Life Behind the Screens: Ash Fraser

Bringing an institutional perspective to higher education transformation

For Ash Fraser, successful technology transformation is not defined by go-live.

After a career spanning technology delivery, local government, legal and compliance environments, customer portals and higher education, Ash has seen major programmes from multiple perspectives, including from the customer side.

That experience now shapes his approach as an Education Industry Advisor at Lánluas.

“Successful transformation is rarely just about implementing the software,” Ash says. “It’s about understanding the institution around it.”

That means understanding how people work, where processes cross departmental boundaries, who owns the data and which decisions need to be made early.

Higher education institutions are complex organisations, bringing together academic, administrative and student-facing functions with very different requirements. Ash sees that complexity as something to understand and work with, rather than something technology can simply override.

One of the most significant projects in his career was his involvement in the world’s first implementation of TechnologyOne SaaS+ across Students, Finance and HRPay. Delivering a programme of that scale at the forefront of a new model gave him first-hand experience of turning ambitious system change into something practical and workable.

It also reinforced the importance of keeping sight of the outcomes an organisation is trying to achieve, rather than treating go-live as the finish line.

“You can deliver the technology, but you also need to understand what people want and need, and how that can be harmonised within the process. If people aren’t on the journey with you, they may not get the best out of the system in the end.”

For Ash, success can mean better processing, greater standardisation, less reliance on manual work, improved student experiences and more efficient back-office operations.

“The real question is whether the institution has achieved the efficiency or improvement it was looking for,” he says.

Admissions is one area where he sees significant opportunity. The application process sits at the front door of the student experience, but behind it are often multiple systems, teams and decision points. Improving those processes can make life easier for staff while creating a smoother, more responsive experience for prospective students.

The same principle applies across other student touchpoints, including marks, personal tutoring, timetabling and wider administrative processes.

Standardisation can also help make organisational knowledge less dependent on individuals.

“In some organisations, a lot of process knowledge can sit in someone’s head,” Ash explains. “By using systems and standardising processes, you can create much greater alignment.”

Ash also sees part of his role as being a sounding board for institutions as they make significant decisions.

Large transformation programmes can involve unfamiliar territory, and having someone who has sat on the institutional side can help teams test assumptions, validate decisions and understand their implications before they become embedded in new systems and processes.

Looking ahead, Ash expects artificial intelligence to have a major influence on higher education technology.

He sees particular potential in the way AI could help students find and interact with information, including improving accessibility for neurodiverse students. At the same time, he believes institutions will increasingly need to consider the ethical and environmental implications of emerging technologies.

It is that combination of technology and institutional understanding that attracted him to Lánluas.

“I love technology and technology implementations. I’m a bit of a geek,” he says. “Working with Lánluas gives me the opportunity to work with a broader range of organisations across the UK, Australia and New Zealand.”

His experience adds a distinctly higher education perspective to Lánluas’s existing ERP capability, with an understanding of how decisions made during transformation affect staff, students and institutions long after implementation is complete.

Away from work, Ash has embarked on a sizeable transformation project of his own.

He and his partner live in North Wales, where they have moved into a former school in the countryside that requires substantial renovation. When he is not working on the house, Ash spends his time hill walking, caving and exploring the area’s old lead and copper mines.

It is perhaps fitting for someone whose career has been built around understanding complex systems: whether in higher education or underground in North Wales, Ash seems drawn to working out how things fit together.

Learn more about what it’s like to work at Lánluas by visiting the About Us page.