The Right Spend

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Technology & the Community College

The Right Spend

2/1/2008

By Matt Villano

"Standardization reduces complexity and by reducing complexity, you gain efficiency," he says. Gallagher adds that the initiative hasn't been without controversy, noting that standardizing on PCs hasn't exactly made Mac supporters on campus happy. "But no program is going to please all users all of the time," he maintains.

Macomb Community College CIO Mike Zimmerman has instituted a rigorous master-plan-based matrix of requirements to be applied before the purchasing committee signs off on IT purchases. "It helps us make sure we're spending money in the right areas. And if we have a product that is strong in all the things that don't really matter, it appropriately stays at the bottom of our list."

4) Avoid Job Creep

Another way to get the most out of every dollar spent on technology is to make sure that each and every tech purchasing project is in line with a series of objectives and goals that were established before the project even began. At many two-year schools, because budgets are so small, technologists insist that pressing needs have forced them to abandon bestcase scenario planning in favor of a more reactive ("knee-jerk") approach. Still, for savvy technology administrators at many four-year institutions, proactive project management has become second-nature.

One two-year school that routinely plans in a strategic manner is Macomb Community College, where Mike Zimmerman, CIO and executive director for communications and information technology, sees to it that every technology expenditure ties back to a master plan. Zimmerman hails from the automotive industry, where the intelligent use of metrics is a common practice. In that vein, he has implemented a rigorous matrix of requirements for members of Macomb's purchasing committee to apply before they sign off on IT purchases.

Required metric examination on this matrix includes looking at categories such as ease of use, scalability, and cost. During product evaluation, members of the purchasing committee rank each requirement on a scale of one to five (five being most important). Later, as committee members evaluate similar products, they rate each product on a scale of one to three (three is best) for the degree to which it fulfills each requirement. In the end, rating and requirement numbers are multiplied and added together, and the tool with the highest score wins.

"The process helps us make sure we're spending money in the right areas," Zimmerman explains. "This way, if we have a product that is strong in all the things that don't really matter, it appropriately stays at the bottom of our list."