Jon Allen: People always joke about these transformations that it’s all about, you know, digital and tech and all that stuff. And I’m like you’re missing it.

Jon Allen: You’re missing the point of even going through the process. The process is to understand how your business runs, how your academic units run, how your organization runs, and making sure you were pushing that dramatically forward. You know, being an R1 institution you have, you know, grants management. You have, you know, things for accounting for time of your faculty and your staff, as it relates to grants cost, accounting all these sort of things that frankly we wouldn’t have been able to support in our Old World right? And so having that infrastructure in place. And when I say infrastructure, people always want to focus on technology. No, it’s not just the technology. It’s the people. It’s the processes. It’s the knowledge that you have to have in place, which is holistically your infrastructure to support that ability to be an R1 institution.

Joe Gottlieb: That’s Jon Allen, Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at Baylor University, talking about what’s most important about transforming an institution into an r one enterprise.

We talked about key steps and points of emphasis before, during, and after Baylor’s transformation from a regional faith-based institution into a national faith-based institution with R1 status and competing in power four athletics. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Joe Gottlieb: Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, President and CTO of Higher digital and today I am joined by Jon Allen, CIO and CISO at Baylor University. Jon, welcome to TRANSFORMED.

Jon Allen: Thanks, Joe, happy to be here. Looking forward to having a conversation today about the experiences of Baylor and and some of my personal experiences with what we’ve done here as a university.

Joe Gottlieb: Glad to have you on board. I would love to dive right into this topic on Transforming to an R1 Institution.

Joe Gottlieb: But first I’d love for you to share a little bit about your background on, and your personal journey. How you got connected into the world of higher Ed.

Jon Allen: Absolutely. It’s one of those that I think so many of the it professionals do wasn’t one that I was expecting. I actually came to school at Baylor in 1995. As a pre law pre-med type student. Right? I was thinking, maybe I get into genetic law or something like that and got my feet on the ground here on campus, and within the first 2 weeks I got a student work job in its.

Jon Allen: and you know, this was in 95. Obviously, birth of the Internet. Everything is new, everything’s shiny, everything’s fancy. And I have one of those personalities who always wants a challenge, and always wants to be doing something new.

Jon Allen: And so I just absolutely gravitated to it. And next thing I knew, you know, I finished a major in undergrad and political science. But I was taking computer science and IS classes the whole time, graduated and started working at the networking team here at the university, became the first full time Information Security employee.

Jon Allen: Meanwhile worked part time to get my master’s completed and have a master’s in computer science, a path that is not easy as an undergrad in Poli sci, I will say, but certainly had a passion for wanting to make sure I had the degrees to back up where I was headed as a path.

Jon Allen: Served as a first ISO, and the first CISO here at the University. So that kept brought me through. You know the the 20 teens, we’ll say and then in in 2018, was put in as the interim CIO here at the university, as both the CIO and the CISO which is a fairly unique seat, not only in higher education across the country to own both the operations and the risk operation foreign technology organization.

Joe Gottlieb: Great background. Thanks for sharing that. And it explains a lot which we’re going to get into. So let’s let’s set the stage when Covid hits. You were in the middle of a significant transformation there at Bariller, moving to Oracle Cloud for HR. And Finance. So what was that like? And how did you ultimately get through it?

Jon Allen: It. It was a a time that I will remember clearly, probably for the rest of my career. You know, as as an interim CIO, you know they always say there’s one way you can get fired as a CIO, and it’s to do an ERP project right well. It’s even better when that’s your interview. Right? As an interim, CIO, your interview is the ERP project. Our project kicked off in August of 2018 with an anticipated go live of June of 2020. So we were coming to kind of the the hard finish line which is actually also a starting line, and we’ll talk about that some more, I’m sure, in a bit. But of the project, you know, consultants all on board, everybody in war rooms, you know, bringing on your final test systems to run through your data migrations.

Jon Allen: And then all of a sudden, we hit this really surreal point of everybody. Go home.

