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Jenny Leigh Morris: From Fortune 100 to Higher Ed: Lessons in AI, Innovation and Vendor Partnerships
00:30:03
In this episode of EdTech Connect, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Jenny Leigh Morris, a technology strategist at Doctums who bridges the worlds of Fortune 100 innovation and higher education modernization. With a background in designing AI education programs for giants like Walmart, L’Oreal, and Microsoft, Jenny brings a unique perspective on how institutions can streamline technology adoption, improve vendor relationships, and accelerate decision-making. From dissecting the pitfalls of RFPs and pilot programs to advocating for “laser focus” in project scoping, this conversation is a masterclass in cutting through institutional complexity. Tune in to learn why communication trumps ghosting, how to avoid “kitchen sink” projects, and why the future of higher ed tech depends on courageous leadership—not just compliance. Key Takeaways: AI is Your Junior Consultant—Not Your Replacement: AI can automate tasks (e.g., configuration, documentation) but requires human oversight to avoid e...
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- [00:00]
A
Let's say, for example, I tried to schedule a meeting. I was working with ChatGPT to do my time zone conversions and it totally messed up my conversions. I sent out a meeting note, you know, a meeting notice, and it was completely off. Right. So it's an amazing tool, but we still need that oversight. And so I think we, we might see a world in which expert consultants or more seasoned consultants or specialized knowledge workers, their hours or billable hour might be more expensive than it is today potentially. So I think we don't know where it's going to go, but we definitely know that at some point I think that model will be quite outdated.
- [00:44]
B
Jenny Lee Morris is a technology strategist who helps organizations modernize their core systems to better serve students, faculty and staff. At Doctums, she guides institutions through the full lifecycle of student information system and enterprise technology projects, from evaluation and selection to implementation, ensuring every step aligns with institutional priorities and delivers measurable improvements for the campus community. Before turning her focus to higher education, Jennie worked with some of the world's Most recognized Fortune 100 brands, including Walmart, L', Oreal, Intuit, and Microsoft, designing and delivering employee education programs on AI and data science long before the topic became mainstream. She created AI for Marketers workshops and AI for Leaders programs that help global teams understand emerging technologies and apply them in real world business contexts. Outside of her work in higher ed technology, she she channels her passion for wellness into running a yoga retreat in Spain, bringing the same focus on balance and intentional design to both campus systems and personal well being. So welcome to the show, Jenny. It's great to have you today.
- [02:04]
A
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here with you today.
- [02:08]
B
So you have such a varied background. That's what I when I first met you at educause last year, I'm like, wow, she's done a lot. You were teaching AI to Fortune 100 companies like Walmart, L', Oreal, Intuit, Microsoft, before it was on most people's radar. How does that early experience shape how you think about AI's impact on the higher ed vendor landscape?
- [02:32]
A
I think enterprise pushes all industries right. Education, nonprofit, et cetera. And even in my career in the context of adult education, which is where I spent a lot of time and consulting and delivering that education. Buyers and students, they want to interact the same way that you do. If you are interacting in a, I guess A, B2C context, you know, if you're buying something on Amazon, that experience is shaping your behavior. So if you go to enroll you know, in a new degree, for instance, a new university, you want that experience to be seamless. And so I think adopting some of the practices of customer centricity, you know, customer journey mapping, user experience experience, things like that, I think really shapes the way that we think about AI and the student journey in particular as we head into the future.
- [03:25]
B
Well, AI could fundamentally change the consulting and implementation business model. What happens to the billable hour when AI accelerates configuration, documentation and testing?
- [03:37]
A
Well, being in the consulting field, I spend a lot of time thinking about this and I think we're of course not there yet today, but I think it's, there's a lot of value in thinking about how things are going to shift in the coming years. We might see value based pricing, we might see the death of the billable hour. I do think, however, AI is like your, at least in this present moment, your tireless sort of junior consultant or you're a junior analyst. Right. But you still need oversight. Let's say, for example, I tried to schedule a meeting, I was working with ChatGPT to do, do my time zone conversions and it totally messed up my conversions. I sent out a meeting note, you know, a meeting notice, and it was completely off. Right. So it's an amazing tool, but we still need that oversight. And so I think we, we might see a world in which expert consultants or more seasoned consultants or specialized knowledge workers, their hours or billable hour might be more expensive than it is today potentially. So I think we don't know where it's going to go, but we definitely know that at some point I think that model will be quite outdated.
