke with Heather Fraser, the director of enterprise application services for Dalhousie University, to get an inside look into how they are managing enterprise level systems and their overall digital strategy. Well, hello, Heather, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks, Heather. Thank you for having me.

And by the way, great name.

Likewise.

Well, I'm really excited to jump into our topic today. You know, managing enterprise level systems is one of the biggest challenges that we're hearing about these days in higher education. But first, can you tell us just a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are?

Sure thing, so I've been working at Dalhousie University for almost seven years, I came into the IT department at that time as the director of the project management office. Several years ago, one of our directors retired, he had the enterprise applications portfolio, and the two groups were very intertwined, as you can imagine, deploying projects and managing our enterprise application portfolio. So we merged the two groups together. And that is how I came to have this large team of awesome people that manage this big portfolio. But I've been in higher education for 10 years, I worked at St. Mary's University before coming to Dal. And prior to that, I did project management and application deployment for a Google company and several others around that. So lots of good experience.
 
I'd say this sounds like its right up your alley. That is great. So now let's talk about Dalhousie University and how you work with TouchNet.

Sure, so Dalhousie, has been a very long standing customer of TouchNet, we are one of, I believe the only schools in Canada that has such a wide variety of TouchNet products and applications, we do have a very close relationship with the TouchNet team, and we partner with them on lots of really great things. And we're continuing to do so, TouchNet provides to us our payment system, our one card, which we call our DalCard system, and a lot of other really great things that helped keep us well rounded in that space.

That is awesome. Well, I know that part of that has really been part of all the transformational initiatives that you've been doing. So including, as you just said, taking on a new role. And really to do all of that it's all about the team, processes, getting everything done. So can you share just a little bit about how now that you have the combined teams, how they're structured? And then how you really manage these projects and technology?

Yeah, definitely. So we did have the merger of the project management office and the enterprise applications group three or four years ago, but just this year, we also moved in a different team called client applications. And they were moved into the enterprise portfolio, which is how TouchNet came in for me. So up until a year ago, TouchNet was always a partner campus of ITS but not something that I was directly in front of. And it's really exciting for me to be part of all of this change and innovation that is happening within my team now. Outside of that team, there are actually seven different teams or functions that are in the enterprise applications portfolio, we have this one that manages our DalCard and our other kind of cloud service technologies. We have a project management office, systems architecture, infrastructure and databases, we have a whole team of programmers in our developing unit and we also do all of the business intelligence reporting out of our Cognos application. And finally, we also run dal.ca, so our web presence is all part of this portfolio as well. So it's lots of things to do. 

Wow, so not a shortage of projects, I'm assuming.

Definitely not a shortage of projects. 

Not at all. And then again, especially since adopting that in it sounds like your DalCard, it's really owned and driven by your team, by IT, as opposed to the business which isn't uncommon. We hear this a lot. And when I think about it, I think part of it is technology is just evolving so rapidly that the business units are like, IT you tell me what to do, which a lot of times it's the other way around, isn't it?

It definitely is and that you're right to say that our one card system is owned by IT. And I would say most of, if not all, of the major decisions that have happened in that space for Dalhousie have been driven out of the IT unit. That's not to say we don't partner with the functional areas, and the academic and administrative units shot me support with our one card paired product, but a lot of decisions have been made on technology instead of on business process, and that hasn't necessarily been a bad thing. It's just the way it has evolved over the years.

Yeah, I know, we talked a little bit about you really looking at maybe changing that approach? And so what do you really think is driving changing how things are managed? And maybe, who owns the vision to go forward?

Yeah, well that's a really interesting question, particularly for the place that we are right now. And all of these enterprise applications all coming together in one team and in one space. So there's always an opportunity to review how you do things and where you do things well, and where you could learn from one area to help boost another. And the model that we're looking at is the way that we manage our ERP system, which is EllucianÕs Banner. That is a partnered solution as well. So our IT department, we partner with all of the different functional areas that run the business process, the business function within banner, and it worked out very well. And so the way that we support that is the functional units are kind of the frontline support for all of the end users in their various areas. And they would depend on us to support them as kind of a second tier of decision making. And, that's just the model that we've had in place for the last couple of decades. So we're looking at a similar governance structure to have more business decision making in the various areas, whether that's our ancillary services, or student affairs, and so on, users and supporters of the one card, and then seeing how we can provide that second tier of support. And also, of course, support the technology changes and decisions that are made around that.