Jon Allen: And we all kind of look, what what do you mean? Go home right like you’re gonna send your consultants out across the country again, and you’re gonna send your staff, who never have been working from home home. And and we’re supposed to bring this across the finish line. And so talking to my previously my leader at the time. Who sent left Brett Dalton? We had a conversation, he said. It was up at the highest levels, you know. Do we pause? This thing?

Jon Allen: Is this the right thing to do as an institution? And you know there’s times when when you get to work with leaders, and you say they were fearless, right? They really did those hard things that that maybe others wouldn’t have done. And this was one of those cases where we push forward.

Jon Allen: And it’s interesting, because in retrospect, pushing forward ended up being something that I think, as you talk to consulting firms and others. Now there’s a lot more of that going on remote right? Why were we all sitting in a room trying to do this stuff? Did that make the most sense, or being able to quickly fire up virtual teams and all those sort of things. It went well.

Jon Allen: It went really well. We hit the go live date.

Jon Allen: you know, as we said. You know, when you talk about an ERP project, the thing that always is success. Do people get paid? Do vendors get paid right. Those are your first two metrics, staff are getting paid. Vendors are paid. Check the box, check the box. Were there. Challenges absolutely right. You don’t do projects projects at this scope or scale, and not have challenges and things you didn’t think about, or things that work differently than you expected. And so you know, as I said, you know, that go live is really the starting line for what’s next right? Which is that ongoing project of you know. Post, go, live and stabilization and all those efforts and and doing that through the covid period. Right? I think the greatest challenges. We looked at it is, is people never really thought about training people remotely when your whole training plan is based off being in person, in a room, and you have to quickly shift that into a fully remote plan. We did really well at it, though it also highlighted the importance of in person.

Jon Allen: Right. I think one of the takeaways having had to do that remotely, I would always encourage people, if as much possible. Do some in person make sure people have that ability to do in person training. Because I think that is something that created some challenges for us in the early periods is that a lot of our training was virtual like that.

Joe Gottlieb: So all this was happening.

Joe Gottlieb: Great takeaway, by the way, on, on sprinkling in at least good facetime, particularly for training, when you’re so reliant upon a lot of things happening via the virtual mechanisms which I agree with you can tend to be more efficient and more effective in given the complexity and the and the diversity of what we are tackling these days.

Joe Gottlieb: So if I zoom out on this this story right as you’ve given me a little bit of background. You’ve got this huge project going on. Covid hits. You’re right at the the cusp of at least getting into the next stage, which is all the training that goes on.

Jon Allen: Yeah.

Joe Gottlieb: And all this is happening. While you were ascending to R1 status, so.

Jon Allen: Yes.

Joe Gottlieb: Is that what actually drove the transformation? In the first place, let’s talk a bit about that.

Jon Allen: Yeah. So Baylor’s been really strategically focused now for well, over a decade, you know, first going from what I would call, you know, a smaller regional, faith-based institution to a more national, faith-based institution. Within the next step, being a faith-based institution that has R1 research status as well as power for athletics. And so that was, you know, when you put that out there.

Jon Allen: that was a goal that seemed wild, right as an institution. When you first start stating these things 10 years ago. It’s like you’ve got to believe right, because if you don’t believe you won’t, you won’t get there. But it seems so aspirational in nature. And so all of our leaders took time as we started laying out those goals, and and one really highlighted a huge gap. And it was our CHRO, our chief human resources officer, who said, You know, I can’t be strategic with staffing and skills, building and retaining staff and all those things with an antiquated HR system. And we were I mean it was.

Jon Allen: It wasn’t quite, you know, cursors and monochrome screens, but it really was close, right? And and that wasn’t, you know the the face right when you think about your recruiting faculty and staff to a top tier institution.

Jon Allen: That’s the first interactions they have with your institution right? And then ongoing. How much do you care about your people with with learning, modules and retention and performance reviews and all those different things, if it’s, you know, antiquated and difficult to navigate, and all those sort of things. So she really floated that to the top as an executive level, strategic conversation. And that was really in the 2016 timeframe, 2015, 2016. And so it took a couple of years for us to kind of flush that out. Come to the place, that we were comfortable, that we could execute.

