The executive team of one of the largest academic and training institutions in South India was exploring opportunities to meet the changing dimensions of the new form of delivering education. With the COVID-19 situation, the entire bricks-and-mortar education delivery had lifted and shifted to the virtual world. The board decided that it was essential to revisit their technological readiness to conduct classes and meet academic commitments remotely.


The institution had a robust IT setup and experienced resources to manage the technology infrastructure. Management soon started facing roadblocks and challenges for repeated investment versus progress registered outcomes delivered. The executive team struggled to understand the reasons for the program, not scaling and accelerating as expected.

 

DIGITALFABRIC® – A Business transformation advisory and consulting firm (Also, a Framework) was engaged to enable the organization to progress on a steadfast digital journey. DIGITALFABRIC® Simplifies digital business transformation complexities by providing a pragmatic process framework and digital strategy management guidance.

The educational institution has previously focused on the people, process, and platform attributes but overlooked crucial aspects of product and partnership. The DIGITALFABRIC® advisors evaluated the five work design constituents (People, Process, Platform, Product, Partnership) and associated processes, controls, and mechanisms to lay the foundation of a robust Digital foundation.

Overlooking Product & Partnership has left a Void

  • As an educational institution, lack of technical competency (software and programming skills), resources, and capability to customize the applications.
  • Building these capabilities from scratch was not a practical approach as it would consume too much time and resources. Off the shelf, products were expensive, rarely integrable, and data & information security was a challenge due to proprietary teaching methodologies.
  • The analysis showed that customization effort, maintenance and management of applications, 3rd party storage costs, and licensing were all expensive and a recurring overhead. And after all this investment, they would still not own the product.

THE DIGITAL EDUCATION DELIVERY

The DIGITALFABRIC™ (In making) took a different perspective, and the team proposed a business transformation roadmap. A virtual education framework was agreed upon that consists of the following four sets of applications (Independent modules)

    • ERP (Student and Organizational information system)
    • CRM (Content & Course management system
    • LMS (learning management system)
    • EAMS (Evaluation & Assessments management system)

TECHNOLOGY EXECUTION GUIDANCE

  • A hybrid content broadcasting approach, including Synchronous, asynchronous, in-house, and hybrid modes of learning, was considered for the evaluation and respective technological requirements.
  • DIGITALFABRIC™ mapped Customer (student, teacher, admin, parent) journey, user experience, technology needs, and product management skillset.
  • Facilitated the alignment of People, Process, Platform, product, and partnership using its Proprietary framework, checklist, and maturity assessment tools
  • Designed an approach to building modules and corresponding components for LMS (Learning Management Systems), CMS (Content & course Management System), and AMS (Assessment Management System).
  • Qualitative and Quantitative assessment of current ED-TECH product landscape and competitor analysis to devise the approach strategy.
 
  • The following Roadmaps were ideated and presented to the executive Mgmt.
    • Digital Transformation Roadmap (Short-Long-term)
    • Service-Systems Transition Roadmap (Short-Long term, Build Vs. Leverage)
    • o Composite Business Transition Roadmap (Digital Ops, COE)
    • o Success Milestones & Definitions (Success1.0,2.0,3.0)

DIGITAL ADVISORY

  • We proposed to build a product innovation team that works on formulating a new line of business products for the education industry that can be consumed internally and leveraged to open and expand the market.
 
  • Tactical Recommendation to build a subsidiary firm to drive digital innovation in the education industry and business transformation. (Offshoot of the parent educational institution)
    • Entity to be Independent, Objective & Strategic
    • Operate as a profit center & not a cost center
    • Attract market funding: VC interest and collaboration with technology partners.
    • Product mindset & not a service mindset
 
  • New Business models & markets propositions team
    • To identify Untapped Markets (National & International)
    • Building product and assistive education components to bridge the technology gap and democratize education to all society layers in various setups and formats.
    • Educational institutions open the doors to the world to experience Proprietary study techniques, Methods and solving skills that institutions have developed and created over the decades of mastery around intermediate education and competitive examinations.
    • To identify Additional Revenue models
    • To execute a Growth & Scale strategy (Horizontal + Vertical)

This advice is accepted by the executive board and operationalised to create an independent entity to transform assessment & education focused on student learning and development in a post-pandemic world.

Post Comment