St. Thomas University

Results

• Formed a strategic partnership
• Invested in training and processes
• Able to advance and thrive

Summary

This day and age, it is very tough for smaller faith-based, enrollment-driven, tuition-driven institutions to not only survive, but thrive. Because resources are becoming less and less, you have to be effective and efficient.

Especially smaller schools—especially smaller liberal arts, private schools—we don't have the state money automatically or federal money automatically. It only comes through the student when it gets to our institution. And so, resources are always scarce. And so, you better be effective and efficient with the resources that you have.

You have to collaborate. You have to find the best strategic partners out there to get you to where you need to be.

How have we benefited from bringing Ellucian in as a partner? Resources. Again, when we talk about those strategic partners, what kind of resources can they bring to the table for us?

We knew we needed a lot of resources. We needed a lot more investment and training. We needed a lot more investment in processes. We needed people to fix things for us right away, so we could just do the basic things.

Ellucian is bringing resources to us that we could never afford. And Ellucian's size and strength is putting us in a position where we can do the things that we need to do in order to advance and make sure that we thrive.

It is very important for institutions like ours to form strategic partnerships with vendors. And to be honest, I don't use the term vendors. I don't want vendors. I don't like vendors, actually. I like partners.

Ellucian climbed the mountain. They proved to our people, and then all the references that we checked with, all the people that you've worked with in the past, show that you can climb that mountain and be our partner. We've been very happy with the partnership since we made the decision to do that.