Salesforce for higher education
Explore the impressive potential of Salesforce cloud products for educational institutions. Learn why more and more universities and colleges around the world are consistently choosing Salesforce to build complex, end-to-end solutions tailored to the specific needs of their administrations, students, and long-term strategies.
All things EDU on a single platform
Salesforce provides a value-packed combo of standard features, fully customizable workflows, and integration options that will meet the needs of virtually all higher education institutions.
Thanks to the tight interplay and cross-pollination between various Salesforce products and services, your campus can achieve visible synergies in no time, turning digital transformation into yet another project, not a dream.
Benefits for colleges and universities
Salesforce offers a unified approach to digitizing and automating the key processes in higher education using a set of tried-and-tested tools that were deeply optimized for on-campus use.
From better, deeper engagement with would-be students and their parents to building thriving online communities of university alumni and prospective university donors — Salesforce has it all covered in a way you never thought possible.
Key points
360-degree view of student profiles
Dramatically better student experience
All you need for a connected campus
Custom workflows for all departments
Quick implementation and adoption
Why Salesforce
Salesforce is the CRM of choice for higher education institutions around the world for a number of good reasons:
Connected experience
Around 80% of students expect their universities and colleges to know who they are and what they need. At the same time, up to 65% of staff members struggle to quickly respond to students’ requests because of red tape and the lack of a single source of truth. Salesforce effectively addresses these issues and streamlines communications for a more connected experience for all parties involved.
Shortcut to innovations
Up to 70% of higher education officials claim to be using or planning to use AI-based tools in their day-to-day activities to automate key processes and implement smart data analysis and forecasting mechanisms. Salesforce comes with a suite of AI-powered products that dramatically facilitate the work of administrative personnel.
Focus on social media
According to 45% higher ed employees, staying on the students’ social media radar is one of the major factors contributing to the success of recruitment campaigns. With powerful omnichannel social tools, Salesforce provides higher education facilities with what they need in order to stay in touch with prospective and current students.
Reporting
Visualized data conveniently accessible from dashboards. Automated report generation. Tracking of key metrics and customer history.
Asset management
One place to track your commercial and residential properties. Easy monitoring of lease agreements. Financial data and automated analytics.
Bringing long-awaited productivity to every campus
Being one of the leading CRM systems on the global market, Salesforce has firmly set foot in virtually every industry, including higher education. The Salesforce platform is steadily gaining momentum in the educational space by enabling countless institutions to start or continue their digital transformation journey and become better-organized, productive, and connected at many levels.
The majority of Salesforce adopters from the higher education industry use a combination of the Sales and Marketing clouds to achieve new levels of marketing communications quality, higher engagement figures for students and alumni, and, ultimately, boost the enrollment rate across all departments. Find out what Vention and Salesforce can help you with to transform the way your organization works.
Collecting and managing student data
- Build super-detailed student profiles
- Execute on your student success strategy
- Stay connected with your students
- Proactively identify potential issues
Engaging alumni and building communities
- Build lasting relationships with alumni
- Improve the outcomes of fundraising events
- Create and maintain virtual communities
- Foster social activities across the campus
Building an efficient recruiting process
- Dramatically increase your outreach
- Boost the productivity of your recruitment teams
- Deliver highly personalized messages
- Automate the admissions pipeline
Creating a powerful marketing communications machine
- Deliver tailored content across multiple channels
- Deliver best-in-class student experience
- Create and manage online events
- Create a strong brand image in social networks
What’s in it for higher education?
Even out-of-the-box, Salesforce for higher education has plenty to offer. With a number of pre-configured objects and workflows coupled with the proprietary Education Data Architecture (EDA), Salesforce can address a variety of use cases relevant to the typical needs of any college or university. However, further customizations and integrations can take the platform’s capabilities to an entirely new level.
The main objective of any Salesforce implementation is the creation of a connected campus framework that unlocks a plethora of opportunities for every constituent of the educational process: marketers and recruitment specialists, the admissions office, staff members, parents, and, of course, past, current, and prospective students.
More benefits
Top-notch student experience
Knowing your students is the key to building trust and keeping their interest up. Salesforce enables you to create an engaging student journey and guide your students through every step of the way, from researching your admissions process and university facilities to graduation. With Salesforce for higher education, your students can connect with their campus through various channels on the go and get the necessary information or services in a few taps.