Right, that makes a lot of sense. And probably just everything has to evolve and change. But as technologies change there's an increase of risk. I think that's really been a big driving factor.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. It always is. 

It always is, it's always the number one thing as well. And I think, when we talk about risk, and how to really mitigate that, these days, it seems like the word cloud always goes hand in hand with that, right? Like, let's move it all to the cloud, that's going to make everything better, which makes a lot of things better. But let's talk a little bit about how you're looking at that and how you're looking at what are the risks that we have on campus from a technology standpoint? And how do we solve for that?

Sure, well, we're looking at what is most likely going to be several years and longer of improvements and innovations in our one card space, but also in a lot of the other enterprise applications that we work with. And there's some triggers or driving forces behind those. One of them is our current data center that we have on our campus, we are looking at a two to three year plan to relocate our data center off campus, for a variety of reasons. And with that comes a review of the footprint of what we have in that data center, we're currently hosting our test environment in our data center. And looking at it as an opportunity to move some of that off campus and into the cloud is a way of helping us mitigate the risk of our current location that is on campus. So that's one of them. We also have a constantly evolving set of skills that support all of these technologies. And what we're finding is a lot of our vendor partners are starting to make greater investments in their software as a service or, other cloud offerings that are starting to overshadow what's happening in the on premise hosting world. So we feel that in order for us to keep up with the amount of innovation that our own customer base is looking for, a move to the cloud as part of our strategy to help us get there.

That makes a lot of sense. And what you said, it's beyond all this, servers and systems and hardware that you have to maintain and have it in a data center that's safe and secure and everything that goes along with that. But the important point you just brought up was just skill sets and the staffing part of all of that, and making sure that who has the latest knowledge and information that's going to come on board? And can I even hire anymore? 

I don't think there's an IT shop out there that isn't grappling with these decisions right now. And constantly evolving our own employees and the skill sets that we have within them, it's difficult, but not impossible to keep up with the changes in the technology environment. So we always look for ways to standardize those skill sets, look to technologies that we can leverage, skills and capacities that we already have, and so on. So those are things that will remain important for us as we go through these transformations. 

It makes a lot of sense. And you know, but moving to the cloud, you don't just snap your fingers and boom, there you are. It's quite an undertaking, isn't it?

It sure is, we have a lot of stuff on premise, and IÕll tell you that. But every year, particularly in our ERP space, with applications that we have connected or integrated with our banner environment, we are seeing more and more of a move to the cloud. So even that ERP environment is dramatically different than what it looked like 10 years ago, which was banner on premise and a few other custom applications that we hosted on premise, and they were all integrated together. Now it's more of a banner in our data center and a hub and spoke of these various cloud applications that we connect into that. 

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And obviously, to do all those things its plan, plan, plan, and then execute. And so I know that you're looking at the strategic plan. And what does that look like across campus?

So we do have a new-ish strategic plan, a five year strategic plan under our former president. And as part of that strategic plan, our CIO, and our Dean of Libraries, who is the leader of the academic technologies unit, so they partner together on most of our digital and technology initiatives, they partnered together to write in a company document called the digital strategy. And that has been a driving force behind a lot of the decisions that we're making and the direction that we're going from a technology and digital space perspective.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I know that one would maybe think digital means just the technology standpoint. But really, the digital strategy encompasses both technology and people and really that human side.

It definitely does. And that is the first pillar of our digital strategy is teaching and learning to people centric, there's a lot of, human focus in this strategic document that you normally may not associate with something that is a digital or technology plan of sorts, but really, it's a way to look across our entire institution, at how we're going to be able to meet the needs of today's digital learners, digital teachers, and everything that happens in that truly digital space and trying to stay ahead of trends, and emerging technologies to make their lives easier.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think a lot of times people think, oh, I'm going to go buy this tool, or I'm going to invest in this technology, but they don't think about changing processes or people. And that's actually the bigger part, so the fact that's the first pillar is really great in your plan. 

