Why should universities in India use CRM technology?

The higher education system in India is currently undergoing widespread changes on many fronts. Some of these reforms were implemented following the publication of the New Education Policy. Some are reactions to pandemics and post-pandemic circumstances. Some of these are answers to supporting graduate students to determine their aspirations.

One thing that all of these responses have in common is the use of information and communication technologies on a large scale. Digital transformation is being conceived as a solution to meet the next generation's challenges. Many Higher Education Institutions(HEI), including premier institutes or institutes of national importance, are restructuring their academic programs around artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, and machine learning. Blended or open courses are becoming the norm for program delivery.

Many academic institutions have been using Learning Management Systems (LMS) for a long time to deliver courses and keep track of them. Web portals are used to handle admissions and share test results. Some kind of student information system, either built by them or by a third party, to store and report on data about students.

One of the few technologies that aren't used enough in higher education is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It may be because CRM operations like lead management, sales, service, and marketing have fewer obvious parallels to HEI processes. This is especially true for institutions supported by the government. Other than these, the main reason why CRM technologies aren’t used in universities is that education decision-makers aren’t aware of the benefits that cloud-based CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot can bring with them.

This article explains some of the benefits that an educational institute can get by adopting CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot.

CRM for Constituent Relationship Management

The concept of the “C” in CRM is extended to constituents in modern digital CRM solutions. By “constituents,” we mean all the people and groups with whom organizations that use CRM platforms interact.

For an educational institute, it could be students, parents, recruiters, teachers, alumni, institute employees, affiliated institutes, or other institutes with which a given institute is working to offer courses and transfer credits.

Keeping up with all of these people is hard, but it’s important for the overall growth of both the institute and the students. Modern CRM solutions in the cloud take care of the hard tasks, so the people who use them can focus on the growth of the institution.

Supports building a single source of truth

Managing constituents' data through multiple software is common practice among the HEI adopting digital platforms to carry out their institutional teaching and learning processes. These institutes use software like LMS, student information systems, database-driven web portals, spreadsheets, and other office documents.

Data replication, multiple updation, and out-of-sync data are some of the common problems experienced while managing the data when it is scattered institute-wide in multiple application software.

CRM technology platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot facilitate seamless integration with external systems. It creates a single identity for a given constituent across all the platforms with which they are interacting. It resolves conflicts in identity and data in an automated way. As a result, they are contributing to the creation of a single source of truth.

Support for managing student’s progression throughout their entire lifecycle

Monitoring a student's progress from a potential student to a graduate is a hard but important job. It is a significant task because it helps the institute to improve its ranking, to implement educational quality assurance processes, and to increase students’ satisfaction with the amenities provided to them when they are on campus and after their graduation from the institute.

CRM platforms make monitoring this progression simple through their various standard and customized automated flows, reports, and dashboards built over multiple systems.

Omnichannel Student Counselling and Advising

Customized academic programs are taking the place of the idea that one curriculum fits all students.

This is being implemented by HEI through reforms like a choice-based credit system, major and minor programs, multiple exit and entry, an academic bank of credits, and credit transfer. In this context, advising students is a mandatory task like teaching and examining to be carried out by institutes

CRM technology makes advising and counselling an omnichannel activity by adopting multiple channels and mediums of communication. It carries out advising through web-conferencing, chat-bots, scheduling personal meetings, creating success plans, self-help guides, and knowledge articles. It makes it easier to find topics that come up again and again and sends early warnings to students who are at risk.

Engaging students through different social media.

Post-pandemic learners entering graduate programs are more accustomed to using social media platforms in comparison with pre-pandemic learners. In a few cases, the habit of using social media turns into an addiction.

An innovative teacher can utilize this fact to engage learners in novel ways. CRM technology provides the features of the social studio for targeted marketing to businesses to catch their customers on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Sharing or advertising forthcoming quizzes, conducting polls, and special talks on these platforms can improve learners’ engagement with the institute.

Takeaways

1. Modern CRM platforms are for building relationships with all constituents.
2. By adopting CRM platforms, an educational institute can integrate all its existing systems and build a single source of truth.
3. CRM platforms can be effectively used for students' progression and increasing engagement through continuous monitoring and targeted attention.