The Sullivan Method

Discovery & Audit

Nothing is assumed. Everything is verified. The Discovery & Audit phase begins with deep infrastructure review — not a surface-level systems inventory, but a rigorous examination of what's actually running, what's actually being used, and what's actually costing your institution money.

Stakeholder interviews run at every level of the organisation — from the CIO and CFO through to frontline admin staff and student representatives. The most useful insights rarely come from the top. The people who experience the friction every day know exactly where the system breaks down.

Student journey mapping traces every digital touchpoint from application through to graduation. Full audit of existing tooling, active contracts, SLA performance, and team capability levels. By the end of this phase, there are no surprises remaining.

What you receive

Strategy & Architecture

The most intensive phase. Every finding from Discovery is translated into a coherent platform strategy. This is where the work becomes most valuable — and most difficult. Turning a complex institutional picture into clear, actionable direction requires holding a lot of competing constraints simultaneously.

The recommended architecture accounts for your institution's scale, your team's capability, your budget reality, and your governance structure. Vendor shortlists are scored against weighted criteria specific to your context. Budget scenarios model conservative, recommended, and ambitious investment levels.

Everything is packaged into a boardroom-ready strategy document — not a consultant deliverable designed to impress, but a working document designed to be used as a decision-making tool by your leadership team for years.

What you receive

Phased Execution

Structured rollout. Migration workstreams run in parallel with integration work and team upskilling. The sequencing is critical — getting this wrong means disrupted semesters, panicked staff, and recovery work that costs more than the original project.

Everything is aligned to your academic calendar. No go-lives during HECS census dates, exam periods, or orientation weeks. The only constant in university life is that the calendar rules everything, and the execution plan is built around it from day one.

Weekly check-ins keep delivery on track. Fortnightly steering reports keep leadership informed without drowning them in detail. Issues are surfaced early and resolved before they become incidents.

What you receive

Embed & Optimise

Transition to internal ownership. The goal of every engagement is not ongoing dependency — it's the opposite. By the time Phase IV begins, your team should be running the platform, not watching someone else run it.

Quarterly reviews benchmark platform performance against the original strategy objectives. Optimisation recommendations are based on real usage data, not theoretical improvement frameworks. Documentation is updated continuously to reflect the evolving system.

The engagement ends when your team holds the platform fully — equipped with the knowledge, documentation, and confidence to extend and maintain it without external support. That's the measure of a successful transformation.

What you receive