In this captivating installment of the EdTech Mentor by 27zero, Joe Fisher opens up about his extensive experience and shares profound insights into the evolution of Student Information Systems (SIS). The Senior VP of Marketing at Student First discusses the delicate balance between direct sales and channel partnerships, and the unmatched power of face-to-face interactions in marketing. Joe also delves into the age-old debate of education versus technology and the strategic choice between in-house teams and agency collaborations. His narratives are filled with real-world examples and practical advice that will resonate with anyone in the EdTech space. Dive into Joe’s story and discover strategies that can transform your approach to EdTech marketing.
On a personal front, I'm the youngest of three boys. I am the only one to have successfully completed college. My brothers took different paths—one is an electrician, and my oldest brother works with his hands, but he's what we would call street smart. He knows everyone, and if you need something done, he knows someone who can get it done for you. So, if I ever need my house painted or any of those kinds of things, he always has a guy. He has a guy for everything.
I am a poster child for a liberal arts education. My undergraduate degree is in criminology and criminal justice. I left high school wanting to be a police officer because I wanted to help people. Two things happened during my undergraduate career: I was doing research in law enforcement and working as a store detective trying to catch shoplifters, which was a horrible and painful job. I realized that when police officers interact with citizens, the citizens aren't generally happy to interact with them. I genuinely wanted to help people, and during my undergraduate years, I discovered that you could work professionally at a university, which I found appealing. Through my involvement in extracurricular activities, I discovered student affairs and decided to pursue a master's in Recreation.
I'm from a small family, and I was lucky to get into EdTech. I can call myself a second-generation higher EdTech leader. My family moved from Illinois to Tampa because my father got a job as the director of administrative computing at the University of South Florida in the late seventies. This move sparked my interest in technology. One key memory I have is my father bringing home a very large and heavy portable computer from IBM. I was fascinated by it because it was considered portable back then. After finishing my undergraduate and graduate work, I ended up back at the University of South Florida in student affairs. I enjoyed my work but was working hard and not making much money. People who work in higher education are mission-driven, creating educational opportunities for future leaders, but they are not there to get rich. I burned out quickly but didn't want to waste my education and experience.
My father eventually joined a company called Datatel, and I followed him there in 1999. This was a great experience because I got to learn all about higher education beyond just student affairs. Working with my father and hearing positive things about him from others was very rewarding.
Datatel was an ERP company focused on higher education. They had a software product called Colleague, which included a student information system, an HR system, and a finance system. I was hired as an implementation consultant to help colleges and universities configure and set up the system to meet their business needs.
Datatel became Ellucian in 2012 when they merged with SunGard Higher Education, the makers of Banner. The merger was driven by the private equity firms that owned them. I spent 22 years with the organization, the first 13 in the professional services division. I started as an implementation consultant and progressed through different roles, spending most of my time helping colleges and universities make business decisions and set up their systems.
It's interesting because I would argue that the challenges are no different at their core. What I mean by that is I've never actually been in the technology business; I've been in the people business for 25 years. Individuals who work in higher education, as I mentioned before, are mission-driven. They want to help students succeed. They have a decent pay scale and benefits, allowing them to retire comfortably, but they are not there to become rich. Their main motivation is to educate the leaders of tomorrow.
However, particularly in the non-profit space, these organizations are more mission-driven and less business-driven. The challenges we often face in education technology involve offices communicating with each other, understanding how each of their operations impacts other departments, and bringing those individuals together to solve miscommunications and challenges. The core issue remains the same: understanding each office's business objectives, how those objectives align with the greater institution's goals, and helping people navigate this together.
While the core challenges remain, there have been changes influenced by new forces. A significant change is the background of new leaders, such as chief financial officers (CFOs) and chief information officers (CIOs). More of these leaders are coming from industry backgrounds rather than having spent their entire careers in higher education. When a chief technology officer from a for-profit business joins a non-profit university or college, they often discover that the technology is far behind what is necessary for success.
