Campus management has become increasingly complex and expensive. If you look across IT, Facilities, HR, Residential Life, Marketing and more – each department has a unique set of requirements, challenges, and opportunities. However, if institutions continue to view each group separately, they will miss an opportunity to improve the student experience.
When prioritizing and allocating funding for projects and IT initiatives, are you doing this as a cohesive campus-wide plan or is it happening in pockets with varying standards and technologies? By bringing all projects together into a single view, the Project Management Office (PMO) not only gains improved control and visibility – but they can also look for opportunities to efficiently share and manage resources while optimizing outcomes.
Compounding the challenges of campus-wide IT service and project management is the reality of competition. Students expect technology to be current, buildings to be designed with collaboration in mind and infrastructure to support this. Attracting and retaining students has never been tougher.
For this reason, institutions are investing in technology to improve how they manage projects, forming a true PMO. With the PMO in place, they are leveraging portfolio planning tools that are integrated with service management platforms. This allows them to optimize their use of resources and provide a single, online service portal – one place where students can report a broken door, access WiFi codes, request a tour, and much more. To compete effectively, institutions need to think differently, service differently and staff differently, but your technology platform can make or break these efforts.