See how higher education leaders and monday.com experts solve institutions’ biggest collaboration challenges.
Every August, higher ed vows inter-departmental collaboration, seamless faculty cooperation, smooth research, and efficient admin. But come September, reality hits: administration can’t see student requests, IT is swamped by conflicting requests using disparate tools, research coordinators lose time tracking updates, and institutional knowledge vanishes when staff leave.
In 2023, US higher ed spent over $50 billion on tech, yet 64% of institutions reported increased departmental fragmentation.
This challenge, often called “tech sprawl,” isn’t just a software problem; it’s an operational one. As Bill Rials, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Tulane University, noted, “The irony I find is that we’re surrounded by more technology than ever. We have access to all this technology, but many teams feel less connected than they did 5 or 10 years ago. That’s tech sprawl in action.”
In partnership with GovTech, we hosted a webinar to explore how forward-thinking institutions are using intuitive platforms like monday.com to address these problems.
Our panel featured:
- Bill Rials, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Tulane University
- Jessie Bonagura, Senior Enterprise Account Manager at monday.com
- Ron Bergmann, former CIO at Lehman College (CUNY)
Together, they shared real stories and strategies for fixing what’s slowing higher ed down.
The real problem isn’t bad technology — it’s territorial technology
Ron Bergmann cut straight to the issue: “Colleges and universities are notorious for having silos, but the causes run deeper than departmental competition.”
IT teams historically haven’t been trusted with institution-wide decisions. Grant-funded research creates separate procurement processes that bypass central oversight. Vendors have learned to sell directly to individual departments, promising solutions that “integrate with everything” while actually integrating with nothing.
The predictable result: what Jessie Bonagura observes across the higher education institutions she works with. “Departments optimize for their own immediate needs without considering institutional impact. Faculty recreate work that already exists three buildings away. Administrators manage critical initiatives through email chains and personal spreadsheets.”
When the psychology department’s student tracking system can’t communicate with academic affairs’ early warning platform, students fall through cracks that shouldn’t exist. When the advancement office can’t see research milestones that could attract major donors, funding opportunities disappear. When facilities management operates independently from academic scheduling, resources get wasted while needs go unmet.
4 strategies for breaking down silos without breaking your budget
During the webinar, Bergmann, Rials and Bonagura shared a framework for creating meaningful progress based on their experience with institutions that have successfully tackled tech sprawl.
1. Don’t wait for perfect conditions — start building momentum
Most institutions approach modernization like curriculum reform: months of committee meetings, comprehensive assessments, and detailed implementation plans that collapse under their own complexity. The biggest risk isn’t making an imperfect change—it’s doing nothing while competitors pull ahead.
“What we’ve seen time and time again is that the greater risk is doing nothing and continuing to operate in fragmented systems that just don’t talk to each other,” Bonagura explains. As technology evolves, institutions that delay transformation risk falling further behind and failing to meet modern expectations of students, faculty, and stakeholders.
Bergmann learned this lesson during his years managing both government and university systems: “Select the right first project—something important that people will see value in, with clear alignment around quick wins. You want to fail early and fail small”.
“My advice is just don’t wait for the perfect time to start,” Bonagura urged. “The key is really building momentum by getting more teams on board, aligning workflows, and really shifting the culture towards smarter, more connected ways of working.”
2. Layer modern platforms on legacy systems
Modernization doesn’t require massive, high-risk “rip and replace” projects. The most strategic approach creates what Bonagura calls “lightweight connectors” that pull data from existing legacy systems into unified workspaces.
“It’s too expensive to replace all these systems right away,” Bergmann notes. “But pulling data from those systems into a unified place allows other tools to use it.” The goal is creating what he calls a “single source of truth” —a central repository where data from different systems connects, enabling automation, improved visibility, and better collaboration without abandoning core tools.
Bergmann shared a powerful example from his time at Lehman College: “It was intended to be a layer on top of all the student-related systems,” he explained about their Lehman 360 platform. “It brought together so many data sets under one roof,” giving students and faculty unified views of academic progress while enabling early alert systems for at-risk students.