Jon Allen: That there was a solution that could meet our needs. Obviously Higher Ed is a little different, as you know. Right? I mean, some of the things that we worry about are very different than than traditional businesses, and so many times our tools have been specialized

Jon Allen: and we were coming from a history of, we just built it. We just built it. We just built it, and we wanted to get to a place where we were using what was out there and provided right.

Jon Allen: And so I think that’s a big piece of the puzzle was, could we find a solution

Jon Allen: that could move us forward in a way that we weren’t building special things because we’re Higher Ed, or we’re different. No, let’s use a strategic solution that actually meets the need and pushes us forward.

Jon Allen: And I think you know. As we got into it, we started uncovering all kinds of stuff, right? The little things, the corners, the nooks, because you’re shining that flashlight throughout your organization looking at processes. Right? Looking at, you know, data looking at where data lives. And it’s eye opening right? And so people always joke about these transformations that it’s all about, you know, digital and tech and all that stuff. And I’m like you’re missing it.

Jon Allen: You’re missing the point of even going through the process. The process is to understand how your business runs, how your academic units run, how your organization runs, and making sure you were pushing that dramatically forward. You know, being an R1 institution you have, you know, grants management. You have, you know, things for accounting for time of your faculty and your staff, as it relates to grants cost, accounting all these sort of things that frankly we wouldn’t have been able to support in our Old World right? And so having that infrastructure in place. And when I say infrastructure, people always want to focus on technology. No, it’s it’s not just the technology. It’s the people. It’s the processes. It’s the knowledge that you have to have in place, which is holistically your infrastructure to support that ability to be an R1 institution right. And I will say, you know, we were exceptionally blessed as an institution. We arrived three years earlier than we expected, right, and I always remember I was sitting in a meeting with a bunch of the the staff out of the Vice Provost for Research office. It was a training session we were in and we were looking at, you know, some different software and things. And word came down that we hit R1.

Jon Allen: And everybody’s mouths hit the table because it was like, Oh, wait a minute. We got there earlier than we were supposed to. Now we really have to scramble right like, now it’s like, okay, now, let’s get that infrastructure in place. It. It’s great, right? I mean, having that ability. To get where we wanted to be in a faster pace than we expected just shows the dedication and the passion of the people involved.

Jon Allen: And I think that’s the piece you will find. You know this that’s pushed us forward, is, there’s a passion. This isn’t a job, right? This isn’t. This is a passion. This is a drive that we want to be this. You know, as as our President said, the world needs a Baylor right? And that is a very unique institution in being power for R1 and faith-based. And it’s not an or on any of those. It’s a must for each one of them.

Joe Gottlieb: I so love the conviction about that identity and what it did for you, and is doing for you. You can just feel it. And that’s exciting. So let me let me then press to the next question, which is, your ERP transformation featured an adoption of technology that was cloud based and was was to your point, reflective of the sorts of new things you needed to be in R1 that were not going to be possible on your antiquated systems that preceded it.

Joe Gottlieb: And because it was cloud-based, you know many still hope that moving to the cloud will save them money. How for those people that have that in their minds? How would you help them? Reframe that notion.

Jon Allen: Well, first I’d have a conversation with them about the tooth fairy. You know it is. It’s this idea that all of a sudden, you know, you push it out to somebody else. They’re doing all the work. And it’s gonna be cheaper, right? And and I think the problem we have is is, we’re we’re focused too much on the line. Item, the line item, you know. Let’s say it’s it’s staff headcount. And the price you’re paying to a software vendor. And when I look at that, do we save money?

Jon Allen: Not if I look in that narrow focus right? You’ve got to look at business transformation in a much broader sense, right? Looking at process efficiencies, looking at all of the things you were doing holistically as an organization. I mean the great one that I always highlight is, you know, we were running. I believe it was 12 or 13 payroll cycles right? And we reduced that down to three.

