How do you improve student experience when the technology estate has evolved around institutions rather than journeys?

The Challenge

The institution had a clear ambition to improve student experience. But technology had developed over time across different functions, suppliers and initiatives. That created a fragmented picture. Leadership needed to understand:

• Which capabilities mattered most to student experience

• Whether the current technology estate supported those capabilities

• Where legacy systems were creating friction

• Where data issues were affecting service quality

• Where supplier dependencies mattered

• Whether cybersecurity weaknesses could constrain change

• Which investments should be prioritised

• Whether the institution was genuinely ready for the next stage of transformation

The problem could not be answered by looking at applications in isolation.

The Approach

Xirocco helped create a connected view between institutional priorities and the technology capabilities supporting them. The work considered areas including:

• Student experience

• Business and institutional priorities

• Capabilities

• Applications

• Data

• Cybersecurity

• Infrastructure

• Suppliers

• Architecture

• Organisational capability

• Investment

• Transformation readiness

This created a stronger basis for understanding not simply what technology existed, but what that technology meant for the institution's future.

Connect Student Outcomes to Technology Capability

A student-facing service may depend on several layers of technology. For example:

Student Experience → Institutional Capability → Application → Data → Supplier → Infrastructure

A weakness anywhere in that chain can affect the overall experience. Xirocco helped make those relationships visible. That allowed leadership to understand why a technology issue mattered in terms of student and institutional outcomes.

Understand Data as Part of the Experience

Student experience depends heavily on data. Data may need to move between:

• Admissions

• Student records

• Learning systems

• Finance

• Support services

• Communications

• Analytics

• Other institutional platforms

Where data is fragmented, inconsistent or difficult to access, the impact can become visible to students through:

• Repeated information requests

• Delayed services

• Inconsistent communications

• Poor digital journeys

• Limited personalisation

• Weak management insight

The work helped connect data issues to the wider experience rather than treating data as a separate technical topic.

Understand Cybersecurity in Context

Cybersecurity issues were considered in relation to the services and capabilities they could affect. A vulnerability matters differently when it sits behind:

• A critical student service

• Sensitive student data

• Core identity services

• A major institutional platform

• A heavily relied-upon supplier

Xirocco helped connect cybersecurity findings to business and student consequences. That created a stronger basis for deciding where attention and investment were most important.

Connect Technology to Investment

Once the most important capability gaps and dependencies were visible, leadership could begin connecting them to investment. That included questions such as:

• Which improvements are foundational?

• Which investments support the greatest number of student-facing capabilities?

• Which issues should be resolved before larger transformation begins?

• Which supplier or architecture changes require funding?

• Where would investment have the greatest strategic effect?

This helped shift technology investment away from disconnected project requests and towards institutional priorities.