Press Release on Wharton and UNC

106079 Resource 102302 102466 102466 1130339269691 1130684081468 Controlled CRM in the Higher Education Space?

We wouldn't normally think of CRM in the Office of the University President

Couple of interesting wins recently for NetSuite in the higher education market. Both the Wharton School of Business and The University of North Carolina <A href="http://www.infoworld.com/NetSuite/company_47379.html?view=3&curNodeId=0&prId=SFTH01813102005-1">have started to use NetSuite</A> 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. 9 application/xml false crm solution netsuite onlinecrm web based crm Press Release on Wharton and UNC Higher Ed goes Higher Tech http://www.infoworld.com/NetSuite/company_47379.html?view=3&curNodeId=0&prId=SFTH01813102005-1 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 68.250.40.185 68.250.40.185 tfoydel false true false false true 102302 blog blogsite/SightLines/web