Why Basic Informational Graphs in SIS decision Making is Vital Matthew, I think the chart and information may appear primitive and not overly helpful for executives running their SIS platform companies. These executives have a lot of competitive analysis data that does not get carried out to the decision makers on campus. The campus decision makers have 4-‐5 sales pitches that are not conclusive by themselves. Keep in mind that most good decision makers do not trust the Garner Magic quadrant style industry reports. The lack of good across-‐the-‐board SIS platform data that represents good decisions, make any CIO crave the basic comparative charts as a starting point. Behind what every SIS company does not hear is the simple questions by executives who don’t want to sit through six sales pitches. They expect their CIO’s to have some basic data of what 4 of the top 5 president’s questions will be 1. What are our peers doing? 2. What is the cultural impact of a change in our SIS system, 3. Tell me which SIS company will be in business in the next five years, and 4. Is there really any difference with these systems, other than the size of institution they serve as their suite spot. Ultimately, presidents are trying to minimize ‘risk’ and ‘negative noise’ about a major decision. This said, most CIOs and decision makers crave a few basic charts that help with risk and noise. These charts and descriptions need to be ‘trusted’ and help minimize the number of companies who get a presentation on campus. The essence of this is described in a fairly good article posted by the Tambellini Group at: https://www.thetambellinigroup.com/post/blog/the-‐student-‐information-‐system-‐dilemma/ and aptly label – The SIS Dilemma, when FUDD Meets Fatigue the Whole Industry Suffers. Keep in mind, our university chose to stay with Banner and documented our delight in another fair article posted by the Tambellini Group Article at: https://www.thetambellinigroup.com/post/blog/ellucian-‐hits-‐a-‐grand-‐slam-‐with-‐banner-‐9/ and aptly labeled Ellucian hits a grand slam. The articles generated about 30 calls from CIOs to myself, asking if I could share with them the decision making process. Finally, to summarize the point …. The collective good of the SIS systems vendors do not have useful (comparative) graphs, charts, information, decision matrixes that are helpful to the decision making process for a campus decision maker. The sales process, as necessary as it is, actually convolutes the decision for the campus decisions makers, while each vendor is astonished why the decision is taking so long; or the wrong one. Without the types of decision making tools and research by The Tambellini Group and/or DecisionDirector, the best decision may not get made. The chart which may appear simple, provides people with a tangible piece of collateral to show to campus makers who do normally ask ‘What are our peer benchmark institutions doing, and the colleges/universities doing.’ The only way to get away from the question – what are others
doing, would be to provide better decision making data known as ‘trust-‐reports’ before the questions even start. Best, Mike