Presidents of higher education institutions typically come from academic backgrounds, so technology isn't their primary focus. It's essential but not their top priority. However, as more CFOs demand better access to data and CIOs require advanced technology to support their operations, these roles are increasingly critical in moving colleges and universities forward. This partnership between CFOs and CIOs helps support the academic focus that most presidents have, ensuring that the institution's technology can meet the evolving needs of the business side of education.
I like your idea. I like the phrasing of misalignment. I think, you know, an organization that's supporting higher education, well, all of us, by and large, in the EdTech sector, are for-profit companies. So, you know, we have to make money in order to stay in business. Depending upon how the EdTech company is financed can drive some philosophical leanings that will influence how they do business. When I started at Datatel in the late nineties, the president, CEO Russ Griffith, had three principles that still resonate with me today. They are: take care of your employees first, and they will take care of doing their job, which will create a good product, and in turn, they’ll take care of their customers. So step one, you're taking care of your employees. Step two, they're taking care of their customers. And step three, it takes care of your profits. If you focus on that, you can really move forward in a genuine way. Nobody's there on pretense; everyone is there to make that college or university successful.
I think some larger organizations with private equity funding and venture capitalists are really motivated by creating the most profit possible, whereas some smaller organizations understand the need to make money but aim to do it in a fair and equitable way.
Another thing Russ implemented at our organization was a series of empowerment questions for each employee. We had a card called our "basics card" that we could carry in our pockets. The questions were: Is this decision proper and ethical? Is this decision good for the company and the customer? Is this decision something you will take responsibility for? If you answered yes to all three, you were empowered to make that decision. I bring that concept to Student First. We are a newer student information system (SIS) with strong leaders who have been around for a long time. We don't have a lot of extra staff, so we ask ourselves: Is this the right thing to do? Is this good for the customer and the company? And if the answer is yes, we proceed without needing further permission.
I agree with that. Private equity firms have their hands in multiple businesses and industries. At Student First, all our leaders are focused solely on education technology. I believe all of us have primarily been involved in education technologies throughout our careers. This alignment allows us to listen to our customers more easily because we understand their business. We have been working in this field for 25 years or more, so every conversation is easier. When customers talk about challenges, like financial aid simplification here in the States, we understand intimately because we've worked with financial aid offices over the years and deeply understand their business.
My career took me from a professional services consultant to personnel management, and I ended my career at Datatel and Ellucian as an account executive. I was selling directly to customers, but I was never professionally trained as a salesperson. What I discovered is that I only knew how to do it one way: by listening to my customers, understanding their business challenges, and helping them solve those challenges with the products or services we offered. I would not add extra things just to make a sale, as that would be overkill for what the customer needed. Approaching each opportunity as a genuine person was important to me, and I know no other way of doing it.
When I asked my boss for sales training, they said, absolutely not. They liked my approach and wanted me to continue as I was. Later, my boss sent me a book called "Selling from the Heart" by Larry Levine, which spoke about being an authentic salesperson and not an empty suit. That concept resonated with me because I don’t have a poker face. What you see is what you get with me. I might make my answers politically correct to avoid offending anyone, but you will understand the meaning of what I'm saying. For anyone going into sales, it is essential to be genuine, honest, and actually care about what you're doing. This comes through in every interaction, whether on social media platforms like LinkedIn or in person. I disagree with the notion that you shouldn’t ask, "How are you?" or "How's your week going?" because nobody cares. I argue that I do care. If I ask, I genuinely want to know what’s new and exciting with you. Making genuine connections means appreciating each other's uniqueness and differences.
