Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Jenny Leigh Morris: Let's say, for example, I tried to schedule a meeting. I was working with
ChatGPT to do my time zone conversions and it totally messed up my conversions. I sent out a
meeting note, you know, a meeting notice, and it was completely off. Right. So it's an amazing
tool, but we still need that oversight. And so I think we, we might see a world in which expert
consultants or more seasoned consultants or specialized knowledge workers, their hours or
billable hour might be more expensive than it is today potentially.
So I think we don't know where it's going to go, but we definitely know that at some point I think
that model will be quite outdated.
[00:00:43] Jeff Dillon: Jenny Lee Morris is a technology strategist who helps organizations
modernize their core systems to better serve students, faculty and staff.
At Doctums, she guides institutions through the full lifecycle of student information system and
enterprise technology projects, from evaluation and selection to implementation, ensuring every
step aligns with institutional priorities and delivers measurable improvements for the campus
community.
Before turning her focus to higher education, Jennie worked with some of the world's Most
recognized Fortune 100 brands, including Walmart, L', Oreal Intuit, and Microsoft, designing and
delivering employee education programs on AI and data science long before the topic became
mainstream. She created AI for Marketers workshops and AI for Leaders programs that help
global teams understand emerging technologies and apply them in real world business contexts.
Outside of her work in higher ed technology, she she channels her passion for wellness into
running a yoga retreat in Spain, bringing the same focus on balance and intentional design to
both campus systems and personal well being.
So welcome to the show, Jenny. It's great to have you today.
[00:02:03] Jenny Leigh Morris: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here with you today.
[00:02:07] Jeff Dillon: So you have such a varied background. That's what I when I first met you
at educause last year, I'm like, wow, she's done a lot of you were teaching AI to Fortune 100
companies like Walmart, L', Oreal Intuit, Microsoft, before it was on most people's radar. How
does that early experience shape how you think about AI's impact on the higher ed vendor
landscape?
[00:02:31] Jenny Leigh Morris: I think enterprise pushes all industries right? Education, nonprofit, et
cetera. And even in my career in the context of adult education, which is where I spent a lot of
time and consulting and delivering that education.
Buyers and students, they want to interact the same way that you do. If you are interacting in a, I
guess A, B2C context, you know, if you're buying something on Amazon, that experience is
shaping your behavior. So if you go to Enroll, you know, in a new degree, for instance, a new
university. You want that experience to be seamless. And so I think adopting some of the
practices of customer centricity, you know, customer journey mapping, user experience
experience, things like that, I think really shapes the way that we think about AI and the student
journey in particular as we head into the future.
[00:03:24] Jeff Dillon: Well, AI could fundamentally change the consulting and implementation
business model. What happens to the billable hour when AI accelerates configuration,
documentation and testing?
[00:03:37] Jenny Leigh Morris: Well, being in the consulting field, I spend a lot of time thinking about this
and I think we're of course not there yet today, but I think it's, there's a lot of value in thinking
about how things are going to shift in the coming years.
We might see value based pricing, we might see the death of the billable hour. I do think,
however, AI is like your, at least in this present moment, your tireless sort of junior consultant or
you're a junior analyst. Right. But you still need oversight. Let's say, for example, I tried to
schedule a meeting, I was working with ChatGPT to do, do my time zone conversions and it
totally messed up my conversions. I sent out a meeting note, you know, a meeting notice, and it
was completely off. Right. So it's an amazing tool, but we still need that oversight. And so I think
we, we might see a world in which expert consultants or more seasoned consultants or
specialized knowledge workers, their hours or billable hour might be more expensive than it is
today potentially.
So I think we don't know where it's going to go, but we definitely know that at some point I think
that model will be quite outdated.
[00:04:44] Jeff Dillon: You know, I want to go back to your work with other industries. You know,
I talk a lot about higher ed. We're focused on higher ed in this podcast. You know, you work with
these big brands. What do you think higher ed could learn from some of these other private
sector companies and industries?
[00:05:00] Jenny Leigh Morris: In my opinion there's two things.
