This article draws on the experience of educational institutions in Japan.
"We know digital transformation matters. We just don't know where to start." We hear this often from people working at cram schools (private after-school academies), Japanese language schools, vocational colleges and other educational institutions. This article explains how an educational institution can approach digital transformation (DX) without it failing, and the concrete steps to take.
Why educational institutions need digital transformation now
With Japan's declining birthrate and the difficulty of hiring staff, educational institutions are under more pressure than ever to run reliably with fewer people. Yet much of their core work, including student recruitment, applications, student support and HR, still depends on paper, Excel and the experience of individual staff members. That creates risks such as these:
- Work depends on specific individuals and is hard to hand over (in Japan this is called "zokujinka")
- Manual transcription and double-checking are everywhere, which leads to errors and overtime
- Without a clear view of recruitment progress or what students are doing, management tends to rely on gut feeling and experience
Three ways digital transformation fails at educational institutions
When digital transformation efforts don't work out, the cases tend to have a few things in common.
- Installing a tool becomes the goal — Even a feature-rich tool is pointless if staff don't actually use it.
- Decisions are made without the people who do the work — If you move ahead without understanding the daily work of the staff who will use the system, it won't take hold.
- Trying to change everything at once — A wholesale replacement brings a heavy workload and a lot of confusion, and it is likely to stall.
An approach that works: five steps
What matters is not starting big, but starting small and expanding from there. We recommend this order:
- Take stock of current work — Write down which tasks take up time, who does them, and how much time they take.
- Start with the process that hurts most — Don't try to cover everything. Focus on the one point where the pain is greatest.
- Introduce it on a small scale and confirm it sticks — Try it in a way that doesn't interrupt existing work, and check whether staff can actually use it.
- Bring data into one place — When tools are split up, so is information. Eliminating double data entry is at the heart of working more efficiently.
- Divide the roles of people and AI — Hand routine tasks such as document checks and reminders to AI, so people can focus on judgment and conversations.
The first step: applications and student recruitment
For many educational institutions, applications and student recruitment are where results show up most easily. Simply bringing everything from the first inquiry through applications and enrollment into a single system cuts down on missed follow-ups and duplicate messages, and noticeably lightens the load on staff.
At one educational institution that adopted Compass, our student application and management system, the application and administrative work for roughly 440 applicants, which used to take six to eight staff members, is now handled by one or two. Getting applications, the "front door" of the school, in order is a cost-effective first step that also supports student management and management decisions later on.
Summary
Digital transformation at an educational institution does not mean installing a large system all at once. Take stock of where things stand, and start small with the process that causes the most trouble. That is the basic principle for avoiding failure.
XY, K.K. works from firsthand knowledge of how schools operate. We build and deploy systems that actually work in day-to-day operations, and we stay involved until they take hold (we call this approach FDE). We're glad to talk even if your only question is where to start. Feel free to contact us.