"Consumerization of IT Services: Lessons Learned Building a Private Social Network" presentation for EDUCAUSE 2012, November 8, 2012

1. Consumerization of IT Services
Lessons learned from building a private social network
Ryan Fisher
George Leventis
Soren King
Fred Miller

2. About Furman University
● Private liberal arts university
● 750 acres campus in Greenville, South Carolina
● 2700 undergraduates
● 96% live on-campus
● Division 1 athletics

3. About you...
● Which social networks do you use? Institution strategy?
● Use a mobile device? Institution mobile strategy?
● BYOD?
● App development?

4. What is it?

5. Consumers driving more innovation
Industry Govt. / Legal
Consumers
Higher Ed
Institution
Consortia Foundations

6. Affecting Institutions’ Strategy
Strategic
Innovation
Collaboration
Communication
Operational
Service
Digitization
Consumerization (Information Architecture)

7. The Furman Engage Social Network
● Rationale
● Milestones
● Screenshots
● Agile without the mumbo jumbo
● Results
● Lessons Learned
● Next Steps

8. Custom Social Network, The Rationale
Goal 1: to help recruit new students; increase applications
Goal 2: Create an online community of Furman constituents
Benefits:
● More applicants with better fit
● Current student job placement
● More donations from an engaged alumni base
● Informed parents

9. Why not just use Facebook?
● 2009 Facebook is a "walled garden"
● Facebook app not sufficient
● No support to brands on Facebook
● Student focus groups still saw Facebook
as a place only for socializing

10. Tour

15. Milestones
● 3rd party development started in 2009
● Fall 2010 Go-Live
● March 2011: Development shifted to IT
● August 2011: Furman Alumni Network (FAN)
● Two Recruiting Seasons
● 2012: Applications increase 25%

16. Challenges
● 2009 Economic downturn
● 2010 - 2011 Leadership changes
● Rising expectations in social media
● July 2012 SEO spammers kill blogs

22. Course Correction - March 2011
● New Management
● Costs rising
● Improvements slowing...

23. What is Agile Software Development?
Agile software development is a group of software development
methods based on iterative and incremental development,
where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration
between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
Hunh?!?

24. Agile without the mumbo jumbo
● Small team of two IT developers, a
Marketing person, and an Admissions
person
● Used Google Docs as a task list
● Met weekly to review what was completed
and what was next
● Reordered the list as priorities changed

25. Lessons Learned 1
● Modular approach
● Consider Information Architecture
● Collaboration is key
● Agile techniques can work

26. More Lessons Learned
● Need a dedicated auditor/content seeder
● Consider available resources
● Consider time constraints
● Prepare for change and buy-in
● Vendor choice is critical

27. Innovation within the IT Portfolio
● Strategic Innovations
● Infrastructure
Increasing Risk
● Information Management
● Transaction Processing
Adapted from Ross and Weil, IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain, Harvard Business Press, 2009, fig. 3-2.

28. Custom Social Network, The Results 1
Goal 1: to help recruit new students; increase applications

29. Custom Social Network, The Results 2
Goal 2: Create an online community of
Furman constituents
- Prospective students use
- FAN engages alumni to help recruiting
- Most current students, faculty, and staff
do not use

30. So, to answer the question...
Should a university build its own private social
network, or use a consumer service like Facebook?

31. Next Steps
● Facebook, Twitter, etc.
● News & web innovations
● Cloud Admissions: SAAS
● Cloud Mobile: IAAS
● Office 365
● Box

32. Consumerization: final thoughts
What if...
● buying department or
enterprise software was
as easy as buying an
app from an app store?

33. Thanks!
Ryan.Fisher@furman.edu
George.Leventis@furman.edu
Soren.King@furman.edu
Fred.Miller@furman.edu