One is competition. I think what's going to happen in the future is we're going to enter into a
hyper competitive landscape because there is so much information readily available, easily
processed, and you could think you could build a website in 15 minutes right now where in the
past you would have had to hire somebody. I remember I tried to build a website for a business I
started. Took six months or a year.
So I think we will see an increase of hyper competition. And what industry does really well is to
laser focus in on their particular competitive advantage and exploit that. And I think that schools
could do well by thinking about that in context of what they offer that is different from the rest,
and really taking that and exploiting it. The other thing I think we could really learn from industry
is experimentation.
So not getting so dead set on a certain path or a certain plan, and doing AB tests, doing
experimentation. When it comes to marketing in particular, also user feedback and like a product
development mindset. So oftentimes what I see is, you know, maybe people that are leading a
project, they're in the boardroom, they're talking over, they're making a lot of assumptions about
what students want, how they behave, how they interact with systems, and even to some extent,
internal faculty.
So I think we could learn a lot about not only mapping customer journey experiences internally
and externally, but also failing fast, trying things, testing it instead of running one ad on
Instagram, running five, see what works, amplify that, and so on, and not being so static in those
experimentations and those project plans.
[00:06:50] Jeff Dillon: One of the things I think higher ed suffers from is these feedback cycles
when we're going through these big projects are so long and there's so many people involved
and there's so many chances for them to stall.
Do you see that too?
[00:07:04] Jenny Leigh Morris: Yes.
Yeah. And you know what, that's another interesting point that you bring up is I think what I have
observed and also I worked in government in the past, I've been a part of very large, you know,
software overhauls and different implementations at the enterprise level.
And I think sometimes there is this, how do you call it, like, dilemma of niceness, where we want
to include everyone's point of view and at the end of the day, you end up with an RFP or a
project scope that's just a kitchen sink. Right. And so, and not to say that those perspectives
aren't valuable, but in my work, what I always look at is if I get the same type of feedback a
handful of times, okay, a pattern might be emerging. But, you know, if one or two people want a
feature, maybe that's not quite, you know, mission critical. So I think, and going back to even,
you know, this, this notion of capitalizing on a competitive advantage, I think it's also getting to
the heart of the matter. No matter what type of project you're doing within the higher ed
landscape and ruthlessly sticking to that and making sure that you're not adding or bloating the
scope just to, to make people feel better, essentially. But have you seen that in the past in your
work as well?
[00:08:20] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was just thinking of this quote or this. I think it was
Steve Jobs that said once he said, my job at Apple is to steer the ships, but the ship has a hole
and it's sinking, but I gotta make sure it's pointed the right direction.
[00:08:35] Jenny Leigh Morris: Yes.
[00:08:36] Jeff Dillon: And I think that's too often higher ed is like, it's always big picture strategy,
but they're not nimble enough to kind of fix what needs to be fixed in. In the moment.
[00:08:44] Jenny Leigh Morris: Yeah, I agree. And I think it just takes a couple of, you know, courageous
people to toe that line and to be laser focused. But having worked as kind of a middle project
manager, you know, and you're gathering requirements and features and stuff from maybe
executives that are so much higher than you in the reporting, of course you want to fold those
into a project, but I think there is value. And just especially now because there are so many
distractions and pressure to modernize. So if you are, let's say, trying to make the student
experience better, what better thing to do than to actually talk to the students and not make
assumptions and stick very, very closely to the goals and the outcomes that you're trying to
achieve rather than, you know, making like a list of things that's just impossible.
[00:09:34] Jeff Dillon: And now a word from our sponsor.
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[00:10:02] Jeff Dillon: I want your thoughts on this. Many campuses approach technology
buying in a way that frustrates vendors. RFPs go out, conversations start, and then vendors are
ghosted. How can institutions be better buyers?
