Education Digital Transformation

The institutions we've worked with, measured.

0
Faculty Onboarded
0
Institutions Migrated
0.0M
Student Records Unified
0%
Compliance Deadlines Met

"We don't sell transformation. We project-manage it."

See our process
K-12 Districts
Community Colleges
Research Universities
Multi-Campus Systems
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The Engagement Framework

Five phases. No surprises.

Every engagement follows this sequence. The deliverables below are not aspirational — they are contractual.

01

Phase 01

Audit

We read the room before we touch anything.

What Happens

A four-week structured discovery covering every system currently in production — SIS, LMS, CRM, payment gateways, authentication layers, and data warehouses. We interview twelve to twenty stakeholders across academic affairs, IT, and administration. We map every integration, document every workaround, and identify every compliance gap.

What You Receive

A 60-page Systems Audit Report: current-state architecture diagram, risk register with severity ratings, vendor contract expiration calendar, and a prioritized remediation backlog. This document becomes the project charter for everything that follows.

Sample Deliverable

Systems Audit Report
[Institution Name Redacted] — February 2026
CONFIDENTIAL
23
Systems Audited
47
Risk Items
8
Critical
Risk Register (excerpt)
HIGH
SIS vendor contract expiry
Jun 2026
MED
LMS data export compatibility
Ongoing
HIGH
FERPA audit trail gaps
Immediate
02

Phase 02

Architecture

No vendor recommendations until the blueprint is done.

What Happens

Using the audit findings, we design the target-state architecture — the system your institution will run on in three years. We evaluate vendors against your specific constraints: enrollment size, budget cycles, IT staff capacity, and existing contractual obligations. We write the RFP if needed.

What You Receive

A Target Architecture Document with annotated system diagrams, a vendor evaluation scorecard with our recommendation and rationale, a data governance framework aligned to FERPA and applicable state regulations, and a realistic total cost of ownership projection.

Sample Deliverable

Target Architecture — System Diagram
Presentation
Student Portal
Faculty Dashboard
Admin Console
Integration
API Gateway
SSO / SAML
Data Bus
Data
SIS Core
LMS
Data Warehouse

↑ Vendor recommendation: Canvas LMS (score: 87/100) over Blackboard Ultra (score: 62/100)

03

Phase 03

Migration

Data moves in phases, not all at once.

What Happens

We execute the migration against a published Gantt chart with weekly status reporting to your steering committee. Student records, historical transcripts, financial aid data, and HR systems each have their own migration lane with rollback procedures documented before a single record moves.

What You Receive

A live migration dashboard accessible to your project team, weekly written status reports, a data validation checklist signed off by your registrar and IT lead, and a post-migration audit confirming record integrity across all moved data sets.

Sample Deliverable

Migration Gantt — Week 1 of 12
Progress: 34%
SIS Data Extract
Validation & Cleanse
Staging Load
LMS Content Move
UAT Sign-off
Cutover
04

Phase 04

Training

Adoption is a project deliverable, not an afterthought.

What Happens

We build role-specific training curricula for administrators, faculty, and support staff — not generic vendor tutorials. Adjuncts who teach one section get a different onboarding path than department chairs managing curriculum workflows. Completion is tracked, and we don't close the training phase until 90% of target users are verified.

What You Receive

A Training Completion Dashboard showing adoption by role, department, and campus. Written SOPs for the fifteen most common workflows. A recorded library of institution-specific tutorials. A 30-day post-launch support window with a dedicated Slack channel for your team.

Sample Deliverable

Training Completion Dashboard
Registrar Staff24/24 (100%)
Faculty — Full Time165/187 (88%)
Faculty — Adjunct241/312 (77%)
IT Administrators18/18 (100%)
Support Staff48/56 (86%)
Overall adoption: 82% — Phase closes at 90%
05

Phase 05

Handoff

You leave with documentation, not dependency.

What Happens

The engagement ends when your internal team can operate, troubleshoot, and extend the system without us. We conduct a formal knowledge transfer over two weeks, document every custom configuration, and introduce your team to vendor support escalation paths. We are not interested in retainer relationships that substitute for institutional capability.

What You Receive

A complete System Operations Manual, an IT runbook for the twenty most common incident scenarios, vendor escalation contact sheets, a 90-day post-handoff check-in call, and a one-year anniversary review offer at no additional cost.

Sample Deliverable

System Operations Manual — Table of Contents
01Section 1: System Architecture Overview
02Section 2: User Provisioning & Deprovisioning
03Section 3: Integration Monitoring Procedures
04Section 4: Incident Response Runbook (20 scenarios)
05Section 5: Vendor Escalation Contacts
06Section 6: Annual Review Checklist
07Appendix A: Custom Configuration Log
08Appendix B: Data Dictionary
Delivered as PDF + Notion workspace

Anonymized Case Results

What the work actually looks like.

All figures verified by client project sponsors. Institution names withheld by agreement.

K-12 District

Midwest, 14,000 students

The Situation

State compliance deadline for unified student data reporting — 9 months out, zero data governance framework in place.

Deployed compliant data warehouse, migrated 12 years of records, met deadline with 6 weeks to spare.

847K
Records Migrated
6
Weeks Early
214
Staff Trained
Community College

Southeast, 3 campuses

The Situation

Three campuses running three different LMS platforms. Faculty cross-teaching between campuses couldn't access each other's course shells.

Consolidated to single Canvas instance. Cross-campus course sharing went live in semester two of the engagement.

3→1
LMS Platforms → 1
289
Faculty Onboarded
1,840
Courses Migrated
Research University

Northeast, R1 Institution

The Situation

CIO inherited a 15-year accumulation of shadow IT — 47 separate SaaS subscriptions, no SSO, no data dictionary.

Rationalized to 18 core systems, implemented SSO across all platforms, built first-ever institutional data dictionary.

47→18
Systems Rationalized
$340K
Annual SaaS Savings
100%
SSO Coverage

Engagements spanning 2019–2025 · All outcomes independently verified by client steering committees

Syllabus Consulting Group

The 90-Day Migration Playbook

A practitioner's guide to planning, sequencing, and executing a campus-wide system migration — without losing data, faculty trust, or your job.

Contents (48 pages)

01Days 1–15: Stakeholder mapping & system inventory
02Days 16–30: Vendor evaluation framework
03Days 31–60: Migration sequencing & rollback planning
04Days 61–90: Training deployment & adoption tracking
05Appendix: FERPA compliance checklist

Free Download

Not ready to talk yet?
Start with the playbook.

48 pages. No fluff. The actual sequence we use with every client, packaged for you to run internally or bring to your next board presentation.

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First Engagement

Request Your
Systems Audit.

We'll schedule a 30-minute scoping call, review what you share with us, and return a no-cost preliminary audit scope within five business days — a written document outlining what a full engagement would cover, and what it would cost.

What happens next

1

We confirm receipt within one business day.

2

A senior consultant reviews your submission before calling.

3

You receive a preliminary scope document, in writing, before any further commitment.

38
Engagements
5 days
Scope turnaround
No lock-in
Audit only option

Tell us about your institution.

Three fields. No unnecessary friction.

No commitment required. Preliminary scope delivered in 5 business days.