Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity of technology and digital transformation in alumni relations has never been clearer. From enabling data-driven decisions, supercharging alumni engagement, to facilitating smooth operations, a variety of new technologies are powering the future of higher education. Per Cuseum tradition, each year, we eagerly anticipate leading global research and advisory firm Gartner’s release of their annual technology trends forecast. This report highlights the developments that the firm expects to “act as force multipliers of digital business and innovation over the next three to five years.”
As colleges and universities examine which technologies will propel them forward in the digital era, we are eager to contextualize Gartner’s 2022 predictions for alumni engagement. Read on to explore what 2022’s top technology trends could mean for alumni relations.
1. Data Fabric
According to Gartner, data fabric provides “flexible, resilient integration of data sources across platforms and business users, making data available everywhere it’s needed regardless of where the data lives.” With this in mind, data fabric architectures may play a pivotal role in helping universities manage enrollment, operations, research, advancement, and more, ultimately enabling institutions of higher education to make data-driven decisions at an organization-wide level.
For example, by launching a unified data fabric, Syracuse University has been able to “lower storage costs for massive and growing data sets while improving both school operations and empowering academic research.”
Similarly, IBM reported that at Wichita State University, “Data fabric eliminated data silos across departments, improving data governance, quality and lineage capabilities. It created a single view of university data regardless of its location. Reporting dashboards provide easily accessed insights and trends to university analysts and administration.”
Particularly in the areas of alumni relations and advancement, data fabric may be critically important in bringing together data points from dispersed units, divisions, and campuses within a university to develop more holistic insights about your donors and constituents.
Read more → Unpacking the “Big Data” Buzz: How Can We Leverage Data in Alumni Engagement?
2. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Every year, the bar for what artificial intelligence can achieve is raised even higher. Trending in 2022 will be Generative AI. In the words of Gartner, Generative AI encompasses “machine learning methods that learn about content or objects from their data, and use it to generate brand-new, completely original, realistic artifacts.”
In sum, generative AI is the technology used to create new content by utilizing existing text, audio files, images, and videos. With generative AI, computers detect the underlying pattern related to the input and produce similar content.
In the world of alumni engagement, AI has enormous potential that we’re only beginning to tap into. For example, it can power university chatbots; help institutions grain fresh insights to maximize alumni loyalty, engagement, and giving; deliver hyper-personalized content and appeals to constituents; and even enable hyper-intelligent fundraising.
→ Read More: 4 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Landscape of Alumni Relations
Generative AI, in particular, can be used to generate compelling copy and content for alumni engagement and advancement campaigns – according to marketing experts “generative AI might create hundreds of different versions of the same copy, each highly tailored and targeted for a particular platform, publication, or even individual consumer.”
Generative AI can also be deployed to create original graphics, develop chatbot dialogues, compose customized emails, and so much more!
3. Distributed Enterprises
According to Gartner, “Distributed enterprises reflect a digital-first, remote-first business model to improve employee experiences, digitalize consumer and partner touchpoints, and build out product experiences.” Motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this increasingly captures where colleges and universities are headed in 2022 and beyond.
On a large scale, colleges and universities are offering online programs that are expected to outlive the pandemic. As of Fall 2020, 2,500 colleges offered online programs. More recently, in 2021, a poll of more than 100 college and university presidents revealed that nearly half (44%) planned to keep more than a quarter of classes online post-pandemic. According to Harvard Business Review, “technological developments make it imperative for college leaders to make digital transformation and technology a much more central strategic priority, especially when it comes to their core businesses: learning and credentialing.”
Alumni relations is part of this shift as well, as industry professionals expand the digital channels and touchpoints they use to interact with their graduates. In 2020, we learned that 97% of alumni relations professionals had begun or increased their number of virtual programs. Moreover, signature events like graduations, homecomings, and reunions, and increasingly being offered in hybrid and virtual environments, like virtual reality. And that’s not to mention the widespread adoption of social media, online communication and fundraising channels, and digital alumni benefits!
In sum, universities are catering to diverse, geographically-dispersed students and serving far-flung alumni through their digital platforms, while also adjusting to long-term remote and hybrid workforce models.
With this in mind, we can anticipate that universities and alumni associations will continue to evolve as distributed entities in the years to come.