[00:10:15] Jenny Leigh Morris: When we started talking, I wasn't really setting out to chat about the
customer experience so much, but I think that it's particularly salient on both sides and for all
stakeholders involved in a campus experience, whether that be students, vendors, faculty,
whatever. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with this story story from Intuit designed for delight,
where they essentially mapped out their hiring process and found that candidates were spending
so much time being interviewed providing projects, only to not hear back. And just how horrible
that made people feel. And so they basically reimagined their entire process. Cut it down to
where candidates get an answer, a firm yes or no within a certain amount of days.
And I think there's value in that communication. Right? The communication is at the heart of
things. And I think sometimes as a vendor you have conversations, things seem to be going
well, and then you just get ghosted. It's worse than dating, you know, you're wondering what the
heck happened? You know, was it something I said or something that could have gone better?
And then I also think, in my experience, I'll give you an example.
I was in a cycle with a school selling them some cloud based software and we didn't hear for
them.
Messaging, I'm following up, I don't hear back, I don't hear back. And I decided to pick up the
phone and call this prospective client. And we talked about what was happening and he
basically said, look, your, your solution's a little bit slow. And I said, okay, well what kind of
workloads are you running? And he explained all these graphic intensive workloads he was
running. And at the time we had configured this virtual environment to be running a lot less
intensive applications. And I said, well, that's an easy fix. You know, we just up your, the power
of your virtual machines and there you go. And we did that and we ended up signing the deal.
And these guys are like evangelists for the service and the product now. So it's, it's really, I think,
about communication. Even if you don't want to go as a vendor, just let them know. Or
conversely, it could be some, something that they can offer you a solution for, whether it be
tweaking the application or the product or even pricing. It could be that you need the budget to
be a little bit lower. You ask for that and we can accommodate. So I really think communication
is key.
And the extent to, you know, schools can provide that to vendors, it just improves the
relationship, the outcomes. And then, you know, let's say you don't go with a particular vendor
and it's for a certain reason that could help them in their product roadmap to make developments
and features that might help a lot of schools. And not everyone approaches things like that. But
for me, I definitely do. I like to hear what was it about? The pitch, the conversation, the product,
the service offering that just didn't resonate. And then again, if we hear those patterns two,
three, four times, maybe we want to look at adjusting the product and releasing something new.
So yeah, sometimes it's like a stone wall when it doesn't need to be. It could be a conversation.
[00:13:22] Jeff Dillon: I love that example where they were trying it and it was just too slow. But
you wouldn't have known that unless you kind of pried in there and found that out. I think some
sales tip for people like make sure you know what's happening with your sandbox environments.
But I also think more often than not, I've worked with in higher ed for 20 plus years that these
schools, when they do this, they, yeah, we want to try this out. But what happens is many times
they just don't have time to properly do anything. It just sits there. Yeah, sandbox is just sitting
there and they're almost embarrassed to get back to you. And that's why they're ghosting you
sometimes is what I've seen. But yeah, if you could, if these higher ed decision makers could
just like communicate a little bit saying, yeah, we are behind our timeline, this person's out or
whatever it does does help a lot.
[00:14:08] Jenny Leigh Morris: Yeah, that's such a good point. I also have observed and I've been out of
the higher ed space for a while, so I'm kind of coming back in fresh with some tech experience
behind me at this point. But the pilot has been fascinating to, to observe just for the, the reasons
that you mentioned, which is that a lot of times I think it provides a bit of a security blanket like,
oh, we can have this pilot phase. But a lot of times it falls short because no one actually tries it.
And it's not for lack of the desire to try it. Right. But I think oftentimes the project sponsor doesn't
really have a good plan for what criteria are they looking for in that pilot. And then furthermore,
people are very busy so they don't end up trying it. So I think, you know, for that there's
something I like to call together alone, which is just scheduling time where people maybe they're
on mute, but they actually try whatever sandbox environment is prepared in real time. And then
also, you know, on both sides as a vendor and then as someone experiencing it, you can hear
people. You can hear where they get stuck, where they get confused, where something isn't
clear, or conversely where they really love what they're going through. So I think a highly
structured intentional pilot is really key at this time because people are so bombarded with things
to do and can't get.
