I had the great privilege of speaking at the CACCRAO Region 7 and 8 conference on Friday. What is CACCRAO, you ask? It is the California Association of Community College Registrars and Admissions Officers (sheesh, and I thought us geeks like acronyms). I gave my iPod Generation speech and it was probably the best audience so far. I had a great time and the feedback I received was very appreciative (and if any of you that were there are reading my lonely little blog - welcome!).
Those folks really do have a monumental job. This generation of students is so used to having immediate service I can imagine they get pretty impatient when told they need to wait for something. I could tell I struck a nerve when I talked about that. Their jobs are changing - in the old days they simply processed data. They took information from the student and keypunched into a system. As more and more of our systems become self-service for the student, admissions workers need to transition to become information workers. They'll be handling the exceptions that can't be automated, or providing more useful information for students in need. I would think it would be more fulfilling work and I hope they are ready for the transition.
2 comments:
Hi Jim -
I enjoyed your presentation Friday at CACCRAO. I was there because I was asked to help lead a discussion on 'surviving an ERP implementation'. I also scored a pass to Tech Ed, and plan to attend your presentation there tomorrow.
It was also nice to hear about your family and faith. We seem to have similar paths, although my kids are a bit younger (daughter age 4 and son age 8). My son can already beat me at Playstation 2 on a regular basis, and has already asked for an iPod.
I have to take a slight issue with your post from 3/21. You said several people wished they could do similar things (provide innovative web services) but couldn't because they have an ERP. I've worked with both Banner (currently) and Peoplesoft (at Cal Poly Pomona) and just don't agree with this sentiment. I've attended several users conferences and many campuses are doing very exciting and innovative things that interact with their ERP systems - in fact, one of the hidden benefits of going with a mainstream system is the huge user community that is willing to share their development efforts - kinda like the open-source movement. So for someone to claim 'we can't do that with our ERP' is probably quoting campus policy against mods/bolt-ons (and is often reflective of an IT staff that lacks the skills to properly innovate).
Here's a parting thought for you... If we knew in 1996 how ubiquitous cell phones would become on campus in 2006, do you think that we would have been in such a hurry to scrap voice-response systems in favor of web registration?
Bob Hughes
Applications Support Manager
North Orange County Community College District
Bob:
Thanks for the comments (and it was nice meeting you at Tech Ed today). I'm glad you have had a good experience with ERPs, but I talk to a lot of people using them and you are definitely in the minority. Now to be fair, I'm sure if you spoke to people in my district, they would have a list of complaints about our system as well. We're never going to make everyone happy, but with an ERP I feel that IT loses its ability to make real changes to the user experience.
I am very interested in hearing about some of the innovations that people have done with an ERP (I'm always looking for a cool idea to steal). If you have any links to send, please do and I'll check them out.
As to your cell phone idea, I think we still would have pursued the web because I think it's a much better medium for registration transactions. There is too much going on during registration and trying to explain everything through the phone is problematic. We built our telephone registration system and I was the technical lead for that project. I remember how we labored over the text, trying to keep it short enough to keep the call length manageable, but still provide enough information for the students to make good decisions.
Now, what I think would be cool would be to find some way to leverage the text messaging capabilities of cell phones. That is a medium that is very popular with students and could be a great new service. Any ideas?
Post a Comment