Why Technology Maturity Is Now A Competitive Advantage In Online Education

Jamie Smith is Chief Information Officer at the University of Phoenix.

gettyWant to know how technologically mature a company is? Watch a customer try to get something done.​

Does the customer have to figure out which portal or system to use? Remember a password for every interaction? Reenter information the company already has? Call customer service because the website can’t handle a basic transaction?​

Or does the technology simply get out of the way?​

That distinction is becoming one of the most important competitive differences in business today. Qualtrics research found that “organizations delivering above-average [customer experiences] are 2.9 times more likely to report gaining market share.” In my industry, online education, the connection is even more direct: When technology is the primary way a student experiences the institution, technology maturity becomes part of the institution’s value proposition.​

For years, executives thought about technology mainly as infrastructure. It was supposed to keep the systems running. Keep them secure. It shouldn’t break. And, of course, it shouldn’t cost too much.​

That still matters. In fact, you have to be brilliant at the basics. But reliability, security and cost discipline are table stakes for running a modern technology organization. They’re not the definition of technological maturity.​

I’ve watched that definition change over the course of my career. Earlier in my career, technology organizations could succeed largely by keeping systems stable, secure and efficient. In an online university, that standard is no longer enough. When the digital environment is the campus, technology creates the student experience.​

It can be an easy mistake to confuse technology activity with technology maturity.​​ How many applications did we launch? How many deployments did we make? How much code was written with AI? How many employees are using ChatGPT? How big is the technology budget?​

A team can launch an application on time and still make the customer’s life harder. If that new application introduces another login, another handoff or another place to enter information the company already has, the deployment metric looks good while the customer outcome gets worse.​

That’s the difference between measuring technology activity and measuring technology maturity.​ Customers care about getting something done.​ Mature technology organizations engineer around that reality.

​Mature technology anticipates the interaction, promotes the right information and removes unnecessary steps. Customers should not be forced to become experts in the company’s technology.​

The definition of maturity may depend on the role technology plays in the business.​

For an online university like where I work, technology is effectively the campus. It is the classroom, bookstore, student-services desk and administrative office. Our students have told us plainly that school may be third in their lives—behind family and work—so we design the digital campus with that in mind. If a working adult has five minutes to submit an assignment before the next demand on their day, mature technology works in those five minutes.​

For any organization, the useful question is: What is the customer trying to accomplish in the limited time and attention they are willing to give us—and where is our technology making that harder than it needs to be?​

Another major signal of tech maturity is what happens to data. Many companies have enormous amounts of it, but far fewer can actually use it. According to 2025 MuleSoft research, the typical organization averages 897 applications across their technology stack, but only about 29% are integrated to share data. The rest of the data is walled off in information silos. A mature company builds the infrastructure to make sure that data is available in real time.​

That’s especially important with AI. AI is going to believe what you feed it. It’s the old garbage-in, garbage-out problem—with more autonomy. A company can have the world’s most sophisticated model but produce little value if the underlying data and technology can’t deliver the right information to the right system at the right moment.​

There’s one more tech trap for executives: benchmarking against competitors.​

Yes, competitive intelligence matters. Mystery shopping matters. But matching a competitor’s digital experience may simply mean matching an experience that customers already dislike.​

Remember that your customer doesn’t compare your company only with companies in your industry.​ Your customer doesn’t know, or care, who you consider your competitor. A university student may benchmark you against Amazon. A bank customer may benchmark you against Uber.

The relevant standard isn’t the best digital experience in your industry but the best digital experience your customer has anywhere.​

For an online institution, technology maturity is a competitive advantage because technology isn’t adjacent to the customer experience; it delivers much of that experience. Reliability is the foundation. The advantage comes from using technology to remove friction, respond faster and make the organization easier to navigate.​

When technology is truly mature, the customer doesn’t think, “Oh, what a sophisticated system.” They think, “Wow, that was easy.” And that may be the most important technology metric of all.​​​

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