Jon Allen: That’s dramatic right now, is that something that we, as a higher ed institution, ed institution, do a great job of capturing from an Roi perspective.

Jon Allen: No, because we don’t have. You know those metrics of, you know, if this machine shuts down, it cost me this much per minute, and all those sort of things.

Jon Allen: But that’s real right. That is tangible savings of people’s time and effort, and and a level to be, you know, less brittle at the end of the day. If you’re running 13 of something, and you’re now running three less likely that things are gonna go wrong, less likely that there’s process problems. And so that’s the thing I would focus. It’s not an apples to apples, you know. I look at coming from a world with an on-prem system that you know you did. Major updates every 2 years.

Jon Allen: The It team primarily led it and asked a few questions of the business team to a place where the business and technology staff are working arm in arm on a regular basis, engaging in process improvements, new feature implementations. You know, when you look at the pipeline of features

Jon Allen: that these vendors solution providers are putting forth on a consistent basis. It’s a fire hose, and it’s coming out every few months right? And we always joke, you know. Oh, I woke up this morning and my phone updated overnight. It’s completely different. The features all work differently.

Jon Allen: And we just adapt and get used to it. That’s what’s happened with our business systems. And you need to make sure that you have resources that are, you know, going through that, adapting it to your organization, putting the pieces that fit in the right places. The pieces that, hey? Maybe aren’t gonna work for you. You kind of take a pause on, but that value is something that I don’t think we’re really good at quantifying.

Jon Allen: because we’re so new into this right? I mean, even the organizations that have done this early have only been on these systems for five or six years. And so, you know, we’re still in the infancy of this whole, you know, Cloud-hosted what I would call fire hose ERP world.

Jon Allen: That that I think we haven’t really even been able to figure out. What does it mean from a value proposition? You know the idea that oh, all of a sudden this thing that used to be really broken and not work like I expected, has completely transformed in a year, and now is really good.

Jon Allen: Is not something we had in the old, Old World right you were stuck with what it was unless you wrote it. You customized it. Now we’re seeing this space where things are constantly changing, and I don’t think we’ve really done a great job of capturing that. Because what we’re focused on is a line item.

Jon Allen: We’re not focused on the overall impact to the organization.

Joe Gottlieb: So that really helps put into perspective the apples to oranges frame that’s necessary here.

Joe Gottlieb: I want to double click on one item that you touched on, and that is this notion of the features. Keep coming through a fire hose and things just automatically advance.

Joe Gottlieb: And that is a surprise.

Joe Gottlieb: And I’m just wondering. And we yes, we as consumers, we’ve been trained to just deal with it, and and on a good day the new features are intuitive enough for us to discover them. And if we have any trouble, we ask a friend or a younger person in the family.

Joe Gottlieb: Yeah, yeah. And so, are there any behavioral patterns or methods that you’ve discovered about how that works with with this cloud or SaaS-based software constantly evolving so different from the past that reassured what I undoubtedly is a diversity of people in your community that have different levels of comfort with this.

Jon Allen: Right? I mean the people that use the system most often are the greatest impacted right? But they’re also the ones that are closest to what’s happening. Right? So you think about your HR professionals, your financial professionals.

Jon Allen: those folks. Yeah, they’re gonna be, you know, procurement folks. They’re interacting with the system every day, and it changes, you know, on a quarterly basis. Different processes and things will change, you know, when you talk about, you know your faculty, your staff that are interacting with the system. They aren’t interacting with it as frequently right? They’re doing some learn they’re doing things with managing. You know, their salaries or things time off things along those lines. You know, time cards. Their interactions are not nearly as I’m in the system every single day.

Jon Allen: and as such. We’ve got to be aware from a change manager perspective. Is this a change that’s affecting a few business users or a larger community? Right? And that’s why change management? And it’s so funny? Because when I started this project in 2018, I came from a technology pure tech background, right computer science degree change management was how I got code from, Hey, I’ve written the code. It needs to be tested. It goes out like that was change management to me. Right. It was technical, changing the code.

