CRM higher education technology is a fully integratable IT solution that enables institutions to manage relationships with all of their customers (including students, alumni, faculty, staff, and corporate partners) and connect insights from those
interactions in a unified 360 degree customer view. Summit helps schools adopt CRM technology to meet a variety of goals.
Salesforce Education Cloud
- A Salesforce higher education solution quickly supports new business models and personalized experiences without the pain of updating legacy systems: with CRM, faculty and staff can collaborate from anywhere and track critical metrics such as retention, enrollment, and engagement rates across a variety of channels. Salesforce tools like Slack and Chatter turn the Salesforce ecosystem into an easy to navigate platform meeting the entire institution’s needs.
- Connect insights across recruitment & admissions, student experience, advancement, and marketing for a complete view of every constituent across multiple touchpoints: Unlike individual point solutions, which only address a single-use case or challenge, an integrated CRM platform eliminates the pain of having disparate data spread across a variety of systems.
- More time for faculty and staff to do what they do best – ensuring students have the support and resources they need to thrive: With CRM for higher education, institutions can provide more tailored outreach to prospective students, automate self-service, and increase alumni engagement and fundraising efforts and spend less time spent searching for data across multiple point solutions means.
Today, too many higher education institutions are managing the student journey with outdated and siloed systems. Increasingly, students are expecting seamless technology experiences, personalized communications, and an experience where no matter the size of the institution they are treated like a unique individual. Yet, the average university has 35 different applications or systems to manage recruiting, enrollment, engagement, job placement, and alumni and donor engagement. Nearly one-fifth of institutions have 70 or more! This lack of connectivity causes challenges in data-driven decision-making across the student lifecycle. When data exists in silos, the student experience can often feel disconnected and impersonal. Moreover, students expect to have everything they need to succeed right at their fingertips in this mobile technology world.
Salesforce CRM, a true customer relationship management solution, is an integrated platform connecting insights across recruitment & admissions, student experience, advancement and marketing into a single source of truth. This enables institutions to collaborate more effectively and support more students at scale.
With Salesforce Higher Education CRM, personalized student-centric experiences are built by enabling fully triaged case management to help every student overcome any obstacles with omni-channel support.
Stronger student relationships are built on the foundation of connected student data. Stronger student relationships lead to higher rates of retention and graduation among your student body. The right technology can help institutions maximize every student’s potential—from the moment they express interest in an institution to the day they graduate and become alumni. By creating a 360-degree view of every student, a CRM platform empowers institutions to turn data into insights and insights into actions. These connected insights make it possible to shape proactive and personalized interactions with students, ultimately putting student relationships at the center of every decision an institution makes.
Using an integrated platform instead of multiple point solutions not only simplifies data complexity for higher education institutions; it also saves money.
In fact, CRM higher education technology averages $2.4 million in total legacy cost savings, according to a Forrester Total Impact Study. The study found that higher education institutions using Salesforce are driving 195% in ROI over three years, with a 7-month payback period. They’re also seeing significant increases in revenue and cost savings.
This is because institutions eliminate the expenses associated with more training, the adoption of outdated processes, and the time spent updating legacy systems when using multiple point solutions to manage the student journey.
CRM Evolves as an Institution Does
It’s a flexible, integrated platform. A Salesforce higher education CRM solution can incorporate as many tools as you need to serve your student body best: email, SMS texting, community portals, and more.
CRM enables higher education institutions to stay ahead of student needs with tools such as proactive alerts and conversational chat bots. According to Forrester, students are more likely to enroll in a college, and stay there, when a single platform is used to provide more effective communications, remove barriers to information, and streamline support services.
Central New Mexico Community College was looking for a single, consolidated view of all of the customers they serve —from students, alumni, parents and donors to employers that hire students. CRM for higher education provided the ideal solution to create a 360-degree view of every engagement, in one place.
With an integrated CRM, CNM staff had self-serve data at their fingertips. No more reaching out to IT or other departments to run reports which might take a couple of weeks to get back.
With a strong CRM foundation, Central New Mexico Community College was well-positioned to focus on specific areas that they wanted to enhance, like advising.
CNM’s Student Success Hub allowed students to schedule advising appointments, selecting the counselor of their choice and put the notes from previous sessions in the same easy to navigate platform. Forrester found that institutions using a CRM platform, like Central New Mexico Community College, have been able to increase student retention rates by 6.8%. By streamlining workflows for staff members and consolidating relevant student data, advisors can be more proactive in their student support efforts.
When institutions switch to CRM, administrative and academic teams are able to work more effectively. Forrester found a 12% increase in productivity across teams working on everything from admissions and the student experience to alumni engagement and fundraising. Over the course of three years, this equates to $6.7 million for a college or university.
Salesforce Education Cloud inspires collaboration and keeps students engaged and on track. With streamlined student services, your school can deliver unified advising experiences and unlock access to careers for students across a single platform that connects every student support need across your entire campus.
The University of Massachusetts (UMass) had multiple departments handling administrative tasks, and employees were relying on paper and email to communicate with prospective students and alumni. Having seen success from using a CRM platform to improve the student experience, UMass decided to replicate it for employees system-wide.
Making it easier to get work done on a collaborative platform kept divisions and departments connected. UMass wanted a flexible platform that could scale and encourage interdepartmental communication from anywhere.
CRM for higher education is the digital foundation empowering tomorrow’s institutions today. A CRM platform connects insights campus-wide instead of creating data silos, making it easier for institutions to quickly support new business models as constituent needs evolve over time.
Undoubtedly, transformation across education is here to stay. Whether it’s increasing hybrid course offerings or creating additional revenue streams with new programs, having an agile platform is critical in order to support the long term success of colleges and universities. This is the new technology mindset of the future-ready institution and it’s powered by CRM for higher education. It enables a shift from siloed data and disconnected experiences to a flexible platform that grows with your needs.
CRM for higher education from Salesforce implemented bySummit can help you understand your students with:
- Unified student records
- Easy alerts and mass actions
- Advising notes
- Pre-built analytics
Institutions can benefit from CRM higher education technology in a variety of ways, from simplifying data complexity to creating more personalized experiences for every constituent.
