Huron Consulting Group
Helping Colleges and Universities better align Operations to achieve strateg

Colleges and Universities are increasingly leveraging technology to address a multitude of challenges including decreased financial support, tighter budgets, more competition for research funding, and an urgency to successfully incorporate digital teaching tools. Helping these institutions fulfill their technological aspirations is a Chicago-based company, Huron Consulting Group. The Higher Education practice helps institutions achieve operational excellence in the CTO/CIO function, including driving institutional transformation by developing and implementing practical approaches to improve enterprise operations for higher education institutions. “With unparalleled knowledge of administrative processes and systems, including financials, HR, student administration, and grants management, Huron has a dedicated practice which works with institutions on applying technology to improve business operations and mitigate risk,” says Peter Eschenbach, Managing Director and Leader in Huron’s Higher Education practice.

Huron’s IT Assessment, Strategy, and Governance help institutions align their information technology resources and investments to their strategic business, academic, and research goals. Its Enterprise Systems Selection, Planning, and Implementation services help many institutions select, plan, and implement ERP systems. “We are one of the largest consultancies serving higher education and our unique model helps us bring deep and relevant industry experience to our clients,” says Eschenbach. Huron has experience working with more than 350 universities, academic medical centers, and research institutions, including more than 90 of the top 100 research universities.

One of the Huron’s clients, a private west coast institution, had an IT governance model wherein the requests from many units were not informed by central strategic goals and objectives.

Once approved and initiated, projects were not subject to a strong governance structure and little project management or communication was provided to requesting units. Huron identified 30 software systems in use with only 20 percent of them integrating effectively with one another. Other issues included poor data integrity and increased costs due to inefficiencies.

Huron has a one of the largest consulting practices, dedicated to serving the industry and works with institutions on applying technology to improve business operations and mitigate risk

The Huron team partnered with leaders and stakeholders to design an IT governance structure for the university that better aligned priorities with strategic plans and ensured ongoing project oversight and accountability. Huron helped form stakeholder-driven committees to address priority-setting within IT. Huron provided ongoing project management support for approved IT projects and periodic review for continued alignment of progress towards strategic goals.
Huron has partnered with many leading universities to design and implement new business models that help drive more success in IT, among other support functions, that are critical to helping achieve the strategic goals of the institution. This area of focus will include continuing to build on our current core competencies and adding new ones to best support the evolutionary changes in IT and Higher Education. “We will always seek to find better ways for leveraging technology to better serve the needs of faculty, students, and administrative units,” concludes Eschenbach.