- [04:45]
B
You know, I want to go back to your work with other industries. You know, I talk a lot about higher ed. We're focused on higher ed in this podcast. You know, you work with these big brands. What do you think higher ed could learn from some of these other private sector companies and industries?
- [05:01]
A
In my opinion there's two things. One is competition. I think what's going to happen in the future is we're going to enter into a hyper competitive landscape because there is so much information readily available, easily processed, and you could think you could build a website in 15 minutes right now where in the past you would have had to hire somebody. I remember I tried to build a website for a business I started. Took six months or a year. So I think we will see an increase of hyper competition. And what industry does really well is to laser focus in on their particular competitive advantage and exploit that. And I think that schools could do well, by thinking about that in context of what they offer that is different from the rest, and really taking that and exploiting it. The other thing I think we could really learn from industry is experimentation. So not getting so dead set on a certain path or a certain plan, and doing AB tests, doing experimentation. When it comes to marketing in particular, also user feedback and like a product development mindset. So oftentimes what I see is, you know, maybe people that are leading a project, they're in the boardroom, they're talking over, they're making a lot of assumptions about what students want, how they behave, how they interact with systems, and even to some extent, internal faculty. So I think we could learn a lot about not only mapping customer journey experiences internally and externally, but also failing fast, trying things, testing it instead of running one ad, on Instagram, running five, see what works, amplify that, and so on, and not being so static in those experimentations and those project plans.
- [06:51]
B
One of the things I think higher ed suffers from is these feedback cycles when we're going through these big projects are so long and there's so many people involved and there's so many chances for them to stall. Do you see that too?
- [07:04]
A
Yes. Yeah. And you know what, that's another interesting point that you bring up is I think what I have observed and also I worked in government in the past, I've been a part of very large, you know, software overhauls and different implementations at the enterprise level. And I think sometimes there is this, how do you call it, like, dilemma of niceness, where we want to include everyone's point of view and at the end of the day you end up with an RFP or a project scope that's just a kitchen sink. Right. And so, and not to say that those perspectives aren't valuable, but in my work, what I always look at is if I get the same type of feedback a handful of times, okay, a pattern might be emerging. But, you know, if one or two people want a feature, maybe that's not quite, you know, mission critical. So I think, and going back to even, you know, this, this notion of capitalizing on a competitive advantage, I think it's also getting to the heart of the matter. No matter what type of project you're doing within the higher ed landscape and ruthlessly sticking to that and making sure that you're not adding or bloating the scope just to, to make people feel better, essentially. But have you seen that in the past in your work as well?
- [08:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was just thinking of this quote or This, I think it was Steve Jobs that said once he said, my job at Apple is to steer the ships, but the ship has a hole and it's sinking, but I gotta make sure it's pointed the right direction.
- [08:36]
A
Yes.
- [08:36]
B
And I think that's too often higher ed is like, it's always big picture strategy, but they're not nimble enough to kind of fix what needs to be fixed in, in the moment.
- [08:45]
A
Yeah, I agree. And I think it just takes a couple of, you know, courageous people to toe that line and to be laser focused. But having worked as kind of a middle project manager, you know, and you're gathering requirements and features and stuff from maybe executives that are so much higher than you in the reporting, of course you want to fold those into a project, but I think there is value. And just especially now because there are so many distractions and pressure to modernize. So if you are, let's say, trying to make the student experience better, what better thing to do than to actually talk to the students and not make assumptions and stick very, very closely to the goals and the outcomes that you're trying to achieve rather than, you know, making like a list of things that's just impossible.
