Yesterday I attended a rather good workshop on the topic of
enterprise architecture and digital transformation, which was organised by the architecture
group of EDUCAUSE, the American society for IT in higher education. This topic is
of obvious interest to me because we are running several digital transformation
initiatives at the University of Edinburgh.
The workshop was a good opportunity for the participants to learn what
other universities are doing and to reflect on how we, as architects, can
position our work to help these initiatives succeed.
The presenters didn’t let us sit back and relax; there was a
lot of group work and few presentations.
We began by compiling a list of the external factors driving digital
transformation, both technical and cultural.
We produced a long list! Then we
divided into groups, each of which chose one value chain which would be
affected – e.g. recruitment of international students – and discussed the
drivers and blockers affecting that activity.
For example, factors driving an increase in international
students include: the business drivers of more income and enhancing the student
experience; the students’ interest in studying abroad and improving their
employability; and the technical capabilities of hyper-personalisation and
relationship management. These
technologies can be used to make students feel welcomed from a distance and to
reassure them that the university will look after them when they arrive. For the university, these systems can
demonstrate which marketing campaigns work for which students, and help the
university understand what motivates their potential students, so that the
university can adapt what it offers them.
After lunch, we looked more at how far our own institutions
have progressed along the road to digital transformation and where the
enterprise architecture teams fit in that journey. This part of the meeting included a very
interesting presentation about how social transformations progress, which I
don’t have space here to do justice to.
The day concluded with personal reflections on how we may
improve the alignment of our teams with the business transformations that
either are happening or which need to happen.
We considered what we may need to do differently, or to start or stop
doing.
I took several points from the workshop. Some are general, such as more ideas for the
university to transform the services we offer.
Others were more about how to communicate the benefits that my team can
offer: I was particularly taken with the idea of training other people in
specific architecture tasks, so that we can scale up our work without running
out of resource. I also realised that I
have to spend more time learning about predictive analytics, as we will need to
use this much more in the not too distant future.
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