It's interesting. Two things stand out to me. The first is I have a fairly good memory. From a consulting perspective, that's very important because you have lots of conversations about business decisions, you make coding decisions, and you configure a system in a certain way to support those business needs. Sometimes, the question comes up later, "Why did we do that? Why did we make those decisions?" Being able to recall that conversation and what went on has been really helpful. If you translate that to the sales world, we have a conversation one day, and later on, I remember, "Oh, last time we talked, you were up in the mountains and it was cold, but your view was amazing. That was really awesome. I hope I can see that again." That shows that you've listened and understood. Listening and understanding carry people a very long way. You tend to remember the things you care about. It goes both ways; it's not just "I hear you and I'm waiting for my turn to talk." I truly am listening.
Another story that comes to mind is from when I was a consultant. We were working on a large community college implementation near Chicago, Illinois, in the suburbs. We were nearing the end of the implementation process, and I could see the stress on the team's faces. They were all in a computer lab, working hard, and it was really stressful. I said, "Okay, let's stop. Let's go over to the other side of the room where there's a conference table." We went to the conference table, and I said, "We have a live simulation coming up next week. How do you feel?" The team leader looked up with tears in her eyes and said, "No one's asked us that." For me, that cemented that we are in the people business. People matter. These folks have day jobs and are working overtime to get this implementation going, feeling the pressure to make it successful. Talking about that pressure gave her an opportunity to breathe, and that made a difference for her that day. I'll go back to when I wanted to be a police officer because I wanted to help people. I felt like I was able to help her.
I have many people in my professional network from years ago, from implementations. Every once in a while, someone will reach out via LinkedIn or call my cell phone, ask a question, and they know I will try to help them no matter what it is.
Depending on who you're talking to, a good opening question is asking that leader, "What keeps you up at night?" It could be as simple as "What are your biggest challenges?" or "What are you hearing from your employees? What are their challenges?" Because depending on how bad it is, that will bubble up. Sometimes in higher education, people just work harder and may not complain or realize they're working harder. With a modern system, you can easily integrate using APIs and connect two systems together. Some older systems don't connect as easily, so people are hand-keying data that should be handled by an integration. They may not know that an integration can take care of that. They think it's normal to hand-key the list of prospective students. Hearing that and responding with, "Oh my goodness, you're really having to hand-key all of those? We could have an integration with a new system, and you could gain that time back," can make a big difference. Asking those questions like "What's keeping you up at night?" or "What are your challenges?" helps a lot.
After 25 years in the business, many institutions of similar types have similar challenges. A rural community college or technical school operates similarly across the country. They're mission-driven and truly part of their community. A larger regional four-year college or university operates differently, as does a four-year private faith-based institution. Despite the differences, every mathematics department cares about prerequisites in the system, and every music department has unique policies around their program. There are universals that people don't realize are universal. When you tap into those universal things, you suddenly look like a genius.
That's such a powerful point, especially for marketing, because you can be a facilitator of those things. Whenever you have some initiative around the community of practice or just when you keep talking to people and sharing some of the concerns and experiences, you become valuable to that community through those interactions as well.
Yeah. Sometimes higher education people do not do a great job of getting out to understand what other institutions are doing. They don't get to network professionally as much as they should, and that's really important. So, if you travel to that school or talk to them on the phone, being able to share those other things—"Oh, I work with a school similar to yours, and here's what they did"—brings a lot of credibility and reinforces that you're there to genuinely help them.
When I was in high school, I was a theater kid. That experience was important because I interacted with people who were also outside of the norm in various ways. From gothic kids dressed in all black with pale white makeup to flamboyant hair, the full spectrum was welcome in the theater department. You learn to stand on your own, whether on stage or in life, because you're going to be different and just have to go out there and do it. That lesson taught me to be okay with who I am and to be confident moving forward.
I've also always been an old soul. I'm an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of person. I don't have to go out and party. I've been an old soul for a long time, and as a result, I got comfortable with who I was early on. Professionally, when I first started my career in EdTech, I was around 25 or 26. I remember being able to rent a car, which was important as I traveled around the country. I wore a tie all the time to make myself look smarter because I was talking to older, experienced people. I lost the tie probably four or five years in and rarely wear one now because I don't need it to look smart. I can listen and understand what's happening and share my insights based on the discussions.