[00:15:27] Jeff Dillon: I like that intentional pilot much better than the sandbox. Like I think there
was even some stats we ran like the deals that weren't closing. If you give a sandbox too early
and doesn't have enough guidelines or scope or a timeline attached to it, it's probably going to
fail. It might look. Make your product look, you know, less of a fit than it. Than it may be because
you need to be there holding their hand. Needs to be probably further along in the, in the funnel.
[00:15:50] Jenny Leigh Morris: Well, because a lot of times too, those testers, they're just sort of like
thrown onto a list and so and so says so and so would be great to test it out but they don't have
as much context as they probably need going into it. And so it's last on their priority list.
[00:16:05] Jeff Dillon: So yeah. So AI aside, what, what do you think are the most overlooked
factors institutions should consider when assessing whether a vendor is the right long term
partner?
[00:16:16] Jenny Leigh Morris: I think first and foremost the university or school should be laser focused
on the heart of the matter and what they're trying to achieve. And I think that will make it a lot
easier for them to select or deselect certain vendors based on that.
And I think on the school side definitely being wary of companies that say they can have it, you
know, do it all. I definitely see the fallout from that with some clients, you know, where maybe a
certain vendor is great in one domain and they fall short in another. Maybe you need two
vendors or three vendors to really address the scope that you have. So I think being laser
focused there and again trying not to put everything in the kitchen sink into the scope, but getting
very, very focused on what it is they're looking for will help them out.
[00:17:05] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, I have a rule of thumb. You know, I really want vendors that, when I,
when I was in the buyer's side at a university to be at least have 20% of their business in higher
ed. They don't have to be 100% higher ed company. But I noticed the ones that we kind of at the
institution, the ones we felt being held hostage by, often we're the large, large, large vendors, we
know we opt to buy these products. I won't call it any names.
Higher ed is such a small fraction of their higher ed business, although might be multimillion
dollar division of their organization. It's such a small part of it that the roadmap doesn't align, the
licensing doesn't align. So for them to go in and buy their extra thing just because you have that
with them, that's it's kind of a trap you fall into because it's so easy. But it's like, oh, there's so
many great vendors out there now that are coming on board that yeah, it's tough if they don't
have any higher ed clients right off the bat. But once they have a couple and you know they are
focused on higher ed, I, I love, I'm learning about new ones every day almost. It's pretty
amazing.
[00:18:04] Jenny Leigh Morris: Yeah, I mean I think that's an interesting point. I have a question for you
on that. So as we think about so many emergent technologies, we can't expect a lot of these
platforms to have 20 years behind them. Obviously, things are completely shifting. They're
changing really fast. And building software from scratch is a big advantage in a lot of ways to
universities these days. How do we temper that with schools of, you know, you want experience,
you want a track record, you want to work with a company you know is going to be around.
But at the same time, there's so many companies entering the market now.
[00:18:39] Jeff Dillon: Well, that's exactly as funny you asked that. Because that's how I started
EdTech Connect five years ago was we want to know higher ed purchases based on their peers
often. Right. I have this story where I was tasked with finding a cloud workflow solution in 2019.
And I'd been doing my job for at two different places for like 15 plus years. I'm like, okay, yeah, I
can go find us some options, a short list. I was plugged into the largest system in the country, the
CSU system. 23 campuses. We all shared information. I was kind of asking like, yeah, what are
you using for your cloud workflow? Got all sorts of answers. I was on the Slack groups. I'm like, I
was having trouble getting into my shortlist. Not because there were not enough solutions, it's
because there were too many. Like, how do I, I can't bring back 10 to my team. I want to get to
three. So I'm like, why don't we just crowdsource this and say, anyone to higher ed, use your
edu, tell us what you're using, what you like about it, so you don't have to be five years in and
have a bunch of higher ed clients yet. But the way we vetted EdTech Connect is higher ed will
list what they're using and then maybe multiple people will list that. And it can also be generated
by a vendor. They can say, hey, we want to be part of this database. But if a vendor comes in,
they're vetted by a higher ed person and they say, let's go look at their website. Do they have a
higher ed page? Do they have higher ed clients? And if neither of the above is true, it's not. It
doesn't go in. But even if they don't have any clients listed, you could be new. And if you say,
look, we have a higher ed page of a conversation, we'll let them get listed in Ed Tech Connect.