- [09:35]
B
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- [09:39]
A
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- [10:02]
B
I want your thoughts on this. Many campuses approach technology buying in a way that frustrates vendors. RFPs go out, conversations start, and then vendors are ghosted. How can institutions be better buyers?
- [10:16]
A
When we started talking, I wasn't really setting out to chat about the customer experience so much, but I think that it's particularly salient on both sides and for all stakeholders involved in a campus experience, whether that be students, vendors, faculty, whatever. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with this story story from Intuit designed for delight, where they essentially mapped out their hiring process and found that candidates were spending so much time being interviewed providing projects, only to not hear back and just how horrible that made people feel. And so they basically reimagined their entire process. Cut it down to where candidates get an answer, a firm yes or no within a certain amount of days. And I think there's value in that communication. Right? The communication is at the heart of things. And I think sometimes as a vendor you have conversations, things seem to be going well, and then you just get ghosted. It's worse than dating. You know, you're wondering what the heck happened? You know, was it something I said or something that could have gone better? And then I also think, in my experience, I'll give you an example. I was in a cycle with a school selling them some cloud based software and we didn't hear for them messaging. I'm following up, I don't hear back, I don't hear back. And I decided to pick up the phone and call this prospective client and we talked about what was happening and he basically said, look, your, your solution's a little bit slow. And I said, okay, well what kind of workloads are you running? And he explained all these graphic intensive workloads he was running. And at the time we had configured this virtual environment to be running a lot less intensive applications. And I said, well, that's an easy fix. You know, we just up your the power of your virtual machines and there you go. And we did that and we ended up signing the deal. And these guys are like evangelists for the service and the product now. So it's, it's really, I think, about communication. Even if you don't want to go as a vendor, just let them know. Or conversely, it could be some, something that they can offer you a solution for, whether it be tweaking the application or the product or even pricing. It could be that you need the budget to be a little bit lower. You ask for that and we can accommodate. So I really think communication is key. And the extent to, you know, schools can provide that to vendors, it just improves the relationship, the outcomes. And then, you know, let's say you don't go with a particular vendor and it's for a certain reason that could help them in their product roadmap to make developments and features that might help a lot of schools. And not everyone approaches things like that. But for me, I definitely do. I like to hear what was it about? The pitch, the conversation, the product, the service offering that just didn't resonate. And then again, if we hear those patterns two, three, four times, maybe we want to look at adjusting the product and releasing something new. So yeah, sometimes it's like a stone wall when it doesn't need to be. It could be a conversation.
- [13:22]
B
I love that example where they were trying it and it was just too slow. But you wouldn't have known that unless you kind of pried in there and found that out. I think some sales tip for people like make sure you know what's happening with your sandbox environments. But I also think more often than not I've worked with in higher ed for 20 plus years that these schools, when they do this, they, yeah, we want to try this out. But what happens is many times they just don't have time to properly do anything. It just sits there. Yeah, sandbox is just sitting there and they're almost embarrassed to get back to you. And that's why they're ghosting you sometimes is what I've seen. But yeah, if you could, if these higher ed decision makers could just like communicate a little bit saying, yeah, we are behind our timeline, this person's out or whatever it does does help a lot.
- [14:09]
A
Yeah, that's such a good point. I also have observed and I've been out of the higher ed space for a while, so I'm kind of coming back in fresh with some tech experience behind me at this point. But the pilot has been fascinating to, to observe just for the, the reasons that you mentioned, which is that a lot of times I think it provides a bit of a security blanket, like, oh, we can have this pilot phase. But a lot of times it falls short because no one actually tries it. And it's not for lack of the desire to try it. Right. But I think oftentimes the project sponsor doesn't really have a good plan for what criteria are they looking for in that pilot. And then furthermore, people are very busy so they don't end up trying it. So I think, you know, for that there's something I like to call together alone, which is just scheduling time where people maybe they're on mute, but they actually try whatever sandbox environment is prepared in real time. And then also, you know, on both sides as a vendor and then as someone experiencing it, you can hear people. You can hear where they get stuck, where they get confused, where something isn't clear, or conversely where they really love what they're going through. So I think a highly structured intentional pilot is really key at this time because people are so bombarded with things to do and can't get.