Another thing is that I can understand technology and share it with others in a non-threatening way. I can break down what it does, but we don't need to talk about APIs and Kubernetes clusters. Instead, I explain, "APIs will allow you to integrate your systems more easily." That's simple and understandable. Being genuine means talking to people at their level, not down to them. Some people talk down to others to prove they are the smartest in the room, but I never want to do that.
I was alerted to Student First by someone from my old professional network. Someone from the early 2000s whom I hadn't spoken to in a long time reached out and said there was a new student information system on the market looking for someone with my skill sets. At the time, I had left Ellucian and was working for a company called Collaborative Solutions, selling services back to higher education for customers using the Workday system. I wanted to get back to software because I like the idea that technology is helping people. Here we are, back to helping people. The person who contacted me is one of the smartest people I know, so I agreed to talk to them.
When I spoke with David Meek and heard about his mission, it resonated with me. He created a successful software company that eventually lost its way. Growing up in the EdTech space, I spent most of my consulting years visiting smaller colleges and universities. Student First's focus on helping smaller colleges and universities, which often overpay for outdated products, attracted me. The mission-driven aspect and the trust I had in the people who brought me here were key factors.
The second thing that attracted me to Student First is its use of brand-new technology. I didn't fully understand what that meant until I got here. We can develop software faster than others because we don't have to deal with a long legacy of outdated technologies. We can develop products faster and be more nimble, with a lighter technology stack. This allows us to offer Student First at an appropriate price.
Yeah, you're absolutely correct. When I look back at when I worked in Colleague, the core code is still there that they're still using. Over the years, as technology has changed, they've added new technology, but they couldn't afford to invest in deprecating all the old technology. So it just kept getting layered on and stacked on. Ultimately, you get a very complicated mousetrap when all you really need is something simple that works. They have this big, complex system that functions, but it's fragile. With a modern, new, true SaaS system, we're able to accomplish things that our larger competitors can't because they have to deal with a long technology stack and a long history behind it.
What's interesting is that sometimes when we talk to a prospective customer, they're coming from their system and believe it doesn't do certain things. In reality, it probably does; they just don't know how. It has become complicated and complex. As a SaaS company, we provide software as a subscription, which delivers new software. Initially, I thought SaaS meant you automatically stay current. While the code base stays current, we still need to engage with our customers to ensure they stay current in their offices. We're in the people business. We have to not just deliver the software but also communicate proactively to help them use the new software. They need to understand that their problems might already have fixes. It's easy for people to get absorbed in their work and forget that their software is evolving. This is a challenge for us as a technology company. Yes, we're SaaS and provide new products, but we need to ensure they are used.
The first is access to meaningful data to make decisions. Everybody wants to make decisions, and they need the data to make those decisions. Sometimes they won't like the data they get or the answers, but at least it provides a factual answer rather than guessing. This has been a longstanding issue: accessing meaningful data for making educated decisions.
A more emerging trend is integration. The challenge is ensuring all solutions on campus speak to each other as the world moves to subscriptions. We had a conversation with a newly appointed CIO of a prospective customer who said, "We've got a new CRM. It doesn't talk to our SIS, and something else doesn't talk to our older SIS either. We've got a problem." I said, "Yeah, you do." Solving that integration problem is important. In a SaaS world, you don't care what the solution is as long as it solves your problem. By "you," I mean the person in the office, like the registrar. It doesn't matter what they're using as long as it's connected easily and works. At Student First, we decided that playing well with others is important. Hopefully, we all learned in kindergarten that you need to play well with others to get along.
The SIS is the backbone of any college or university. Students are the reason they're in business, and ensuring their educational endeavors are supported is as mission-critical to the university as the general ledger is to the financial system. It is core and fundamental to their business, not secondary. It absolutely is fundamental.
