From the boardroom to the classroom: Gaining real-world, global experience in exchange for a new target market’s perspective.

How can business students gain real-world experience? What if we take a proven technology and hand it to a younger generation of curious, tech-savvy students to review, pull apart and piece back together? That was the focus of the Loyola and Synchronoss Collegiate Program which kicked off in January 2022. For an entire semester, students were exposed to real-world, global challenges and presented their findings and feedback to senior leaders at Synchronoss.

Let’s go back to where this project started…

Over the last eight and a half years, I’ve watched as Synchronoss evolved into the company it is today. With adaptation comes innovation. In the fast-paced world that is tech and software as a service (SaaS), it is essential not just to survive but to thrive in your mission as a company and to consistently provide new, innovative software to customers.

In 2019, I joined the Innovation committee with the hopes to challenge the way I think about and approach various projects. Two years later, we brought in Marek Pawlowski from MEX as a guest speaker. He spoke about taking a challenge you face and trying to view it from a new perspective. This leads to thinking creatively – after all, repeating the same pattern won’t yield new results.

This ideology stuck with me for years until one day the stars aligned on a project that was promised to give me a new perspective. I reached out to my alma mater and fellow board members, Paul Tallon and Kim Wagner, to discuss the possibility of bringing real-world challenges into the classroom. The idea was to have a completely new demographic who are known for their sharp and honest feedback. Certainly, college students are the next generation of professionals who are eager to make their mark on the world.

As the Sellinger School of Business and Management is a nationally-ranked business school, partnering with Loyola University Maryland was the perfect opportunity to gain fresh perspectives from a new target market.

In January 2022, we kicked off the semester with a broad description of the project and a demo account of Synchronoss Personal Cloud for each group. One piece of learning that I took from the various book clubs, speaking sessions, and group discussions on innovation is to leave room for a vision. Therefore, I provided enough details so the students could kick off the project but made it clear that if they wanted to go off track and take this in a new direction, I was open to creative, non-conventional approaches. Each group began to carve out their SOW while working in parallel with Professor Kim Wagner to learn about project management and what takes an idea across the finish line of a final project.

The students began to meet with me every few weeks over the semester. Groups went from being unsure of how to reach me with a 5-hour time difference, to scheduling meetings at a time that suited all their group members within my work hours. Small tasks like this proved that the experience they were gaining was valuable and would provide confidence in their future careers with global companies.

By the end of the semester, each group was well acquainted with our Personal Cloud app – from the onboarding workflows to new features that enhance the customer experience and make it even easier to manage and access their content. Yet, my goal wasn’t to have a room full of students just talk about what works. The goal was to pick it apart and put it back together in a way that made the most sense to them. They did just that.

On the last day of the semester, the students presented their suggestions to our senior leadership team along with product, legal, design and marketing departments, from copy edits with a softer tone to highlighting an existing feature at the forefront of the app. The observations, including user enhancements as simple as adding an action button with a CTA, could, in turn, improve retention, promote active users and lead to more wins for our tier one customers and their subscribers.

This feedback comes at a valuable time as we push ahead with innovative features to stay ahead of the competitive, ever-growing space for cloud. As a tech company, it’s always in our best interest to be reviewing and updating the ‘best of’ technology.