Breaking Down Data Silos to Create a Comprehensive View of the Student
Mass personalization through data is key to innovation in higher education, according to Anthology Chairman and CEO Jim Milton. Here's how the company is moving forward after last year's Blackboard merger to enable data-informed decisions across the university.
Since Anthology's October 2021 merger with Blackboard, the company has been focused on developing an integrated ed tech ecosystem that leverages data to help institutions drive student success. We checked in with Chairman and CEO Jim Milton to find out what's next for Anthology and for the future of ed tech. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Campus Technology: We're approaching the one-year mark of Anthology's merger with Blackboard and I imagine there's been a lot of integration work to do to create a cohesive product portfolio. How is that going?
Jim Milton: It's been a whirlwind. I think we had an advantage in that the two companies that came together, and even the ones prior that came together to form Anthology, all had complementary solutions. So this was not a matter of picking one student information system or one LMS over another. First and foremost, we had to focus on one plus one is equal to two — essentially making sure, for the clients that enjoyed working with Blackboard or enjoyed working with Anthology or any of the predecessor companies, that we kept, minimally, that level of service to those clients. A lot of companies lose focus on the importance of that. In trying to get to one plus one is greater than two, they forget about one plus one has to equal two. So we put a lot of focus on that.
Related to that is cultural integration, all the people, the qualitative aspects of this — it was very helpful that we had similar cultures. Obviously, both companies played in the education space, so we believe in the mission of education, the transformation of lives, at the core of what we help enable through our clients. We're not dealing with different industries and different missions, if you will. So bringing that together was really important.
We actually had over 500 of our employees help come up with the values of the combined entity. So it's been a very inclusive process, to make sure that it's not just Jim Milton sitting in his office here in Boca Raton saying these will be the values or this will be the mission and vision of the company. This was a collective process. We spent a lot of time on those cultural things at the front end. It was my favorite of our strategic initiatives, because it was called Project DNA — and it was really trying to identify the DNA of the combined entity. What do we aspire to be — as you look a decade, two decades from now, what does this company look like?
CT: What are the core tenets of that company DNA?
Milton: One of the key values, and the one that was most obvious externally, was client centricity. When we make a decision, no matter what decision it is, we should have a feedback loop of client input. We announced a number of initiatives at our user conference that allow for even more client feedback, bringing all of the community together to be able to vote on great ideas. We call it the Idea Exchange. So we accelerated the amount of client feedback that we're getting — that's one manifestation of client centricity. Another aspect of this is for all of our folks to think about the student or the learner at the end of any decision that we make. Think about that adult learner, the single mother of two, or the former prison inmate who's getting an education to get a second chance at a successful life. Or just think of your traditional student, somebody's son or daughter, whatever the case may be. But think about the consequences of the decision that we're making, no matter where you sit in our company. In other words, focus on the customer of our customer, and everything that we can do to make an impact to help transform more lives. A lot of it has to do with just making sure we're all on that same page. Because to me, those are the things that a decade from now are going to be the sustainable aspect of this company.