As much as I love to talk about technology every day, it really starts with people. And a lot of the work that we're doing is to focus on change management, as over 1000 of our customers are modernizing and moving to cloud. That's really important to get the peopleÕs side to understand how are your business processes, and the peopleÕs needs going to change. 

Welcome to focus, a podcast dedicated to the business of higher education. I'm your host, Heather Richmond, and we will be exploring the challenges and opportunities facing today's higher learning institutions. In this episode, I caught up with Laura Ipsen, the CEO of Ellucian about supporting student success and the power of working together throughout the higher ed tech community. 

Hi, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today.
It's great to be here, Heather.

I'm pretty certain that most of our audience is familiar with Ellucian and you, of course, as being the CEO, but let's just go ahead and do a quick overview of Ellucian.

Sure. Well, listen, right at the top, we are a mission based organization, a company that is focused on creating better outcomes for institutions, and obviously mapping that to student success. Ellucian provides what we call really the operating system, from administration all the way into HR and all the students systems, but also the success capabilities for students. Today, we serve over 3200 customers, we just bought an amazing company, CampusLogic. So they're part of the Ellucian family taking out the friction of financial aid and finances is certainly something that TouchNet knows quite a bit about. We're a global company, we're in over 50 countries, and with over 2700 employees. So I'm really excited to share more about our vision and strategy. I am super excited about how we've been growing our partnership with TouchNet. Over many decades, and how we create success together.

Yeah, it's been a great time. Absolutely interesting, a lot of success out there and seeing our institutions really thrive in that. And so, you know, obviously, both of us are working in higher education, higher education is important to us. And so I know, especially for you, and you have some background there. So can you expand on that?

Yeah, well, listen, I grew up in a family that that education was a big priority. My mother was a teacher, my father got his masters and in art, became a working artist and a professor and ran a department at a university. So two parents that committed their life to higher education. Then a mother who was not just a teacher, but then got her master's in special education and a PhD at the age of 58, while still working full time and raising five kids. So, you know, both my parents dedicate their whole lives to education. And, oddly, I think at some point, we all become a little bit more like our parents.

Absolutely, it was kind of a path that maybe you didn't go to initially, but you were bound to end up here.

No, absolutely. And you know, as much as we all resist, I'm just so excited to be at Ellucian. I left Silicon Valley after 25 years working for big tech companies like Microsoft and Cisco. And, you know, just knowing that we had incredible capabilities, to solve some of the toughest challenges in higher education to have an impact and create better outcomes. That's why I moved. You know, also, as leaders and female leaders, Heather, it's important to make sure that we have diversity, equity, inclusion, and that we create pathways for leadership at all levels. And, quite frankly, I dreamed about being an ambassador, it wasn't my dream to be a CEO. Now, I feel like I'm an ambassador for education, technology and powering that forward. But you know, more of us in diverse communities and women need to get those leadership opportunities. If I didn't take a shot, then shame on me because you know, more women, we see more women having great success like you, and it's really important. It's certainly important in education as well.

100% I couldn't agree more and I think you are absolutely an inspiration to many. I know, especially for me when I saw you first on the big stage, I was like, yes, this is going to be great and really transformational for higher education in the technology space.

Well, listen, I remember seeing you for the first time and we took a picture together and I love the fact that I got a copy of it and that you had on a purple jacket. You won me over right away coming to an Ellucian Live and we just so appreciate TouchNet being our great partner with all of our events and looking forward to our user conferences coming up in just next month.

That's right. I know it's interesting too, when you think about your parents, but now you're that parent that has kids go into college so the roles are reversed.

Yeah, listen, I got one out of the funnel of college after going to NYU. I have one who I was watching at Lafayette College playing volleyball, studying neuroscience, Nina, with a minor in Mandarin. And thank goodness, they are amazing. Lafayette College with a president Nicole Hurd, an amazing institution on the move, transforming. They have our Banner system and eager to modernization, they'll move to cloud. That's exciting. And then I'm in the stress of having a senior. My son Logan, a senior in high school trying to figure it out, kind of my late bloomer. And so I know the stress students in getting a job, the one in college, and the one about to go, fingers crossed.

Yes. Well, so you're right in that process too, of okay, the students are going through, but maybe the parent might have to pay some tuition and how do I log in, and you've now sort of become a user of this technology.

And you know, it's important for all of us to be users even if we didn't have our own kids going through. We, Ellucian have focused so much on the user experience, the UI, because you know, when you've been around for a while and you're on premise, you're not thinking about the SaaS experience, we are quickly becoming a SaaS company with you know, we've delivered on the platform, which we call the SaaS2.0 platform, giving both the institution experience and student experience in new ways. And then obviously, with our experience, having any persona and a campus pull up. What do I want around my data? Specifically focused on the financial area, financial aid, the transactions, that you all do such an amazing job with making sure that they're compliant, friction free for both the administration part and students and really providing that one look, so students can make better decisions. And a big part of, you know, as we focus on that, and I mentioned CampusLogic is, we just believe, at the core of students success, you have to have financial success, mental health community, all of that comes together at a platform level, and unleashing that data is going to be the next moves that you'll see us make at Ellucian.