But there's over 1100 solutions. I'm pretty happy with that number. It's not like a G2, but it's 1100
crowdsource solutions all, you know, across higher ed. So I've never told that story on this
podcast. So thanks for. Thanks for.
[00:20:21] Jenny Leigh Morris: Oh good. I teed you up. I'm happy. Yeah. And you know, that brings up
another point I think is leverage. And thinking about if you are going with a new company, you're
taking a risk. So what kind of leverage does that give you at the negotiating table? You know, on
price, on contractual terms. And then there can be advantages. It obviously is a risk and not
every school has the appetite or ability to take that.
However, you can be a beta tester for things. You can influence the way those products are
developed and serve the university. But you have to have the right mindset and the right
partnership in order to do that.
[00:21:03] Jeff Dillon: You know, that's a great point.
[00:21:04] Jenny Leigh Morris: I mean even like thinking where we started the top of the podcast AI for
marketers and non technical people. When I developed those workshops with my team, that was
something I was hearing from the client. You know, that a lot of executives are like what the heck
is this stuff? And they're conflating terms and nobody really knows what they're talking about, but
they want to chase after this trend. And that really came out of just listening to the client and co
creating something with them that ended up being productized and launched to other
enterprises. So it doesn't have to be a horrible relationship. I think with a vendor school
sometimes it brings a lot of stress on people, but I think there's a lot more potential than
oftentimes meets the eye.
[00:21:47] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, and you kind of talked a bit about this, but when they're new, they
need, they need you, the institution probably more than you need them. And you can often give
them some marketing help if you really believe if their solutions working for you, that's what they
need. They case studies and if you have the right people. I notice some people are shy to be on
a stage with a vendor. They just don't feel it's appropriate or they don't feel comfortable. But
some do. There's a lot of people in higher ed, they want to travel and go to conferences and talk.
And that's what I do for a lot of my clients is like, tell me who your best clients are and let's go
out and tell some stories of how they're using your software. And so there are people out there
at universities that at the right type of university, they're okay going on stage and talking about
their product, about how they're using your product so well.
[00:22:35] Jenny Leigh Morris: I think there's such a value in storytelling, and I don't think that that is
going away no matter what happens in terms of technological developments. And my point of
view is if you can save someone time, energy, pain by sharing your stories of how you got to
where you are, why not talk about it?
You know, I think it's important to share how people and different organizations approach these
modernization efforts because things are unfolding pretty quickly and it takes some people that
are willing to get out there on the forefront. I mean, if you think about it, we're on the edge of
completely endless possibilities and we need people that are out there on the front trying stuff,
testing stuff, and bringing it back to the rest of us through stories.
And I think that partnerships are critical between vendors and schools in order to do that and to
really get us into the place we need to be in terms of technology.
[00:23:29] Jeff Dillon: One thing I want to talk about is you are probably intimately aware of this
because you've worked within higher ed and outside of it is that. And some of my clients, they're
breaking into higher ed. They have a great product, but they're breaking into higher ed. And what
they realize is these higher ed decision cycles can stretch for 18 to 24 months.
[00:23:48] Jenny Leigh Morris: And holy smokes, yeah.
[00:23:50] Jeff Dillon: How can institutions streamline the decision to make a process without
sacrificing the diligence?
[00:23:56] Jenny Leigh Morris: This is going to be an interesting topic, I think, for us to talk about
because I feel it only takes one or two courageous individuals to lead a charge.
And one of my pet peeves when I worked in government was that we would meet every week to
talk about a project. You know, how can you shorten that time frame and maybe just do a
workshop and say at the end of this workshop we're going to have a decision and outcome,
something like that. I mean, sometimes you do have to work within those confines. And I think
the way that you do that is by trying to map out a timeline for those decisions. And it's old school
project management, right? Like stakeholder mapping, putting together, you know, maybe a raci
chart or something like that. But I would love your thoughts as well, because sometimes it's like
an immovable beast that you're trying to get through and just get to a decision and.
