Want to see how your data can drive results? Salesforce Education Cloud combines the power of the #1 AI CRM with tools built specifically for university education. It takes all your scattered information and turns it into useful insights. This helps your institution run better, and it also changes the way you connect with students, building relationships that last a lifetime.
As the higher-education vertical recovers from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic turmoil, institutions are experiencing lower enrollment and student retention rates. With Salesforce, institutions can move away from disparate point solutions across campus to a centralized, enterprise-level CRM that equips the institution to improve the entire student experience, from prospects to alumni. (Forrester Report, 2023, The Total Economic Impact Of Salesforce For Education)
Let’s take a look at why bringing Education Cloud to your educational institution is a smart move.
CRM in higher education, Salesforce for Education, Education Cloud – what is the difference?
As a leader, you understand the critical need to optimize resources and drive positive outcomes. You are likely familiar with terms such as “CRM in higher education,” “Salesforce for Education,” and “Education Cloud.” Let’s explore these concepts and their impact on your bottom line and strategic vision.
CRM in Higher Education: The Foundational Principle
Think of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as the bedrock of efficient operations (in postsecondary education, the term “customer” is more closely related to the term “constituent”.)
It is about managing and nurturing relationships across the entire student lifecycle or student journey – from prospective inquiries to alumni engagement.
This translates to a unified system for tracking student interactions, managing admissions, streamlining communication and fostering alumni connections. Among the benefits of CRM, you utilize targeted communication and personalized outreach, leading to higher conversion rates. Further, you gain valuable insights into student engagement and satisfaction to inform strategic planning.
Salesforce for Education: The Platform Powerhouse
The platform brings the CRM vision to life. It’s the robust, adaptable technology that allows you to customize solutions to fit your specific needs.
It provides a centralized hub for managing student data, optimizing workflows, and integrating various school systems. It allows for the building of custom apps to fill any specific need. With its help, you can automate repetitive tasks, reduce administrative burden, and free up staff time for strategic initiatives. One of the most impactful features is breaking down silos and fostering seamless communication across departments.
Education Cloud: The Tailored Solution
Education Cloud is the industry-specific layer built on top of Salesforce for Education. It provides pre-built solutions and functionalities designed to address the unique challenges of the education sector.
For high schools, it offers specific tools for managing admissions, student success, advancement, and more. This includes student information system (SIS) capabilities and tools to manage student behavior.
Such a solution accelerates implementation by leveraging pre-configured solutions. Further, it provides proactive student support and early intervention tools to help drive academic success.
The result? A more efficient, effective, and future-ready high school that delivers exceptional value to students and the community. And there are reports that highlight the benefits of the positive impact that the Education Cloud is having on the education landscape.
Why use Salesforce Education Cloud?
The most recent Forrester report, “The Total Impact of Salesforce for Education” (2023), discusses cost savings and business benefits. What are the specifics?
Improved Student Experience and Retention
Educational solutions from Salesforce provide clearer, more consistent communications to students, build digital-resource centers, offer a single point of entry for student inquiries, and improve end-to-end usability across the applicant-to-alumni lifecycle. For example, one university improved its retention rate from 79% to 81% after implementing Salesforce.
Leveraging Salesforce has facilitated our increase in retention rates, graduation rates, enrollment rates, conversion rates, [and] service. It’s not the only thing, but it definitely has impacted all the success rates that we measure here, Senior product manager IT, public university (Source: Forrester Report, 2023, The Total Economic Impact Of Salesforce For Education)
Empowered Administrative and Academic Teams to Lift Productivity
Centralized information, data visibility into conversion rates, email automation for drip campaigns, and easier queue navigation translate to productivity lifts for administrative and academic teams across each use case. The productivity lift drove $6.8 million in productivity gains to the composite institution over three years.
Our goal was to replace manual intervention with automated processes where we could in order to promote efficiencies and effectiveness, and to free up staff time to spend the time on one-to-one interactions, Head of data systems and applicant engagement, public university (Source: Forrester Report, 2023, The Total Economic Impact Of Salesforce For Education)
License and Support Savings
By providing a centralized CRM solution, Salesforce allows institutions to decommission redundant point solutions across departments. This consolidation drives savings through avoiding licensing and reallocation of IT resource efforts, amounting to $1.6 million over three years.
Salesforce is incredible, and it’s allowed us to become more future-proof. What I really like about Salesforce is [that] you can do anything once you get the data structure and architecture right. [Salesforce] can evolve to meet any challenge very quickly, Associate vice president of enterprise systems, private university (Source: Forrester Report, 2023, The Total Economic Impact Of Salesforce For Education)
Improved Alumni and Donor Engagement
Salesforce helps institutions preserve alumni information, optimize relationship management, gauge donor interest, and audit for effective fundraising approaches. This resulted in additional funds raised, with one institution increasing fundraising contributions by 10%.