Yeah, that's great. You know, we often say it's the success outside the classroom. So there's the academic side of the house. But, you know, Ellucian and TouchNet, weÕre really focused on the business side, and you have to have the same level of success there for a student to not be worrying about the financials, or did I pay my bill? And is it on time? Are my classes going to get dropped? How do I pull that altogether? So having that, you know, partnership, integration too, like you said, in that platform view, having that single view to see everything really helps to ease that students mind.

Well, it takes a you know, there's a lot of anxiety, we've seen, you know, massive increases in anxiety on campus, it's kind of parallel with students dropping out, it tends to be either the financial issues or mental health and more mental health issues that we saw through COVID. So if you can take any of the complexity out of student's lives, that's a good day, that they can see a whole picture. More importantly, that you can onboard quickly, nudge them into something, provide new opportunities for them, you know, suggest something to them to make life better on and off the campus that is equally important. And those are the things that we're focused on. You know, advisors in most institutions are one to 100 sometimes, right? If you're lucky, but more of that is going to be an AI and be digital help to students. I don't know about you, but I think students, you know, the early students now want more of those digital capabilities that they want to go, then they want to go face to face and go into, for example, the financial office, that's just not as comfortable for students that we see. At the same time, we're not just pursuing and helping institutions ensure more success and better outcomes for students that graduate from high school. With students of all ages, called lifetime learners, and there's a value around lifetime learners, that more institutions are realizing, as we have rescaling, we move from just credentials and micro credentials into new ways of measuring skill sets. That's a really exciting time. And as we've seen, over a million students dropped out of higher education over the last two years here in the US. Institutions are thinking about how do I transform? Not to shrink the size of my institution but expand the impact beyond the borders that they normally think about? And I just got off a call with an amazing president of a community college in Missouri who was talking about this and the stress that we've seen across the board in terms of enrollment and those decreases. Presidents are really thinking out of the box with their teams about what else can we do, and things like TouchNet and those payment systems are critical for the financial success and overall success of students in an institution. 

Yeah, we've seen that too. And really, when you think about enrollment, you think of the holistic picture of new freshmen coming in, but also that retention side. Like you said, in terms of even those who maybe have had a withdrawal from a medical perspective, or mental health, bringing them back in that really helps to attribute to that enrollment side, and being able to have the financial burden eased. We offer payment plans, so it's like, don't go into debt, don't go put things on credit cards with high interest rates, but let's split out those payments, and have that integration and have that real time rate calculation, so it helps you to stay on track while you're in college. 

Absolutely, you guys do an amazing job with that. And that's so critical, especially, you know, students that have family situations change, and they thought their finances were secure, we can help with loans and grants, but you guys make it real and sort of helping a student plan for that, and giving them surety that they're not going to have to drop out, because once they drop out, like getting back on board is hard. So if you just look at this country, we have close to 30 million Americans that started an education didn't get a degree. Now with a lot of the capabilities that we provide our advancement solutions to institutions that you can nurture those, those students that dropped out, bring them back, and many of them, you know, some are, let's figure you're a single mother, you're not going to be able to go on campus, with the silver lining of COVID is that most institutions are hybrid. I was with Dr. River at that Hudson County Community College yesterday, I think they're just about 50/50, a little bit more on campus. But they need that because their students can't always commute in and having a hybrid capability to have their decked out with cameras everywhere, it's just a spectacular institution. TheyÕre really showing the power of technology, and providing more ability to embrace every student no matter what their situation is. And that's quite powerful.

100%, it definitely shows really the power of technology and how important that is. So, you know, from the hybrid example, not just students, but staff. And we're starting to really see that as we have to transition staff, technology really becomes a member of your team. And being able to, like you said, having the AI of it available and having it all come together, it's helping really create this new digital transformation that we've been talking about for some time. But obviously, last couple years, it really made us and schools focus in and make it happen.