[00:24:49] Jeff Dillon: Well, what I've seen most successfully, a lot of the, the vendors I work
with, they're selling to marketing and it and you kind of need both at the table. And what I've
seen most successful recently is it's often and it's not always at the private schools. It's private
and public. But they're the marketing. IT teams are starting to blend.
And I used to say marketing, you have a seat at the table, you're actually hosting the entire
dinner. Now you need to be leading the charge. And they're kind of reluctant to take that. But I've
seen now where these senior directors maybe up to an AVP level, someone with technical skills
is put in the marketing department to run the digital team and then once that person gets on
board, that champion, they can pretty much get things done quickly. But to have the
collaboration between two or three people across different sites, silos is I think what slows
everything down. So maybe look at your org chart and like how do we, how can we speed these
up from the time of like, okay, who really needs to approve this from what? Different.
Different silos. So it's interesting to see that they close faster when it's that technical person in
the marketing team. They can go faster.
[00:25:57] Jenny Leigh Morris: Yeah. And I also think in sales and really you could think about this as
someone trying to execute a project on the inside of an organization as well.
And if you think about the problem, we call it like a bleeding neck, is it so consequential? Are
there big consequences if you do nothing and if not, it's probably going to be a slower cycle.
Right. If you don't have a super amount of pain that somebody needs to solve and then
furthermore you need the budget and you need somebody that has ability to say yes. And if you
don't have those three things, the cycle is going to be really long. And I think in some of those
cases it's a lot of follow up, a lot of contacts. You know, you don't want to nag people or anything
like that, but you do want to keep it top of mind and understand what are the side effects of not
doing anything for any, anything that you're embarking on, really. So yeah, I think if you don't
have those things, you're probably looking at a pretty long cycle.
[00:26:56] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, sometimes you just have to accept it and like really target who are
you targeting? Targeting what? Schools are trying to make quicker decisions because we know
some of them. Sometimes it equates to the size and the decentralized nature, which makes
things tougher. But I want to ask you one last question about the difference between the Fortune
100 companies versus higher ed, but about managing vendors for performance. How do you
manage vendors for performance rather than just procurement compliance?
[00:27:25] Jenny Leigh Morris: I think that's a big One that you touched on having sat on the vendor side,
working with Fortune 100. I mean, they're ruthless in terms of performance and holding you
accountable to those deliverables. And I think that higher ed could learn a lot by that and being
very communicative and very firm on the desired outcomes of certain projects. And if you notice
things are not going the way that you want them to go, really raising that early and often. And I
think playing out those scenarios, right, I mean, if you signed up a vendor and they say they're
going to deliver something in 12 months and it's stretching to 18 and 24, definitely maybe think
about switching. I mean, there are a lot of options out there. And if you're not getting the service
that you need or the quality or whatever, definitely don't be afraid to change course. And I think
sometimes people, you know, this is human nature. We don't want our decisions to be under
scrutiny. We don't want to think that a vendor we brought on board didn't perform and it's our
fault or whatever. But the reality is we're all here with a job to do. And if you're hiring an expert in
their field, they should deliver upon that expertise and don't be afraid to have those tough
conversations and be direct. You're hiring them for that job and they should perform and deliver
upon it for you.
[00:28:46] Jeff Dillon: That's great advice to end it on. I'm going to close this out with just thank
you to you, Jenny, for being here. I love where this went about really getting into the purchasing
process, the ins and outs of higher ed procurement.
[00:29:01] Jenny Leigh Morris: Thank you.
[00:29:02] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, I'll put links to your LinkedIn and your doctums company website in
the show notes. And again, great to have you, Danny.
[00:29:11] Jenny Leigh Morris: Awesome. Thanks. It was so great to be here. I really appreciate it.
[00:29:16] Jeff Dillon: As we wrap up this episode, remember EdTech Connect is your trusted
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