Last week, Campus Technology ran the first part of an interview with Nicole Engelbert, Lead Analyst at Datamonitor, on “CRM Pushing into New Areas of Higher Ed” (Part 2 of that interview will appear this week). As some of you know, Nicole was the keynote speaker at Personify Education 2008, the Intelliworks users conference, and many of the points mentioned in the interview were consistent with her presentation, including

1. In higher education, [CRM] means automating recruiting steps like generating and coordinating letters, calls and emails, tracking marketing efforts, and collecting customer service information.

2. Only a third of colleges and universities have any sort of CRM solution in place.

3. Datamonitor predicts a steep CRM adoption rate in higher education over the next six to 24 months.

Perhaps the interesting point, however, was Nicole’s assessment of the growing role of constituent relationship management (CRM) software in higher education, and her belief that it will push into new areas of higher education (i.e. beyond enrollment and admissions). I completely agree with this view. However, there are a few things that need to happen before this dream can become a reality. One of the main ones that companies such as Intelliworks can control is the manner in which CRM (or as we call it: relationship management) solutions work with other systems on campus.

In fact, I gave a presentation in July at Bb World 2008 (Blackboard’s Users Conference) in Las Vegas that outlined the Intelliworks vision of this new landscape for CRM in higher education. In order for CRM to become an increasingly important part of institutions’ system architecture, these systems must “play well with others.” 

Specifically, they need to interoperate with all of the most important systems that institutions use to manage their operations. We believe that three of these systems are especially noteworthy:

• Student Information Systems : As you know, SIS are the main “systems of record” that manage the business of institutions. They address such areas as student registrations, financial aid, degree audit, billing / invoicing, and housing. They are absolutely critical to managing the student experience once a student enrolls and are the most obvious point of intersection with an institution’s relationship management solution. Specifically, a “front-end” CRM that is focused on inquiry management, marketing & outreach, and communications with prospective students must make it easy for information to be passed back and forth with the SIS, as students progress from “prospects” to enrolled students.

• Learning Management Systems : These systems are also nearly ubiquitous at colleges and universities, and they focus on delivering online courses / content, facilitating student interaction, and reinforcing the learning community. Surprisingly, their connection to CRM has been almost completely unexplored (to our knowledge). This was actually the crux of my presentation at Bb World, where I demonstrated Intelliworks’ ability to integrate with Blackboard’s Learning System. We believe this type of integration is going to become increasingly critical in the future. Why? Together these systems facilitate not only the online learning environment, but also help institutions efficiently and effectively execute the increasingly important tasks associated with attracting, enrolling, and retaining prospective students. Specifically, this integration enables the passing of course registrations from the CRM into Blackboard, as well as the communication of important credentials back from the LMS into Intelliworks. This, in turn, enables communications with these students based on a student’s performance and class-room experience. One industry analyst expressed to me after the Bb World presentation the opinion that this interoperability would become extremely important and powerful in the months and years ahead. Much more on this in the future.

• Web Sites and Interactive Properties : It is no surprise that today’s prospective students do much of their research about colleges and universities online; and once they become students, they consume many of an institution’s services in the same way. They do so via websites, social networks, self-service portals and help-desks, and many other avenues. To facilitate great service to all different types of constituents, a CRM must interact seamlessly and intelligently with them. Specifically, web-sites that incorporate CRM technology allow institutions to effectively collect information about the prospects that inquire about their programs and facilitate thoughtful, efficient, and context-sensitive responses to those inquiries. They also allow institutions to reach out to interested students in the domain that is native to these aspiring students. Again, this is a major area of focus for Intelliworks and one that I’ll talk about more fully in future posts.

You can see the slides to my Bb World presentation below:

At Intelliworks, we’re actually avoiding the typical “corporate vision” where we see our solution sitting smack in the middle of the universe, with all other systems hanging somewhere off to the side. Rather, we think that CRM plays a pivotal role, along with SIS, LMS, and web properties. At the heart of them all, as I explain in my presentation, is the student (or a learner, or community member). Taken together, along with institutions’ visionary leadership and tactical execution, these systems can truly enable a cohesive and powerful experience throughout a student’s interaction with a school.

Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to Part 2 of the Campus Technology’s interview with Nicole.