Strategic Initiatives

Select a Trusted Advisor to Meet Your Strategic Initiatives.

Gilfus Education Group Strategic Initiatives Services provide stakeholders, executive management (CIO’s, CFO’s, Chief Academic Officers) and Program Offices with the independent expert advice and assistance they need to succeed. Leverage our team of former consulting firm partners, software company executives, entrepreneurs, and recognized industry thought leaders to achieve your goals. With our help, doing “more with less” can become a reality.

Strategic Initiatives and Planning

To develop your strategic plan, the Gilfus Education Group uses a series of facilitated planning sessions, accompanied by small focus group discussions with institutional stakeholders to gather their input and information. We tailor the number of planning sessions and focus groups to your institution’s size and complexity and can assist you with each step of planning the future of your organization. Building a sound strategy is the cornerstone for all successful systems projects. Strategic Planning leads our customers through a process of defining the services to be provided, the customers to be served, necessary service applications, and the underlying required infrastructure. This type of effective planning and standardization improves service delivery and reduces both risk and cost. Let us help you to plan your success today.

Organizational Change Management

In order to survive and thrive in the 21st century organizations must change and adapt to their evolving environments. Unfortunately, embracing opportunities to change is not a part of the DNA of most organizations. In fact, most organizations actively resist their opportunities to change and grow. We work with our clients to overcome their resistance to change, through effective information exchange, increased teamwork, improved communication, and institutional alignment. By utilizing effective change management processes our clients are able to optimize their organization’s results and have greater impact on the constituents they serve.

Business Process Assessment

Business process assessment is a necessary course of action when a new system or application is implemented which helps to ensure a smooth transition to the new environment. This assessment analyzes and redesigns business processes and work flows prior to the implementation of a new system. the Gilfus Education Group Business Process Assessment includes:

• Documenting and mapping current and needed business processes
• Prioritizing business processes based upon value impact analysis
• Facilitating workshops to design new business process models and
• Preparing implementation plans for business process improvement, testing and deployment.

Program and Project Management Planning

Program and Project management planning are the crucial foundational activities once your project’s vision, scope, objectives and governance are defined. Gilfus Education Group Program and Project management planning services assess the level at which your institution is prepared for a new enterprise system initiative or implementation. These activities provide the assurance that project’s participants (including executives, administrators, faculty and students) understand the project goals and agree on how the project’s objectives will be achieved. Program and Project management planning addresses factors such as:

• Project Governance and personnel skill sets
• Infrastructure
• Project milestones and time lines
• Project risk assessment

Your institution is faced with multiple challenges today: the need to replace legacy systems, stay competitive to attract high-quality students and faculty, streamline business processes and improving access to and the quality of information to facilitate better decision making. Often these challenges must be addressed with an insufficient budget. With our experience and network of higher education customers, we can help you to accurately estimate, validate and justify the real costs of meeting these challenges.

Procurement & Contract Negotiations

the Gilfus Education Group’s Procurement Planning and Contract Negotiations Services help executives to plan and negotiate favorable business and legal contract terms with administrative software vendors and service providers. We focus on the terms of each contract to help reduce your total cost of ownership, mitigate project risks and increase your service levels. Our proven approach can expedite the procurement process by providing you with insights from the perspective of each of your vendors. the Gilfus Education Group can facilitate requirements gathering sessions, support required document preparation and managing the vendor selection processes. When the strategic outsourcing of applications, infrastructure, or people makes sense, we can guide you through this process as well.

Academic, Administrative and IT Planning and Assessments

Your institution’s ability to serve your students, faculty, alumni, and staff in a timely manner depends upon the viability of your network and its associated technologies. This eco-system must operate at peak performance regardless of the demands placed upon it. Our assessment services are designed to scrutinize your institution’s planned or current technology environment, evaluate it against critical success factors, and recommend specific actions that you can take to enhance both its performance and effectiveness.