The future of tech product will be choose your own adventure
Automation has been changing how educators operate right along the end-to-end student journey.
Making processes more streamlined and efficient, tech providers have been automating so that educators who want to be able to enrol their students online, enhance team workflows, or give students control over their own learning journey through on-the-go access can do just that.
The pace is only getting faster during Covid-19. In a coming world Gartner describes as one of hyper automation, the global EdTech ecosystem is now moving at a rapid pace to deal with a range of education challenges, from delivering learning at a distance to managing students on campus.
Is the future about evolving EdTech products faster? Yes. It’s clear the educators we deal with want to keep up with their competitors, by replacing legacy systems costing them in money or student experience. They also want something else. They want to be more effective with the technology they have.
Keeping the pace with a design approach to technology
Is there a way we can combine speed with ensuring we’re going in the right direction?
The current landscape of automation of tasks, workflows, tasks and communications might tempt educators to source a single system that ‘does more stuff’. The temptation is to outsource the complexity to a product or vendor that is developing for everything and forget the problem.
This decision can end up making an education provider less prepared to adapt at the faster pace if they are tied into a single product roadmap. In our experience, what they need is a product (or a curated family of products) that can solve their problems. They need the right tools for the job.
That means taking a design approach to technology selection.
At ReadyTech, our aim is to bring value to our education customers. We are doing that by forging partnerships with best-in-class systems and tech firms (both in Australia and around the world) that together create an ecosystem of value that gives educators an edge as they face the future.
In our area of expertise – our Student Management Systems – our customer-focused roadmap ensures we’re laser focused on the problems we’re solving for our customers in that domain. Student management is where our products lead, and where we’ll continue to head the pack.
But we know there’s technology in adjacent areas that will help our customers succeed. We believe it’s our responsibility to connect our customers with the best possible value. This means giving them the ability to access multiple aligned product roadmaps. They can design what works for them.
A learning management system example
The Learning Management System market is a perfect example.
Covid-19 has rapidly accelerated the development of learning management software. From new start-ups to established players, the market is now receiving renewed focus from tech players, as well as investment dollars that will bring about a new generation of online and hybrid learning.
We believe it’s better to connect our customers with this value.
We’ve done that through our partnership with aNewSpring. Rather than develop an LMS from scratch, we’ve partnered with a global leader in the specialist learning management niche. It is now a fully integrated and evolving part of our technology product ecosystem for education.
This has enabled us to immediately deliver value to customers in Australia through a premium product. By focusing on what we do well and partnering with a best-of-breed LMS, our customers can now seamlessly access an LMS that is keeping the pace with global trends in this market.
Staying agile for the future of education
An ecosystem technology product philosophy delivers both speed and opportunity for educators. There is a whole universe of existing software systems and applications – as well as many more yet to come – that will solve educator problems faster and make the more effective providers.
Our vision is to create an agile technology ecosystem that grows and expands with our clients. By giving them the ability to ‘choose their own adventure’, we believe they will receive compounding value over time and be empowered to face a future of fast-paced automation with confidence.
Interested in learning more about how we help education providers build the integrated technology ecosystems they need for the future? Learn more here.