- [15:28]
B
I like that intentional pilot much better than the sandbox. Like, I think there was even some stats we ran like the deals that weren't closing. If you give a sandbox too early and doesn't have enough guidelines or scope or a timeline attached to it, it's probably going to fail. It might look. Make your product look, you know, less of a fit than it. Than it may be because you need to be there holding their hand, needs to be probably further along in the, in the funnel.
- [15:51]
A
Well, because a lot of times too, those testers, they're Just sort of like thrown onto a list and so and so says so and so would be great to test it out but they don't have as much context as they probably need going into it. And so it's last on their priority list.
- [16:06]
B
So yeah. So AI aside, what, what do you think are the most overlooked factors institutions should consider when assessing whether a vendor is the right long term partner?
- [16:16]
A
I think first and foremost the university or school should be laser focused on the heart of the matter and what they're trying to achieve. And I think that will make it a lot easier for them to select or deselect certain vendors based on that. And I think on the school side definitely being wary of companies that say they can have it, you know, do it all. I definitely see the fallout from that with some clients, you know, where maybe a certain vendor is great in one domain and they fall short in another. Maybe you need two vendors or three vendors to really address the scope that you have. So I think being laser focused there and again trying not to put everything in the kitchen sink into the scope, but getting very, very focused on what it is they're looking for will help them out.
- [17:05]
B
Yeah, I have a rule of thumb, you know, I really want vendors that, when I, when I was in the buyer's side at a university to be at least have 20% of their business in higher ed. They don't have to be 100% higher ed company. But I noticed the ones that we kind of at the institution, the ones we felt being held hostage by, often we're the large, large, large vendors, we know we opt to buy these products. I won't call it any names. Higher ed is such a small fraction of their higher ed business, although might be multimillion dollar division of their organization. It's such a small part of it that the roadmap doesn't align, the licensing doesn't align. So for them to go in and buy their extra thing just because you have that with them, that's it's kind of a trap you fall into because it's so easy. But it's like, oh, there's so many great vendors out there now that are coming on board that yeah, it's tough if they don't have any higher ed clients right off the bat. But once they have a couple and you know they are focused on higher ed, I, I love, I'm learning about new ones every day almost. It's pretty amazing.
- [18:05]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting point. I have a question for you on that. So as we think about so many emergent technologies, we can't expect a lot of these platforms to have 20 years behind them. Obviously, things are completely shifting. They're changing really fast. And building software from scratch is a big advantage in a lot of ways to universities these days. How do we temper that with schools of, you know, you want experience, you want a track record, you want to work with a company you know is going to be around. But at the same time, there's so many companies entering the market now.
- [18:40]
B
Well, that's exactly as funny you asked that, because that's how I started Ed Tech Connect five years ago, was we want to know higher ed purchases based on their peers often. Right. I have this story where I was tasked with finding a cloud workflow solution in 2019. And I'd been doing my job for at two different places for like 15 plus years. I'm like, okay, yeah, I can go find us some options, a short list. I was plugged into the largest system in the country, the CSU system. 23 campuses. We all shared information. I was kind of asking like, yeah, what are you using for your cloud workflow? Got all sorts of answers. I was on the Slack groups. I'm like, I was having trouble getting into my shortlist. Not because there were not enough solutions, it's because there were too many. Like, how do I, I can't bring back 10 to my team. I want to get to three. So I'm like, why don't we just crowdsource this and say, anyone to higher ed use your edu, tell us what you're using, what you like about it, so you don't have to be five years in and have a bunch of higher ed clients yet. But the way we vetted EdTech Connect is higher ed will list what they're using and then maybe multiple people will list that. And it can also be generated by a vendor. They can say, hey, we want to be part of this database. But if a vendor comes in, they're vetted by a higher ed person and they say, let's go look at their website. Do they have a higher ed page? Do they have higher ed clients? And if neither of the above is true, it's not. It doesn't go in. But even if they don't have any clients listed, you could be new. And if you say, look, we have a higher ed page of a conversation, we'll let them get listed in Ed Tech Connect. But there's over 1100 solutions. I'm pretty happy with that number. It's not like a G2, but it's 1100 crowdsource solutions across higher ed. So I've never told that story on this podcast. So thanks for. Thanks for.