Yeah, I mean, it's really happening. You know itÕs happening when presidents are leading with digital transformation. But as much as I love to talk about technology every day, it really starts with people. And a lot of the work that we're doing is to focus on change management, as over 1000 of our customers are modernizing and moving to cloud, that's really important to get the people side to understand how are your business processes and the people needs going to change? How do you make sure that you have the right staff in the right places? That was the conversation a little bit, that I just had with another president that I just referred to. So and you know, she's super charged up about that transformation. But it does start with people. Even in my own transformation with Ellucian it starts with, you know, how do we view the organization and the people and the changes that we go through from being a company that delivered, you know, world class, best in class capabilities on premise to the cloud, it's a big transformation. I've gone through that with some of the largest tech companies. And it is, it's not for the faint of heart, it's the hardest thing you can do as a technology company, is to move from on premise to staff, and we're well on our way, and just an exciting journey. And, you know, just thrilled that TouchNet is part of that as probably one of our longest many decades partner, a global partner, you know, serving over 1000 customers, and you guys are with us in over 20 countries. And we're just going to keep growing from there, right Heather?

We absolutely are. And I think that really, that brings it all into perspective of it really starts with people, you have to have the technology in place to transition and I think that once you move to the cloud, we see how the customers go, Oh, now it's a lot easier for us. But it definitely takes work to get there.

It does like the early days, you know, CIOs would call and say, Lord, I can sleep at night. And there is more of an urgency now more than ever part of it is you got to be resilient. It's hard to get all the technical staff that you need. I mean, you think tech companies are challenged, think about what institutions are dealing with. But you can't innovate in the future unless you're in a platform that lets you sort of build your own future in the ways that institutions want to. So getting thereÕs important, certainly, the being able to sleep at night, the cybersecurity issues that we see. Those are all things that we work on together. And the great news is that we have an amazing cloud partner Amazon Web Services. So AWS has just been spectacular and giving that confidence and the resiliency of their infrastructure, serving all of our customers really well.

Yeah, that's great. I know, we've talked about how important it is to earn institutions to make sure they are compliant, especially from a security standpoint and the safety of their students, their students data and, you know, having that across the board, and, you know, we educate a lot on PCI compliance from a payment perspective. And, and I laugh, sometimes some of our schools will say, I just want to make sure I stay at a PCI jail. Well, the good news is, there is no PCI jail, however, we want to keep you out of it if there was such a thing.

Well, listen, I think that's the thing, the knowing and seeing how much you all focus on data privacy, getting ahead of the policies and regulations in different countries, building that in, gives us so much confidence that that data will be protected, that no one will go to that PCI jail, because you guys are on it. It is a very sophisticated, high degree of difficulty to get all the compliance, right. And it's one of many things that we value about the partnership with TouchNet.

Well, we really appreciate that. And it is a hard job, like everything itÕs always constantly evolving and changing. But that's why, you know, you picked us to be in that strategic partnership to make sure we're the experts in that space, so that you can ensure you work on other things.

Absolutely. And, you know, we also just appreciate everything that you do to continue to innovate, that higher education is so important to TouchNet, that you not only focus on the experience in the institutions, but the students as well. And I think as we see students evolve to really lifetime learners, because we're all having to rescale, what we do, you do, I do as a CEO, IÕve got to continue my skill sets too, knowing that there's security around the protection of the data at all levels with students those transactions, and that we get that right, right out of the gate in any country that we go to is, is really invaluable. So that really puts you number one in terms of partners we think about and the confidence that we have, and we're going to continue to build on that and go into new markets together.

That's wonderful. Well, I think, again, with all the transformation that's happening, too. That's why it's really important for this ed-tech community to work together and to support each other. So we can support these institutions, you know, really, in the current and future challenges.

It is and listen, you know, one of the things that we all went through COVID. And we are getting back to our user conferences, having you all there is just fantastic. So we're going to be in Liverpool, we're going to be in Dubai, we're going to be in Australia, we'll be in Chile, in Santiago. So we're excited because I think part of it is showing up. And getting back out in the global markets. We are both global companies is really exciting and showing the whole community how we're going to come together. You know, I often talk about community, I did an E Live this past April as our superpower. And it's a community of higher education. But it's a community of the partners that we build, and certainly one of our superpowers is TouchNet.

I love hearing that. And you know, Laura, I often say too, that is why, I've been in higher ed-tech for you know, gosh, a couple of decades now. But to me, the most powerful thing about it is that power of community, and it's really unique and impactful. And so I would like to say together, we can make anything happen. And I think we've proven that.

Listen, we can and we will and we're doing it and we're taking it up a notch, moving to be a SaaS company. It's an exciting future. And who knows what's next?

That's right. Well, I can't wait to see what's next. Well, this has been a great conversation, Laura, I always enjoy hearing your insights and outlooks into our business and really making things better for the higher education community.

Wonderful. Well, listen, we're all in it together. I think more and more. You know, we are focused on putting students first which, if you haven't read it, read the book, Dr. Paul Leblanc did an amazing job, showing us what we all need to do to be able to commit to the future of education. It's the lifeblood of our economies. It's what's going to change the world and we look forward to doing that together with TouchNet.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Focus. Don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up to date on the business of higher education. For more information, check us out at TouchNet.com.