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Couple of interesting wins recently for NetSuite in the higher education
market. Both the Wharton School of Business and The University of North Carolina
have
started to use NetSuite to manage recruitment, applications, applicant
issues and a host of other processes critical to Higher Education institutions.
This might have something to do with the fact that all educational
institutions are in need of more students. But it also might signal a need for a
more student focused search, application and admission process. My own
experiences with universities is that there are a number of qualified, hard
working people in the admissions office who are deluged by paperwork. The end
result is a student recruitment and application process that seems, well, not to
be a process at all.
I request a form. It comes at some point and I fill out all of the
information. I may have a few questions and I have to call several times to find
an answer. Each time I call, I have to start from square one and explain the
issue. I am provided different ad-hoc answers depending upon who is working when
I call. Eventually the form is returned and several months pass. There is no
contact whatsoever during this time - the relationship has gone dark, as they
say. Finally I am notified by form letter that I have been admitted. Again the
relationship goes dark - I have no idea what comes next. My move? Their move? Am
I missing something here? I have a queasy feeling the day I inquire about
renting a U-Haul. Maybe I should just check in and make sure this is really
still a go? The person on the other end of the phone can't believe that I am
wasting here time! "Did you receive an admittance letter?. "Yes, then why are
you calling?" "We'll be sending a welcome packet soon."
So does CRM provide a solution in this context. I can't think of a better
context frankly for a CRM solution. If a CRM solution cannot drastically improve
this situation, then it has no business being called CRM.
Couple of questions. We have heard terms like 'aligning business objectives
with technology solutions'. But what the heck is this? Well, the situation that
I describe above is exactly what this is. The University, you choose a name,
spends millions on marketing. Yet when a buyer arrives on their doorstep the
effort falls on its face. Wouldn't it make sense to install a better process,
even a better manual process, that links the recruitment efforts of
marketing, with the admissions process of student affairs? With a better process
supported by a good CRM system the University ought to not only be able to
serve applicants better, and therefore win more of them over to full time
students, but they should be able to measure with a lot of accuracy the
effectiveness of the marketing spend.
Web based CRM, online CRM, offers a great solution here because it enables
several easy ways for the applicant and the University to interact, from an
online pre-application form, notifications of upcoming events and online
registration forms, to FAQ's. Most college applicants are going to be well
versed in using web technologies.
Pushback? Sure there's going to be pushback. No one wants to be measured,
especially marketing. Processes may help to make life a little more bearable in
Admissions, but processes again create measurements. How many applicants were
not contacted within 2 business days of leaving their information? What was the
rate of enrollment delta between applicants invited for a personal visit
and those sent the brochure?
CRM in the Higher Ed space may sound unusual. We are used to seeing it in a
business contexts almost exclusively. But there are as many different
applications of CRM as their definitions of customers. | 