- [20:21]
A
Oh, good. I teed you up. I'm happy. Yeah. And you know, that brings up another point I think is leverage. And thinking about if you are going with a new company, you're taking a risk. So what kind of leverage does that give you at the negotiating table? You know, on price, on contractual terms. And then there can be advantages. It obviously is a risk and not every school has the appetite or ability to take that. However, you can be a beta tester for things. You can influence the way those products are developed and serve the university. But you have to have the right mindset and the right partnership in order to do that.
- [21:03]
B
You know, that's a great point.
- [21:05]
A
I mean even like thinking where we started the top of the podcast, AI for marketers and non technical people. When I developed those workshops with my team, that was something I was hearing from the client. You know, that a lot of executives are like what the heck is this stuff? And they're conflating terms and nobody really knows what they're talking about, but they want to chase after this trend. And that really came out of just listening to the client and co creating something with them that ended up being productized and launched to other enterprises. So it doesn't have to be a horrible relationship. I think with a vendor school sometimes it brings a lot of stress on people, but I think there's a lot more potential than oftentimes meets the eye.
- [21:48]
B
Yeah, and you kind of talked a bit about this, but when they're new, they need, they need you, the institution, probably more than you need them. And you can often give them some marketing help if you really believe, if their solutions working for you, that's what they need. They case studies and if you have the right people. I notice some people are shy to be on a stage with a vendor. They just don't feel it's appropriate or they don't feel comfortable. But some do. There's a lot of people in higher ed, they want to travel and go to conferences and talk. And that's what I do for a lot of my clients is like, tell me who your best clients are and let's go out and tell some stories of how they're using your software. And so there are people out there at universities that at the right type of university, they're okay going on stage and talking about their product, about how they're using your Product so well, I.
- [22:36]
A
Think there's such a value in storytelling and I don't think that that is going away no matter what happens in terms of technological developments. And my point of view is if you can save someone time, energy, pain by sharing your stories of how you got to where you are, why not talk about it? You know, I think it's important to share how people and different organizations approach these modernization efforts because things are unfolding pretty quickly and it takes some people that are willing to get out there on the forefront. I mean, if you think about it, we're on the edge of completely endless possibilities and we need people that are out there on the front trying stuff, testing stuff, and bringing it back to the rest of us through stories. And I think that partnerships are critical between vendors and schools in order to do that and to really get us into the place we need to be in terms of technology.
- [23:29]
B
One thing I want to talk about is you are probably intimately aware of this because you've worked within higher ed and outside of it is that. And some of my clients, they're breaking into higher ed. They have a great product, but they're breaking into higher ed. And what they realize is these higher ed decision cycles can stretch for 18 to 24 months.
- [23:48]
A
And holy smokes, yeah.
- [23:51]
B
How can institutions streamline the decision to make a process without sacrificing the diligence?
- [23:57]
A
This is going to be an interesting topic, I think, for us to talk about because I feel it only takes one or two courageous individuals to lead a charge. And one of my pet peeves when I worked in government was that we would meet every week to talk about a project. You know, how can you shorten that time frame and maybe just do a workshop and say at the end of this workshop we're going to have a decision and outcome, something like that. I mean, sometimes you do have to work within those confines. And I think the way that you do that is by trying to map out a timeline for those decisions. And it's old school project management, right? Like stakeholder mapping, putting together, you know, maybe a raci chart or something like that. But I would love your thoughts as well, because sometimes it's like an immovable beast that you're trying to get through and just get to a decision and.