We were in a multi-system environment. The systems were all doing a good job, but they didn’t interact. It meant the resource placed in the small online advancement area handled a lot of manual data and manual processes. By moving to one system and using integrations with the CRM, the resource could focus on other things, CRM manager, public university (Source: Forrester Report, 2023, The Total Economic Impact Of Salesforce For Education)
The report also mentions several unquantified benefits, including:
- Students connect with peers and mentors through meaningful digital interactions.
- Staff aligning long-term strategic goals against capabilities and roadmaps.
- Targeted marketing efforts fuel budgeting efficiencies.
- Process standardization enables cross-team collaboration.
Overall, the report emphasizes that thanks to Salesforce institutions improve student experiences, increase enrollment, enhance productivity, and simplify operations.
A systematic approach from a top consulting firm demonstrates the positive impact of Salesforce for Education. Let’s explore the areas where the Education Cloud excels and delivers a significant competitive advantage.
What are the application areas for Education Cloud?
Salesforce itself presents Education Cloud in four main areas: Recruitment and Admissions, Student Success, Advancement and Alumni Relations, and Academic Operations. Each of these areas is explained in detail to demonstrate the capabilities that the Education Cloud brings to an institution.
Recruitment and Admissions
With Education Cloud, you can build custom paths for communication, sending the right information to the right student, wherever they are. It’s like having a central hub to manage every step of the admissions journey, from that first email to the day they enroll.
- Automated workflows take care of things like processing applications and sending reminders.
- Organizing enrollment events becomes much simpler – you can track who’s coming and follow up easily.
- To keep everyone in the loop, students can check their application status online, while your team can quickly find and update any application.
Student Success
With Data Cloud for Education and Holistic Student Insights institutions gain a 360-degree view of each student, encompassing both their academic and personal lives. This means advisors can:
- Understand not just a student’s grades, but also factors that might be impacting their performance, such as attendance, engagement, and personal circumstances.
- Identify students who may be struggling and intervene proactively. This includes visual indicators of student performance and AI-powered insights on student academic history and current course participation.
The resources and support necessary to achieve students’ educational goals ensure increased retention rates and a better overall experience.
Advancement and Alumni Relations
Education Cloud transforms graduate relations by fostering a continuous, lifelong engagement between institutions and their graduates.
- It provides easy access to sign-up for events and mentoring opportunities, strengthening connections and building a vibrant community.
- On the institutional side, the platform consolidates fundraising data, enabling detailed tracking of engagement and participation trends, which are crucial for effective development strategies.
Thanks to the Salesforce solution, institutions can build relationships based on a lifetime of engagement, moving beyond transactional interactions to build meaningful, lasting connections with their alumni.
Academic Operations
Salesforce Education Cloud significantly streamlines academic operations by providing tools to manage the entire learning lifecycle.
- The Learning Creation Wizard simplifies the process of defining course and program details, making it easier for institutions to create and manage academic offerings. It enables the design, viewing, and maintenance of diverse learning program plans across undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education, offering a centralized platform for academic planning.
- Education Cloud helps streamline degree progress, providing clear pathways for students and administrators to track academic requirements.
How is AI used? It analyzes program and course information and identifies market-relevant skills. This allows institutions to create a list of skills that can be seamlessly added to course descriptions, ensuring students are well-prepared for the workforce. It also helps bridge the gap between academia and industry, ultimately improving student employability and institutional relevance.
Further Development and Latest Innovations for Salesforce Education Cloud
What’s more, Education Cloud is an evolving solution. It adapts to changes in new technologies, pedagogical approaches, and student expectations. Salesforce takes advantage of technological advances such as the use of AI, machine learning, and data analytics. And feedback from customers in the education sector influences the development of the Education Cloud.
That’s why the platform is changing. The spring releases for Education Cloud bring significant enhancements aimed at streamlining admissions and enriching student support:
- An AI-powered Student Recruitment Agent now provides immediate answers to prospective student inquiries, expanding admissions team capacity.
- Stage management capabilities offer greater control over complex application processes, optimizing workflows and providing clear visibility across stages.
- Data Cloud integration delivers holistic student insights, using Einstein AI to summarize data and visual indicators to track learner progress, enabling proactive support.
- Rubric-based application scoring promotes faster, more consistent, and equitable admissions decisions, empowering administrators to define scoring criteria and reviewers to provide detailed assessments.
The cloud-based architecture of Education Cloud offers updates, significantly streamlining the deployment process relative to on-premise software solutions. Consequently, clients benefit from immediate access to the most recent platform enhancements. For institutions seeking to maintain currency with Salesforce’s technological advancements within the education sector, we offer comprehensive consulting services. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information and assistance.
