“ THE LIFESPAN OF A CUSTOMER FOR US COULD BE 60 YEARS LONG , BUT RIGHT NOW WE ONLY HAVE A CRM FOR THE BOOKENDS OF THAT LIFECYCLE : APPLIC- ANTS AND ALUMNI ”
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY
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“ THE LIFESPAN OF A CUSTOMER FOR US COULD BE 60 YEARS LONG , BUT RIGHT NOW WE ONLY HAVE A CRM FOR THE BOOKENDS OF THAT LIFECYCLE : APPLIC- ANTS AND ALUMNI ”
— Brian Bolt , Deputy Chief Information Office , Boise State University of the technologies we have may have reached the end of their lifecycle .” Over the course of his career at Boise , Bolt has faced each of these challenges and more .
Though his career at Boise State began working with the Novell NetWare operating system , by 2007 Bolt could see that transformation and transition were long overdue . “ At one point in time , universities were looked to as leaders with regard to technology and its adoption ,” he says , “ but I think in the 90s the corporate world started to get ahead .” Technology , Bolt points out , became more entrenched and slower moving in academia . “ So , we held onto our Novell infrastructure for a lot longer than the corporate world ever did . Which is fine . It ’ s just kind of the way that universities work , and there ’ s a reason why universities have been around for a long time . They ’ re typically deliberate about their decision-making process .” Boise ’ s relationship with Novell came to an end as a result of reduced reliability due to vendors not being able to invest as much money in maintenance updates . “ We were probably one of the last schools running
MARCH 2019