- [24:49]
B
Well, what I've seen most successfully, a lot of the, the vendors I work with, they're selling to marketing and it and you kind of need both at the table. And what I've seen most successful recently is it's often. And it's not always at the private schools. It's private and public. But they're the marketing. IT teams are starting to blend. And I used to say marketing, you have a seat at the table, you're actually hosting the entire dinner. Now you need to be leading the charge. And they're kind of reluctant to take that. But I've seen now where these senior directors maybe up to an AVP level, someone with technical skills is put in the marketing department to run the digital team and then once that person gets on board, that champion, they can pretty much get things done quickly. But to have the collaboration between two or three people across different sites, silos is I think what slows everything down. So maybe look at your org chart and like how do we, how can we speed these up from the time of like, okay, who really needs to approve this from what? Different, different silos. So it's interesting to see that they close faster when it's that technical person in the marketing team. They can go faster.
- [25:58]
A
Yeah. And I also think in sales and really you could think about this as someone trying to execute a project on the inside of an organization as well. And if you think about the problem, we call it like a bleeding neck, is it so consequential? Are there big consequences if you do nothing and if not, it's probably going to be a slower cycle. Right. If you don't have a super amount of pain that somebody needs to solve and then furthermore you need the budget and you need somebody that has ability to say yes. And if you don't have those three things, the cycle is going to be really long. And I think in some of those cases it's a lot of follow up, a lot of contacts. You know, you don't want to nag people or anything like that, but you do want to keep it top of mind and understand what are the side effects of not doing anything for any, anything that you're embarking on really. So yeah, I think if you don't have those things, you're probably looking at a pretty long cycle.
- [26:57]
B
Yeah, sometimes you just have to accept it and like really target who are you targeting? Targeting what? Schools are trying to make quicker decisions because we know some of them. Sometimes it equates to the size and the decentralized nature, which makes things tougher. But I want to ask you one last question about the difference between the Fortune 100 companies versus higher ed, but about managing vendors for performance. How do you manage vendors for performance rather than just procurement compliance?
- [27:26]
A
I think that's a big one that you touched on having sat on the vendor side, working with Fortune 100. I mean, they're ruthless in terms of performance and holding you accountable to those deliverables. And I think that higher ed could learn a lot by that and being very communicative and very firm on the desired outcomes of certain projects. And if you notice things are not going the way that you want them to go, really raising that early and often. And I think playing out those scenarios, right, I mean, if you signed up a vendor and they say they're going to deliver something in 12 months and it's stretching to 18 and 24, definitely maybe think about switching. I mean, there are a lot of options out there. And if you're not getting the service that you need or the quality or whatever, definitely don't be afraid to change course. And I think sometimes people, you know, this is human nature. We don't want our decisions to be under scrutiny. We don't want to think that a vendor we brought on board didn't perform and it's our fault or whatever. But the reality is we're all here with a job to do. And if you're hiring an expert in their field, they should deliver upon that expertise and don't be afraid to have those tough conversations and be direct. You're hiring them for that job and they should perform and deliver upon it for you.
- [28:46]
B
That's great advice to end it on. I'm going to close this out with just thank you to you, Jenny, for being here. I love where this went about really getting into the purchasing process, the ins and outs of higher ed procurement.
- [29:01]
A
Thank you.
- [29:02]
B
Yeah, I'll put links to your LinkedIn and your doctums company website in the show notes. And again, great to have you, Danny.
- [29:11]
A
Awesome. Thanks. It was so great to be here. I really appreciate it.
- [29:17]
B
As we wrap up this episode, remember, EdTech Connect is your trusted companion on your journey to enhance education through technology. Whether you're looking to spark student engagement, refine edtech implementation strategies, or stay ahead of the curve in emerging technologies, EdTech Connect brings you the insights you need. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an inspiring and informative episode. And while you're there, please leave us a review. Your feedback fuels us to keep bringing you valuable content. For even more resources and connections, head over to edtechconnect.com your hub for edtech reviews, trends and solutions. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.