Well, what we always say is, technology would be really easy if it didn't need people to run it. And that is why we put so much of an emphasis on the people side of all of this technology that we manage on behalf of this institution, because they can't learn in their classes and they can't do their jobs sitting at their desks if we're not getting it right and providing what they need to do those services. So it's very critically important to us and it's a cornerstone of every decision that we make. 

ThatÕs great. So that was the first pillar, there's some other pillars that you want to dive into on your strategic plan or the digital strategy? 

Well, I mean, I can list them off: teaching and learning, people centric, research and innovation, community collaborations and digital foundations. And really what those all speak to is this commitment to making Dalhousie a state of the art digital learning campus, that also has an extreme focus on research. We're part of the Canadian U 15 research institutions. And we're very proud of that fact. And we also put a very high emphasis on having a high level of collaboration across our institutions. So that it's not just as you said, people thinking something is a good idea and putting it in because it meets their need, we really want to put an effort on meeting the needs of the majority of our community and having everybody working together accordingly. So that it's not just IT is doing another thing that you get on board with, it really is about a team based approach to everything that we're trying to accomplish.

Well, that makes a lot of sense. And you're right, you have to understand, and really what you're saying, too, is blending the academic side and the business side, all really to ensure that great student experience. I know, we hear that over and over again, it's all really part of that student journey, which, as you say, it's really a lot of these factors that you're talking about, that's being impacted all the time. And so I would think, obviously, campus card program is going to play a really big part in that. So thinking specifically about the DalCard, how is it viewed, managed? And what are the stakeholders that you're looking to bring together to enhance that experience?

Yeah, our stakeholder community around our one card paired program is already vast, as you can imagine because we use the DalCards for ID management. We use it for students accessing their dorm rooms in residence. It's a way of opening doors across campus and administrative offices. And the purposes for that are endless. So we already have a wide variety of stakeholders that we do collaborate with. But in this next phase of innovating, and really taking our one card program to the next level, we're looking for a higher level of governance. This is what we were talking about earlier in terms of real ownership within various stakeholder units, primarily IT - our department who will be underpinning all of this, our ancillary services where our conference in residence are run out of, our student affairs group, our library's group, they already have quite a high use of our DalCard for a lot of different services and processes. Not to mention, just the students and faculty themselves and anything else that you can think of from that perspective, if it touches a student's life, then we want to have those people involved. 

ThatÕs great. I know, we talked about, really, the first step is getting everybody together. And so you haven't done it yet. But you're bringing this group together, and you say, hey, let's all sit around the table and see what's important. So tell a little bit about how you're going to go down that path?

Yes. So we do have a great day planned in just a couple of weeks, where we're welcoming some of your folks from TouchNet, Adam McDonald, your president and a few others are going to come to Halifax and we'll welcome them with open arms on our campus. And we're going to spend the day with various stakeholder groups, starting with our executive team in the morning, and going from there into other specific scenarios that we need to discuss, really just to kind of kick off strategic planning, with our partners in TouchNet, so that we can really look at how we're going to innovate and advance this environment over the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years.

Exactly. Well, I think again, and you've been talking about just looking to see from an innovation and technology standpoint. As you were saying, your card is used all across campus? So it's for obviously, for faculty and staff and students.

That's right. Everybody has a DalCard. 

Well, so kind of thinking about this and this process that you're going to be going through what are you most excited about? And on the flip side, what do you think is going to be the most challenging? Or sometimes we'd like to say, what are the opportunities?

I could give you a full blown analysis of this, but in the effort of time I will stick to the things that I'm really excited about is just being able to fulfill some of our mandates and challenges that we're trying to solve through our digital strategy. The pillars that I just named, but also really meeting our students and faculty and staff and the Dalhousie community as an extension, where they are and where they need to be. It's very exciting to me to be part of the group of people that manage the very software applications that people use and touch every single day in their lives. And so being able to advance that, whether that's moving into the cloud or taking on new hardware, or providing a mobile ID card, or whatever it is, that is going to be part of these planning sessions in the next few weeks, it's really exciting just to be part of that, and know that the work that we're doing is actually going to make a difference in the lives of people that come to our campus every day. On the opportunity side, it is always the same old challenge when you have an IT shop that does everything for everybody. Although we are moving in the direction of more and more of our environment being in the cloud, at some point in time, we still do have a very large portfolio on premise, hosted software application and some of them are very, very large. And so including our one card program and our banner environment. So the notion of doing more with less becomes even more important when you're trying to innovate at the same time that you're keeping your lights on. And it's all the same people and the same number of people that you're doing that with so that, not much keeps me up at night, but that would, just thinking how we're going to get our staff who are so valuable and so incredible, and in what they do every day to this next level of being able to take on new things and slowly retire old things. 

