Choosing the wrong tech is like death by a thousand cuts

Your marketing team comes in with a brilliant idea for improving the student experience. You brief the developers. Then comes the crushing response: "Before we can build what you want, we need to fix these underlying problems. It may take months."

Your simple request just became a massive project.

This is death by a thousand cuts: the digital edition. Over 17 years implementing digital solutions across different markets, I've watched technical debt and rework from past decisions force teams to inflate every new initiative with expensive fixes to yesterday's problems.

What's particularly challenging is that organizations don't realize how far behind they've fallen until they try to implement something new.

For organizations like higher education institutions, your digital footprint is one of your most important assets. Students today expect digital experiences that are responsive and interactive. They also search for information in a conversational way, asking questions, expecting direct answers. But most institutional websites still work like filing cabinets, presenting information how the organization thinks, rather than how users search.

The institutions that can adapt quickly are pulling ahead of those trapped in set-and-forget cycles.

The difference isn't budget size, it's the mindset about choosing technology that enables daily evolution rather than periodic overhauls.

The Project-Based Thinking Trap

Organizations get trapped in project-based thinking. The set-and-forget approach where digital improvements happen in big, expensive cycles rather than continuous evolution. This mindset leads to both costly technology choices and operational problems that compound over time.

I had a university choose a "cheaper" solution instead of our platform. A year later, they were still stuck in implementation with no launch date and poor results. The financial cost stretched to extended implementations, additional development work, security vulnerabilities, and systems that limited teams rather than enabled them.

More red flags that tell you you're caught in this trap is when:

• You're constantly building workarounds - your team regularly says "the system won't let us do that, but here's a hack"
• IT bottlenecks block marketing teams - content updates require developer intervention
• Digital decisions are isolated from business objectives - not connected to enrollment goals, student retention, or other key metrics
• Simple changes require complex projects - updating admission requirements needs significant planning and development resources

These are signs your technology limits rather than enables adaptation.

When Technology Actually Works for You

Compare that to a university I've worked with for 13 years, serving 90,000 students across thousands of websites. When I visited recently, the CMO wasn't bogged down managing websites. He was thinking about groundbreaking changes to their digital experience.

They've got a great design system enabling consistency across 500+ websites, and with a lean team servicing a massive organization, they can invest in content experts instead of developers.

When we were implementing the project initially, the CMO told me, "We don't have budgets to recreate 500+ websites every time we have a brand change. By the time we're finished, we'll need a new redesign." So we built solutions enabling daily evolution.

This is what adaptable technology looks like. Technical debt doesn't hold them back because they built correctly from the start. They have workflow processes so when they need something new, they know how to get developers involved and iterate quickly. Marketing teams can respond to changing student needs without waiting for IT.

The mindset that matters

The university I just mentioned had the right mindset because the technology enabled this mentality. To do this well yourself, first you need to understand what job you're trying to accomplish before evaluating any vendors to help you along the way.

Start with these three questions:

1. What are your key business objectives? Focus on critical paths, not everything. Most organizations get overwhelmed with hundreds of web properties when just a few critical journeys drive the majority of results.

2. What are your key user journeys? Map how students, faculty, and staff (or for your organization: users, employees, and/or customers) actually interact with your digital properties and where friction points exist.

3. What data needs to flow between systems? Understanding how information moves through your organization helps evaluate whether solutions work within your existing ecosystem.

With these answers, you're primed to discuss solutions rather than features. You can tell vendors how their technology should serve your specific objectives, instead of getting impressed by capabilities you don't need.

Making the Move Without Breaking the Bank

Making the shift doesn't require unlimited budgets. Start by consolidating your marketing technology stack. Most organizations use a small portion of what they're paying for and can find budget by eliminating redundant or unused tools.

Build for reuse instead of treating each digital property as unique. Have a lean internal team for daily evolution with ability to bring in specialized agencies for larger creative projects.

Most importantly, connect digital initiatives to business outcomes, which for our university client, involved factors like student enrollment and retention.

With this kind of approach, a marketing leader can become a hero. Instead of having disconnected budgets and strategies across IT and marketing, they can consolidate around technology that works for both. From a CFO’s perspective, everything becomes more transparent and accountable to business results. It’s a win-win-win all the way around the boardroom table and beyond.

Book a 30-minute call with one of our Squiz consultants to discuss your organization’s goals and map out a digital strategy tailored to your needs.