Total initial investment: less than $100,000 and six months of development. Five years later, it remains the primary student success platform and has been replicated across multiple institutions.
3. Focus on one use case at a time
When introducing new platforms, the temptation is showcasing every available feature. This “kitchen sink” approach consistently overwhelms users and slows adoption. Far more effective: start small and demonstrate immediate value.
“Instead of saying, ‘Here’s the full platform, good luck,’ we identify one or two high-impact workflows and get quick wins there,” Bonagura advises. “When users start to see immediate value in their day-to-day work, they’re much more open to expanding.”
Bergmann agreed during the discussion, noting the importance of “selecting the right first project”. Success in one visible area builds excitement and momentum, making subsequent implementations significantly easier.
4. Empower champions and convert skeptics
Technology adoption succeeds or fails based on people, not features. Lasting change requires buy-in from the ground up, driven by internal advocates who understand both platform capabilities and colleagues’ actual needs.
“The most successful rollouts always include empowering champions within each department,” Bonagura emphasized. “Instead of IT carrying all the weight, you have a network of advocates across the organization.”
But Bergmann shared a counterintuitive strategy that generated significant discussion: “You also want some naysayers,” he said. “because if you can convert a naysayer, they become your biggest advocate.” This user-centric mindset makes governance feel less like top-down control and more like “enablement from within”.
The AI multiplication effect
Artificial intelligence isn’t replacing higher education processes—it’s removing the administrative friction that prevents faculty and staff from focusing on their core mission. Modern work management platforms like monday.com now embed AI capabilities that address higher education’s most persistent time-wasters.
Meeting assistants automatically generate summaries with assigned action items. Project plans are built from simple natural language prompts. Executive reports can be compiled using data from multiple departments without manual wrestling. Risk algorithms may flag potential delays before they cascade into crises.
At Georgia State University, AI-powered project management tools reduced administrative time for research coordinators by 60%. Faculty spend less time updating project statuses and more time on actual research. Grant compliance tracking happens automatically instead of consuming entire afternoons each week.
For chronically overworked higher ed professionals, this means reclaiming hours currently lost to information management and status reporting.
Managing change in change-resistant culture
Higher education institutions sometimes resist change by design. Shared governance, tenure systems and academic freedom create deliberate barriers to rapid transformation. As Bill Rials observed, “… a lot of times it’s not the technology that stops a rollout of a new implementation, but the culture inside the organization.” This protects institutional mission and academic integrity, but it shouldn’t mean paralysis when facing operational dysfunction.
As discussed by Bergmann Bonagura, and Rials, institutions succeeding at modernization work within governance culture rather than against it. They start with voluntary adoption, not mandated rollouts. They demonstrate value through pilot programs rather than comprehensive implementations. They build on existing relationships rather than creating new reporting structures.
Most critically, they prepare for champion turnover. When key advocates leave (and in higher ed, people do move between institutions), workflows and institutional knowledge remain accessible within institutional platforms rather than walking out the door in personal systems.
The cost of continued fragmentation
Delaying transformation carries measurable costs beyond IT budgets. Faculty waste an average of 8.5 hours per week on administrative tasks that could be automated. Research projects experience 23% longer completion times due to coordination failures. Student success initiatives achieve 40% lower impact when departments can’t share data effectively.
More critically, institutions that can’t demonstrate operational efficiency and outcome transparency face increasing scrutiny from accreditors, state funding bodies, and prospective students who expect seamless digital experiences everywhere else in their lives.
Ready to start? Begin with one strategic win
The institutions building sustainable momentum aren’t waiting for perfect conditions or comprehensive solutions. They’re identifying one cross-departmental workflow that’s visible, valuable, and achievable—then executing it well enough to build credibility for the next phase.
Whether that’s research project management, student success coordination, or facilities scheduling, the key is proving that breaking down silos creates immediate value for the people doing the work.
Ready to see how work management platforms designed for higher education can transform your institution’s collaboration and efficiency? Explore monday.com’s solutions for higher education to discover how other colleges and universities are building momentum through strategic, incremental modernization.
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