Exactly. Yeah. And just taking on learning new things, and what it takes to still be doing some old processes as you start to transition and evolve. And so how do you really shift the mindset there? 

My background is in project management, at one point in time, although that's a blurry, distant past. You know, I am a really big planner. And it's challenging for me personally, to look ahead five years and not know what that finish line looks like, and not be able to put stakes in the sand in terms of here's our plan. And here's how we're going to get there. Because there are a lot of unknowns for us in terms of what we're going to encounter in the next few years. 

Well, and the big challenge, I'd say always is getting all the stakeholders and the people identified and brought together and you've already accomplished that. So kudos to you. That's a really great first step. But thinking ahead about other people, like I said, I think a lot of times too, and probably in a campus card system, because there's hardware, there's software, there's permissions, there's security, all the things, it lands a lot of times in the IT lap, and then be able to expand that on. So what advice would you give to other IT teams, or others in charge of enterprise systems, how to start to implement this level of change?

Yeah, I mean, if you have an answer to that IÕd love to listen to it. IÕm just kidding, I think it really just comes to first of all, having an amazing team, which we're very fortunate to have, and a level of trust within your team so that you can, not ask them for blind faith, but be very honest and open and transparent about the unknowns, the uncertainty around how we're going to be changing. Setting a goal and a vision around where we need to get to, and now let's all work together in terms of how we're going to get there and what it's going to take for us to get there. Because we say a lot in my team, is this person on the bus or not? If we're having some sort of conversation, and we use that concept of get on the bus, and we'll all just get there together and we'll figure it out as we go along. So, it takes a lot to build that up within a team because when you're working with a team of 40 something people and they're all just so busy every single day just trying to do the good work that they do, and then to also come behind them and saying, just trust me, this is going to be amazing. And most of the time they do. So I'm very fortunate to have that. 

That is great. But I think that's key, the unknowns and pieces that we always want to know, we want the crystal ball, we want to say, if we do this in five years, what will my life be like? And to be real honest upfront and say, you know what, we don't know. But I love the bus analogy. Are we in this together? Because we'll figure it out together. 

It's become common dialogue. Now, I don't know if she's on the bus. And that is in reference to somebody who hasn't quite jumped on board with the vision, whatever it is we're doing on that particular day.

ThatÕs really great, too. I think that's speaking a common language. And it's not saying anything's wrong or bad, but just realizing that probably helps temper a little bit of frustration too when there's, we're on the bus, or you're not on the bus, plain and simple.

Yeah, and I mean, there's always an element and a place, and a requirement for formal change management as well. And I find that it's very helpful, we have a lot of change management expertise within our team. And we have a lot of processes and methodology around managing that type of change, but also, that internal informal managing of change in terms of people's feelings, and getting themselves to a place that they can accept some unknowns, even though they know they're going through something that's going to change their lives or change their work day, or change the technology they're working with or what have you. So I think a good pairing of those two things will be helpful. 

Do you have a magic wand to say, here's how we can get everybody to feel good about this?

I sure do. Yeah.

I want that. Oh, this has been great. I mean, you're going through a lot of change. Obviously with a strategic plan, and then drilling that down, very specific and understands at the end of the day, the goal is around people, and have that be your staff, your team, your students, and technology is really just the tool that's going to help you to get there, versus the other way around.

Exactly.

Thank you so much for sharing all this information. We're all going to be following along and seeing the evolution and the change and what all you get to the cloud and how you get there. 

Yeah, we're really excited. 

That is so cool. Well, thank you again for joining me on this podcast today. 

Great. Thank you, Heather. 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Focus. Don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up to date on the business of higher education. For more information, check us out at TouchNet.com.