Jon Allen: Now the definition’s completely flipped. You say, change management. Nobody thinks about technology change management. And it’s all about culture. And you know, making sure to bring technology changes into the culture and process improvements into the culture. And so I think that’s the piece that’s so important to layer on top of this. It’s something. Frankly, we didn’t do historically, in organizations. Right? Is the idea of actually working to, shape and educate and frankly tell stories.

Jon Allen: Why does this matter right? That’s a really good thing to ask yourself and if the answer is, it doesn’t.

Jon Allen: Then, as a leader, you should also be saying that. Why am I doing it, right? I think that’s a really important piece that that often is overlooked, and change management’s a great opportunity to do that because you have people that maybe aren’t great technical professionals, maybe not straight business professionals, but a little bit of a hybrid. Who are gonna ask those questions. They’re gonna help tease out some of these things like, why is this so important? Because people will do things and buy into things that they see a reason for if it’s just a mandate.

Jon Allen: yeah, there should be pushback. Right? I mean, let’s be honest, mandates aren’t things that you know anybody gets excited about. So you know, when you talk about how you roll out changes to your campus, make sure there’s a story that explains, why are we doing this, what is the benefit to the organization? And we certainly haven’t mastered that as well, and have certainly stumbled along the way in racing to change so quickly. But I think, looking forward, that’s an expectation in organizations when we talk about systems and improvements now is is you’ve got to have the story. The reason, and you have to be able to say it with a straight face.

Jon Allen: Because if you can’t say it with a straight face, and it feels like it’s a mandate or something that doesn’t have value. You’re gonna get asked about it.

Joe Gottlieb: Yeah, I really appreciate the way you’ve characterized both the need for why, with stories and the differences between the populations and the fact that the most changes happening to the people that are most familiar, and therefore probably have the most tolerance for that, particularly as they experience it over time. Right. So that’s a good thing. I think that’s very reassuring to people staring at this from the outside in wondering maybe being overly concerned about how this might all go down.

Joe Gottlieb: So, speaking of familiarity you’ve had a very long tenure at Baylor, including serving as its first security hire and first Chief Information Security Officer. So how is your tenure there at Baylor helped and hurt you in terms of tackling big transformations.

Jon Allen: So my tenure would obviously by most be looked like as a hindrance. Right? If you want change, you bring somebody new to the table.

Jon Allen: If you want change, you get fresh blood right. Somebody who’s seen other things and you know, won’t look at the organization the same, and things, and I understand why people say that. But you have to remember when you’re doing one of these projects. One of the things you’re doing is you’re already bringing out a lot and a lot of outside people. Right? You’re bringing consultants you’re bringing in all these different folks from outside the organization. And you’re you’re got those fresh ideas.

Jon Allen: The thing you don’t have is the history right? And the relationships and the trust. Because at the end of the day trust is crucial. When you talk about change, and you talk about, you know, making these massive changes. And I think those are the things I was able to bring into the project and throughout the project. And now, you know, I was very blessed, and became the full time, CIO, and see. So at the the finish of this project. To bring forward right is, I knew things that we had done. I knew what our challenges were, and so that’s a piece of the puzzle that’s been really important for me to be able to show that you know I was the guy that pulled cable in the ceiling side by side. Some of these folks, right? I was the one who’s done all these things. And and I’m also the person who’s gonna value experience right? Who’s gonna value knowledge, and all those different things. So that’s the way I look at it.

Joe Gottlieb: I think that’s a good way to place it. Just a great reminder. Trust is an often overlooked benefit of tenure, which, when it comes to change can can be presumed to be a hindrance. That is exactly.

Joe Gottlieb: I love that now it’s not always true, but in this case it sounds like it was quite true. So now I want to pick at something else that was, I think, might be pertinent to this story, and that is you talk about. I don’t think you’ve said it here, but in past conversations you’ve mentioned to me how it is the foundation for everything and and and and and so enterprise architecture is a concept that now enables you to really create leverage with your technology in a sustainable way. Those are my words, but I’ll let you play with this. So what? What’s give me? A couple of examples of some new technologies and associated services that have support helping you support your new R1 enterprise architecture.

