WesternU propels innovation with renewed IT approach

Dr. NeeCee Cornish matches technology, processes, and people to university endeavors

It was at the height of a pandemic and on the heels of a major reorganization when Dr. NeeCee Cornish assumed the dual role of Associate VP of IT and Deputy COO at Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU), a graduate health professions institution with campuses in California and Oregon.

“Everyone was still unsettled and trying to disentangle processes and responsibilities,” she recalled.

Adding to the situation, rising costs and enrollment erosion continue to stir higher education institutions across the US. “Colleges are struggling with questions like, ‘How do we continue to deliver that student experience?’ and ‘How do we innovate and still keep costs down?’ ” Cornish noted.

She emphasized the need for IT professionals to join the conversation and lead with solutions: “The role of CIO is in a state of change. We can no longer just focus on network infrastructure or automation. We must be at the table thinking about business and institutional needs.”

Seeking guidance for realignment

For years, WesternU functioned in reactive mode without an established IT strategy, but Cornish knew planning a new approach could be costly and time-consuming. “It might take months and it may never even come to fruition,” she said.

As an IT leader who started as a database programmer, then took on leadership roles and earned a doctoral degree in business administration and management, Cornish owns her space as a matchmaker of technology, processes, and people. She and her team of almost 60 IT professionals sought research-driven guidance and best-practice methodologies for recalibration.

Establishing a unified IT strategy within a week

WesternU scheduled an IT Strategy Workshop with Info-Tech Research Group to uncover business needs, align scope, and plan actions. “When you get a workshop from Info-Tech, you’re talking to experts. They know what questions to ask,” Cornish said.

She described the four-day experience as intense and inclusive with valuable output. “We involved the voices of our IT team and the voices of the business … we made our vision and mission in half a day’s time, maybe even less. And it’s a vision and mission that really resonated with everybody.”

With Cornish’s leadership, the workshop provided a space for all participants to be candid about concerns and ideas. Within days, the unified team established a structure and initiatives to serve as its blueprint.

The streamlined effort also proved cost effective. “It saved me tons of hours and tons of money,” Cornish related. “We would have needed to go through all our applications, all of our products, all of our contracts, all of our everything. We saved at least $100,000 by doing the IT Strategy Workshop.”

"With the Info-Tech IT Strategy Workshop, we involved the voices of our IT team and the voices of the business and we made our vision and mission in half a day’s time, maybe even less. And it’s a vision and mission that really resonated with everybody.”

- Dr. NeeCee Cornish, Associate VP of IT and Deputy COO, WesternU

Transforming IT with precision and efficiency

With the strategy in place, Cornish and her team could evaluate all IT efforts, keeping only services indispensable to university goals.

First, Cornish worked with Info-Tech analysts to refine WesternU’s organization design. Together, they ran scenarios and ensured the result serves its users. “That was such a beneficial guided implementation,” she said. “They reminded me to make sure I’m taking the people aspect into the equation and lumping groups together that make the most sense. By the end, I made some changes … I realized my initial plan wasn’t the right thing to do.”

WesternU then took a deep look at its application portfolio to reveal essentials and redundancies. “That saved us about $60,000 to $70,000 annually,” Cornish noted. “When the contracts came up for renewal we knew which ones we didn’t consider strategic vendors anymore.”

Cornish and her team realized additional savings by reviewing contracts. In one case, Info-Tech analysts reworked phrases within a 60-page document, ensuring verbiage remained favorable to WesternU. “We thought, ‘There’s no way this company is going to accept all of these red lines,’ ” Cornish said. “Sure enough, they accepted every single one of them, which saves us $40,000 in maintenance on an annual basis.”

Refining operations with data-driven insight

Cornish welcomes tools, templates, and programs developed by Info-Tech analysts to match her people to empowering processes and technology. “The diagnostic programs tell the real story of what’s going on,” she explained.

For instance, assessments from the IT Management and Governance Framework exposed over- or under-servicing, and stakeholder metrics from the CIO Business Vision elevated coordination. “I’m going to run diagnostics every year because every year they’re informing me of what we need to do differently and reaffirming what we’re doing well,” she said. “With this guidance, I have a team that trusts me to lead them.”

“CIOs, especially those of higher education, are going to have to be thinking less about technology, and more about how we’re going to move the business forward by matching the right technology to the right people and processes.”

- Dr. NeeCee Cornish, Associate VP of IT and Deputy COO, WesternU

Renovating student and faculty experiences

WesternU advanced certainty with its new IT approach. Then, armed with its fresh strategy and insight, the university gained a springboard for cost-effective modernization.

“In education, we’ve got to do more with less,” Cornish related. “One of the things a CIO and IT can assist with is helping to innovate, bringing novel ideas to some of those traditional problems.”

Among the new initiatives designed by WesternU, team members created an artificial intelligence system that tracks moods of students and faculty. For student convenience, the university also released a chat bot, enabled electronic signatures, and offered automated after-hours support.

As challenges arise, Cornish engages with her executive counselor from Info-Tech. “I look to my executive counselor for guidance, for helping me have difficult conversations, and for leadership challenges that I'm having. I really believe that I wouldn't be where I am today without that service.”

Through it all, Cornish plans to keep matchmaking. “CIOs, especially those of higher education, are going to have to be thinking less about technology and more about how we’re going to move the business forward by matching the right technology to the right people and processes.”