The First 90 Days: Why Onboarding, Not Features, Determines Tech ROI

One of the most common onboarding mistakes institutions make is thinking that new technology alone will "fix" all of their enrollment challenges, without any effort or change management on the campus side. The reality is that there is no technology that will make a meaningful difference without buy-in from campus stakeholders in addition to strategy and process changes around it. 

The most successful clients we have at Liaison truly understand that change management and cross-campus collaboration are essential in order to see results. By putting the effort in up front, they see the benefits come to fruition on the back end. 

Another mistake I often see is that the "why" behind the decision is either not clearly articulated or not communicated to the campus stakeholders responsible for the onboarding and/or adoption of the new technology. There is often a disconnect between the champion who signed the contract and has the vision for how this change aligns with institutional priorities and the “doers” on campus: the people involved in the day-to-day work. 

Getting buy-in from all stakeholders at the front end is so important to a successful onboarding. With any big change or new system adoption, there is a lot of coordination required to make sure the change is adopted across campus, because if you make this change in a vacuum and don't involve the right people from the start, it can unravel very quickly.

In addition to asking whether adoption and milestone metrics are being hit during the first 90 days, I think it is even more important is determine whether the right people are actually utilizing the system. How is it being spoken about internally during the onboarding? Think of it as a "vibe check" if you will. 

What I mean by that is that at the beginning of a project there is always going to be an element of nervousness or hesitation. Any new system introduces change, and humans don't like change. But by 90 days in, you should have worked through the initial concerns about process changes, and you should start being able to move into forward thinking. 

Instead of being hung up on how things work now or how it's always been done, the questions should start sounding more like "How could we do this better?" or "What would it look like if we...?” You want to see staff starting to build new processes around the platform, rather than forcing old processes into it. You know you’re on the right track when stakeholders start noting improvements rather than hesitation or complaints.

When I’m asked about the role a champion plays during implementation, I think about one particular institution I worked with that joined a couple of Liaison’s Centralized Application Services (CAS) and just really knocked it out of the park during onboarding. I believe that contributed to their lasting success. 

The champion was clear about her vision for joining CAS, was upfront about the internal challenges they may face, and was also really involved during the onboarding, which allowed her to communicate the progress and successes from all sides. She brought up CAS at every faculty committee meeting to integrate it into the conversation early and often. And she continued to articulate the vision of what the system will and will not do for them, so that there were no surprises. 

Often, when you adopt a new system, your benchmarks might change, and your KPIs might look different. If you don't prepare people for that, the shift can be jarring, and the successes get muddled in confusion. But this institution also used the opportunity to bring their marketing folks into the fold and be really strategic about how they were going to build a strategy around CAS to maximize the benefits of the system. 

This allowed them to clean up some pretty substantial gaps in their website design and communication strategy, which took a little bit longer on the front end but also ensured long-term success with CAS and with their recruitment in general, which is a win by any measure.