4. Cloud-Native Platforms
Cloud-native platforms are technologies that allow you “to build new application architectures that are resilient, elastic and agile — enabling you to respond to rapid digital change.”
In 2022 and beyond, institutions of higher education are hoping to reap the many benefits that cloud native platforms offer – particularly an efficient and resilient IT foundation.
Gartner predicts that cloud-native platforms will “serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives by 2025,” which means that cloud-native technologies will play an important role in helping universities power high-performance computing, build a more responsive infrastructure, and enable streamlined, reliable operations.
In the world of alumni relations, the number of cloud-based alumni management and engagement platforms is booming. Right now, tools like Graduway, AlmaBase, Evertrue, and Ellucian offer a variety of cloud-based services to help alumni teams build virtual networks, streamline alumni engagement, and fundraise more effectively.
5. Cyber-Security Mesh
In 2022, cybersecurity is continuing to rise as a chief business and consumer concern, and the public is demanding more protection to ensure the integrity of their personal information.
For this reason, Gartner has named “cyber-security mesh” a top trend for the years ahead. This type of technology “enables best-of-breed, stand-alone security solutions to work together to improve overall security while moving control points closer to the assets they’re designed to protect.”
At universities and institutions, phishing attempts and ransomware attacks are becoming more common. For example, on an average day, Penn State alone blocks more than 20 million hostile cyberattacks from around the world. Recent instances, like the Fall 2021 ransomware attack at Howard University, have caused entire universities to shut down classes for days, and the University of California, Stanford University and Michigan State all experienced cyberattacks in 2021.
Such attacks have deleterious effects on universities. They can damage trust with students, staff, and alumni; cause unforeseen disruptions to research and education; and result in serious financial repercussions – in fact, the average ransomware attack costs educational institutions $2.73 million.
Consequently, cybersecurity mesh may become increasingly important for universities to maintain stable operations, protect data, safeguard financial solvency, and establish trust with alumni and donors.
6. Decision Intelligence
Decision intelligence is “a practical discipline used to improve decision making by explicitly understanding and engineering how decisions are made, and outcomes evaluated, managed and improved by feedback.”
As higher education leaders and executives strive to make the best possible decisions to help their institutions survive and thrive in unprecedented times, decision intelligence can support this process. Indeed, decision intelligence can use data analytics, artificial intelligence, and simulations to help universities save resources, maximize revenue, and mitigate risk. For example, decision intelligence platform EduNav promises that such technology can offer “actionable intelligence and analytics to drive student completion and optimize institutional resources.”
In alumni relations specifically, decision intelligence can help pinpoint the activities and campaigns that help you achieve your advancement and engagement goals.
7. Total Experience
Gartner defines total-experience as “a business strategy that integrates employee experience, customer experience, user experience, and multi-experience across multiple touchpoints to accelerate growth.” This is a particularly valuable approach to help universities to drive employee retention, student outcomes, and alumni loyalty.
As universities know, student and alumni fulfillment are critical to driving new student recruitment, and engaging educational opportunities from enthusiastic faculty can impact enrollment. With this in mind, total experience recognizes that the sentiments of prospective students, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors do not exist in discrete realities, but rather form facets of a singular and interrelated experience.
As alumni relations teams strive to deepen constituent engagement, as well as nurture their alumni into vocal donors and evangelists, total experience strategy may very well play a critical role in the years to come. Such an approach empowers alumni professionals to examine how other divisions of the university may impact alumni engagement and inclination to give, ultimately empowering them to achieve their goals.
It has never been more important for colleges and universities to stay on top of the latest technology trends. Motivated by the pandemic, countless alumni relations professionals have already adopted new initiatives like virtual programming and events, digitally-accessible alumni benefits, digital alumni cards, virtual and augmented reality experiences, and so much more in order to offer seamless, cutting-edge, and digitally-connected alumni engagement opportunities. As institutions continue to adapt to the pressures of the pandemic, rising constituent demands, and operational inefficiencies, exploring and investing in new solutions will remain imperative. These tech trends may sound futuristic today, but by tomorrow, they could very well be household names!
Looking to learn more about how technology solutions can help you drive alumni engagement? Schedule a demo with Cuseum.