Report Examines Need for Customer Relationship Management in Higher Ed

Destiny Solutions today released a white paper on how colleges and universities can better meet student demands for a high level of service while simultaneously increasing efficiency amongst staff. Titled “Improving CRM Capabilities to Reach Market Potential,” the report determines that in order to do more with less, higher education institutions must implement customer relationship management (CRM) systems, process and strategies to recruit and retain students.

“Although CRM is fairly new to higher education, it is clear by looking at business benchmarks that by introducing CRM capabilities, institutions can gain a 42 percent increase in revenue,” says Shaul Kuper, president of Destiny Solutions, a company that provides business software solutions for non-traditional divisions of leading higher education institutions, including Penn State World Campus, Stanford Center for Professional Development and eCornell.

According to the white paper, CRM can also yield a 35 percent decrease in the cost of sales and a 20 percent increase in customer satisfaction ratings. However, in order for higher education institutions to get the most out of a CRM strategy, they must address the following four key elements:

• CRM must include complete tracking of each student’s interests, preferences and purchase intent as well as academic, financial and communication history for “360-degree understanding of the student.” Better decisions based on complete profiles, the paper says, can boost revenue up to 66 percent.
• CRM software must be seamlessly integrated into the rest of the campus-computing environment. A unified data set can increase lead conversions by more than 12 percent.
• CRM systems must empower the institution to mine data and effectively segment the student population. An effectively targeted e-mail drives 18 times more revenue than a broadcast e-mail blast.
• CRM processes must include automated workflows to notify the right people at the right time of tasks that they need to complete. By being the first to answer a student’s inquiry, for example, an institution has a 238 percent better conversion rate than the second responder.

To view the full report, please visit: http://info.destinysolutions.com/non-traditional-students-white-paper-communicating-with-students

Contacts

Destiny Solutions
Rachel Kuper, 416-480-0500 ext. 214
rkuper@destinysolutions.com