Jon Allen: Well, I think the biggest thing is, you’ve got to take the step back and understand that the infrastructure you need for going to. We’ll call it hosted cloud systems is different than when you had on premise. Right? I joke integrations was sequel. Connect? Right? Well, that’s not the world you live in when you move to these hosted systems. And so a couple of things that we focused on was identity management and making sure we had a platform for integrations. Right? And so for us, we we use the boomi integration platform, met our needs for gluing all of these cloud and on premise systems together in a secure, manageable way. And then we use Fisher International for identity management because it was clear to us as we look forward, I was gonna have, at least for the time being, a separate student system, a separate HR system. And I needed something that was really good reconciling and managing all those identities, you know, if I even look further out. You know, things like master data management data governance, which you know, weren’t huge topics in 2018. But as I look forward, I certainly see that those are going to be key infrastructure elements in the future. Are really important to have as you launch these journeys because, frankly, not having those very base level pieces are crucial, you know, if you don’t have those, the top next layer is gonna fail. It’s gonna have challenges. It’s gonna be brittle because the under Lease foundation isn’t there. So I would see, you know as a CIO, that’s a key piece for you to be thinking about. You know you shouldn’t be the one pushing this forward right? You shouldn’t be the one leading. We need to do a business transformation. It should be your business peers who are doing that right. Your academic peers who are doing that, a Provost, a CHRO, a CFO, that sort of thing.

Joe Gottlieb: Good stuff. Okay? Looking forward, how are you gonna leverage this post transformation mindset and and posture moving forward? What lies ahead?

Jon Allen: Oh, boy, yeah, that’s such a big question as as we look. You know, we have launched a a new strategic plan as an institution. And I think you know, people say, you know, have you arrived right? Well, we’ve achieved a lot that we outlined in our previous strategic goals, and and I think we’ve certainly out shown that in what our new strategic plan is, which is Baylor indeeds right. And it’s an outward facing strategic plan. It’s much more about what is Baylor going to do in the world, and less about what we are going to do to grow internally as a capability of an organization. It’s a it’s a big piece of the puzzle, right? And so that is is something I’m really excited about. For the first time in the University’s history since its founding in 1845, we’ve actually modified our university seal to include pro mundo so pro Texana pro ecclesia pro mundo. So pro world. So it’s exciting for me to see. You know. How are we going to be reaching out and doing? You know, great things in the world, with our students, with our faculty, with our capabilities as a very unique institution, with our three items that we hold true to, you know, being faith based being our for athletics and being an R1 research institution.

Joe Gottlieb: Sounds super exciting. We’ll be watching you and rooting for you from the sidelines here. So in summary, what three takeaways can you offer our listeners on this topic of transforming to an R1 institution.

Jon Allen: So three quick takeaways and I mentioned one here a little bit. The CIO, I strongly believe, should not be the person leading this from a strategic sponsor level. It needs to be another seat at the table. If you don’t have those locking arms, your fingers gonna get pointed at you real quick by everybody when there’s some choppy water, and it’s gonna be difficult to say the least.

Jon Allen: You need to have the foundation in pace place, right? The CIO is responsible for those COGS that I’ve mentioned. You’ve got to make sure you have those pieces, because otherwise everything else above. It’s gonna fail.

Jon Allen: And I think the piece that I found myself sitting in, and some of it was because of my tenure. Say the hard things, even if it makes everybody uncomfortable. You need to call out the things that make no sense. Payroll cycles made no sense. Say those hard things, because at the end you’ll be glad you did.

Joe Gottlieb: Jon, great summary. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Jon Allen: Thank you. I appreciate it, Joe. This has been really, really great experience.

Joe Gottlieb: And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. Hope you have a great day, and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED.

Joe Gottlieb: And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED.

Joe Gottlieb: Yo, stop the music. Hey, listeners, have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you, and they, can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.