A Higher Ed IT Leader’s Guide to Consolidation & Cost Savings
Alabama A&M University (AAMU) and Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) transformed their tech stacks by consolidating duplicate systems and improving user experiences — ultimately saving costs and reducing budget. Ryan Adkins, Cloud Application Administrator at AAMU and Sejal Vaishnav, Chief Information Officer at Illinois Tech, joined Chase Williams, Pathify’s CEO, to discuss leveraging Pathify to simplify the college experience (and their bottom lines!).
Higher Ed Challenges
Higher education faces various challenges, including funding uncertainties, enrollment cliffs, and questions about overall value. More than ever, institutions must find ways to improve experiences… and save money. Williams explained how the explosion of education technology brought improvements, along with the hard and soft costs of implementing and maintaining different systems. In the quest to control costs and find innovative ways to attract and retain students, Pathify connects students and other constituents with the information and people they need for success—all on one platform.
Simplifying Tech Stacks
When considering options to improve their campus mobile app, Adkins at AAMU wanted an engaging, intuitive interface to provide users with accurate, relevant content — not just something mimicking their public website. With Pathify, AAMU consolidated key tools, including their legacy student portal, mobile app, employee portal and chatbot, into one place. “As a one-person team, managing a software stack becomes much easier within Pathify,” Adkins said.
Meanwhile, University of the Pacific consolidated 29 systems down to five and Illinois Tech consolidated its link farm student portal, campus mobile app, Drupal intranet and email marketing platform into Pathify’s centralized hub. “Pathify keeps everyone and everything in one place,” Vaishnav explained.
The switch to Pathify simplified IT responsibilities while benefiting students and employees, who reported higher satisfaction with a single platform. “We’ve been able to control what different users see via Roles,” Vaishnav said. Rather than sending blanket emails most users never open, Illinois Tech used Pathify Roles and Announcements in pushing out updates, resulting in significantly better engagement.
Additionally, campus departments have autonomy over Pathify Communities, managing content, Groups and Events independently, without relying on IT. “We [IT] don’t want to be the center of control, Pathify helps us distribute responsibilities and removes IT from being the bottleneck,” Vaishnav added.
Reducing Costs
All three institutions — AAMU, Illinois Tech and University of the Pacific — experienced cost savings by folding disparate, duplicate systems into Pathify. Under this consolidation effort, AAMU saved roughly $25,000 of its annual IT budget, noted Adkins. For both Illinois Tech and AAMU, maintaining Pathify means working more efficiently with the same headcount.
Deploying with Ease
Consolidation and simplification also saved valuable time and resources. Vaishnav highlighted the easy implementation as a key factor. Thanks to fellow customers like Adkins, Illinois Tech didn’t reinvent the wheel — instead, using Pathify’s Recipe Library and successful strategies from other institutions. “Higher education helps higher education,” Vaishnav said. “We wanted to leverage available resources without adding administrative overhead.”
With resources like the Recipe Library at their fingertips, Adkins and Vaishnav continuously improve their Pathify instances with maximum efficiency. “The IT team said Pathify remains one of the university’s best purchases because of its easy implementation,” Vaishnav said. Whether deploying Pathify for the first time or tinkering with it to better serve their needs, administrators never navigate the process alone. Pathify’s digital customer community, Collegium, and robust customer success team ensure customers thrive together.
Interested in simplifying the digital experience and saving budget? Catch up with Ryan, Sejal and Chase here!
