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Moving Beyond the IT Budget

By: Glen McCandless

10/1/2008

Creative funding strategies are part of selling to higher ed

My livelihood for many years depended on selling computers, printers, and related technology for use in higher education classrooms and offices. I can safely say that there was hardly a time when budget wasn't an obstacle to the sale. I can count on one hand the number of calls where budget was available to cover the products I was anxious to sell.

Conventional wisdom tells us that campus technology is purchased largely through the IT department, and that wisdom is not incorrect. A 2007 survey of higher-education technology decision makers, conducted by EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR), reports that 75 percent of technology spending on campus comes from the central IT budget. But this percentage varies greatly depending on the type of school. According to the ECAR report, less than half the technology purchases for doctoral (research) universities are funded from central IT, and faculty have more discretion to spend dollars on technology. Smaller institutions, likewise, often have more flexibility in spending, being able to move dollars more easily between operations and strategic areas.

In light of continuing requests from students and faculty for more technology-driven services, and as the entire higher education community becomes more web-centric, the central technology budget will likely continue to fall short of keeping up with demand. This situation is not going to change. Unless you are selling campus-wide enterprise computing solutions, most ed tech companies have to look beyond the traditional IT budget to be a viable player in higher ed. Let's look at some of the ways you can do that.

Cost-shifting, Cost-saving Tactics

Sometimes the technology itself shows you the way into a school's budget. When the product or service you are selling represents a shift in traditional institutional practices, it may be an indication to look for shifts in budgets that can pay for it. And if the new technology can save the school money (which is often the case in these kinds of sea changes), you've got an invincible sales argument.

Dr. Edward Fox of Virginia Polytechnic University believes technology companies need to be proactive in identifying how their solutions can shift practices and cut costs if they want to be funded: "With regards to funding technology, the novel approach is to automate some activity that must and will occur anyhow, in such a way that all parties benefit, and where the savings are more than the costs of making the change."

Salespeople often overlook organizational units-- like the university library-- that operate somewhat autonomously from central IT

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