The Right Spend

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Technology & the Community College

The Right Spend

2/1/2008

By Matt Villano

"We're all about openness and letting people see what technology we've chosen and why we've selected it," he says, noting that the shootout data are available free of charge. An additional benefit, he adds: "Even if vendors do poorly, they might sharpen their pencils next time and really blow us away."

The technologists at Montgomery County Community College (PA) host similar events once or twice a purchasing cycle. Celeste Schwartz, the school's vice president of IT, says that when she and her team invite vendors onto campus to show off the functionality of particular technologies, they also require that the presentations address four other areas the team has determined to be of critical importance with regard to IT expenditures:

How well the product integrates with enterprise systems (if applicable)
Upfront implementation and development costs
The potential for end users to become self-sufficient (in other words, do training costs need to be factored in?)
The impact on process efficiencies and customer service

"While it is often difficult to get an apples-to-apples comparison, this review does provide a basis for cost analysis," she says. "We always try to obtain a fair analysis of [potential user] satisfaction as well as an inside view of the institutional ramifications during product deployment."

WHEN TECHNOLOGISTS AT NORTHAMPTON Community College invested in a web conferencing solution for the school's distance education programs, they quickly built a new online tutoring program around the technology effectively killing two birds with one stone.

2) Collaborate With Other Schools

Sometimes the best information about technology purchases and the efficiency of certain products can be gleaned from the experiences of other institutions. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to turn to national organizations that serve as repositories for institutional knowledge from a variety of schools across the country (see "For More Information"). Another option is to look for similar advice on the regional level, from organizations that service a smaller niche.

At Coffeyville Community College (KS), Dean of Technology Bill Strecker has taken this approach, regularly turning to a group of eight community colleges in Kansas for input and insight on IT. The group meets quarterly to share best practices about experiences with particular technologies. Occasionally, when certain schools are interested in purchasing the same kind of hardware, Strecker says member institutions band together for greater purchasing power and a lower price.