Advanced workflow automation
Salesforce was built with BPA in mind and is a perfect solution for setting up and automating such essential processes as recruitment and admissions, career advisory and degree planning activities, organization of online and offline events, onboarding, student and staff support, fundraising efforts, and much, much more. With unified, cross-departmental access to university resources, student profiles, reports and financial data, the administration can make faster and better-informed decisions.
Continuous improvement
Thanks to its modular structure and high customizability, Salesforce can be easily scaled to address the growing needs of your organization. Whether you are experimenting with new alumni membership programs, fundraising models, or creating student communities with advanced features, Salesforce can be augmented with the necessary components, connectors, and modules to accommodate innovations and keep them under the same umbrella.
Admissions and recruitment
Salesforce offers an unparalleled set of tools that help higher education institutions work with their “sales funnel” — that is, prospective students and their parents. By enabling recruitment teams to build relationships with a few initial touches with a high degree of content personalization, Salesforce dramatically increases admission rates. It also has everything necessary for taking prospects through the entire admissions flow, from submitting applications to scheduling on-site visits.
Choose your ingredients
Salesforce for higher education is not a universal, monolithic solution. It is composed of a set of products that, combined, effectively address the business challenges and operational needs of a particular college of university.
Our 6-step recipe of a complete digital renewal
Vention covers the complete range of implementation activities for any Salesforce project in the educational field: from building a crystal-clear vision of the final product in close cooperation with the client’s shareholders to configuring major workflows, customizing forms, deploying the solution and providing the client with the necessary training.
Consulting
We work with the client for as long as needed to put together a comprehensive list of project requirements and get fully aligned on expectations and project outcomes. As part of the process, we also advise on the most cost-efficient license type and the optimal product bundle.
Implementation and сustomization
Our team configures the default Salesforce instance according to functional and non-functional requirements, sets up the necessary user types, groups, entities, rules, policies, and flows. If necessary, we also perform customizations to adapt the system to the client’s business processes.
Integration
With years of experience in custom software development and Salesforce implementation and customization projects, we are fully capable of bridging the gap between Salesforce and any other system or data source. All our integrations are fully tested for end-to-end data security.
Managed Services
Our SLA-based managed Salesforce service relieves you of the burden of monitoring and supporting your Salesforce-based solution. Vention will make sure that the system is always in great shape, supplied with the necessary resources, and working for your staff and students 24/7.
End-user training and support
Our client support team is always there to assist our clients with user onboarding, ongoing training, and long-term maintenance. With full project documentation at hand and deep understanding of the client’s needs, our support activities are always fast, precise and cost-effective.
Migration of legacy applications
Our team offers a wealth of engineering talent for projects involving the migration of legacy applications and databases to the cloud. If you are still using an old student information system or an admissions management tool, our team will be able to recreate all or most of its functionality in Salesforce.
Addressing everyone’s needs
Our services for the educational industry are not limited to higher education or a particular user group. We cater to the needs of each and every educational institution striving to achieve new levels of operational effectiveness and grow its student body.
Higher education
If you are representing a college or university, we’ll do our best to create an “at home” student experience and provide the tools needed to get things done quickly and without the unnecessary hassle.
Other education forms
If you come from the K-12 world or a professsional education business, we’ll help equip your employees with powerful tools needed to quickly assess any situations, proactively solve issues, and work in an environment of continuous improvement.
Why Vention?
We’ve done it many times before
- Over 7 years on the market
- Solid educational portfolio
- Salesforce Consulting Partner status of many years
- Profound knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem
We’ve got some of the best Salesforce experts
- Over 60 certified Salesforce developers, consultants, administrators, and architects
- Dozens of complex Salesforce implementations under the belt
We prioritize the client experience above all
- You get to choose the team
- Flexible engagement models and fast kick-off
- Mature, client-centric processes
- Professional, consultative approach to communications
Talk to our Salesforce experts
Talk to our Salesforce experts
With 5+ years of experience in Salesforce, Kate has worked with clients across 30+ industries, including higher education. She is passionate about establishing business development strategies and ensuring that every unique story has a perfect digital solution to back up.
Alex is an expert with 5 years of experience in rolling out Salesforce projects. He has deep knowledge in Sales and Marketing automation, as well as hands-on experience in automating routine and complex tasks.
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