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+1-480-382-1320Student Application Solution for Higher Education Case Study (Part 3)
Case Studies
Background
The client was introduced to Girikon by Salesforce staff thanks to Girikon’s expertise in implementing Salesforce for Education Industry and more specifically, higher education institutes. The client selected Salesforce Pardot to replace HubSpot in creating their landing pages, forms, email templates and digital engagement journeys. Girikon presented the solution based on the experience gained from implementing Salesforce for Education providers and was selected without much hesitation by the client to kick off the implementation.
Besides Pardot discovery, Girikon also conducted the discovery to prepare for the Salesforce rollout to other departments and faculties. After gathering requirements including students’ pain points, wishes and opportunities to improve, Girikon presented the student journey to the client. The client understood that Pardot could be used not only to capture the first step in the overall student journey but also to communicate directly with prospective students throughout the application and onboarding process.
Girikon worked with the clients’ IT department to develop the digital enablement strategy to implement an end-to-end solution for their student’s journey beginning from the prospective students’ enquiry to application, admission, offer, enrolment, onboarding and most importantly the support throughout their lifecycles as students and beyond
About the client
The client is a not-for-profit Higher Education Institution that recently celebrated 100 years of providing Biblically grounded, quality education and training.
The client is committed to its Baptist heritage; however, their community of students are from a wide range of denominations. The client aims to prepare students to apply studies within their profession, including ministry, teaching, mission, nursing, accountancy, building.
The client offers cutting-edge training in Bible, Ministry, Theology, Evangelism, Mission, Education, Counselling, Chaplaincy and Leadership development.
The client is currently undertaking a Digital Transformation Project. As a part of this project, they are trying to figure out a way to a more efficient way of doing everything. Key objectives include a review of the current digital ecosystem, current business processes, and adoption of a digital platform such as Salesforce to accommodate a 360-degree of the student throughout their journey, introduce key automation, and interoperability between their third-party systems.
The Problem
The client’s admission staff had to work on an enormous number of applications coming from students with diverse backgrounds. Each of these applications entailed working through a lot of documentation and criteria to assess a student. Besides, as staff members had to collaborate with others before making a final decision, with information stored in different systems, admission team members sometimes had difficulty in tracking the application process, resulting in spending a lot of time going back and forth to assess an application.
On the other side, some applicants might feel that their experience with the admission team was disconnected and that they lacked the support for them to be really confident in the process. The client’s team members always want to help applicants succeed but they did not have a clear view of a student in one place, an understanding of the journey the student was going through, or which stage the student was at, making it hard for them to be proactive.
1. Pain point associated with the Student Application Enquiry
- As the current enquiry process was managed using HubSpot, JotForm, and Paradigm (SMS), staff members found it difficult to make a proper sync of their prospective data with Salesforce.
2. Pain points associated with the Prospect Management
- The client did not have a prospect scoring system to prioritise important leads.
- The current setup did not provide them with reports and tracking of prospect activities on the website.
- Internal communication process and communication with prospective students were mainly manual.
3. Pain points associated with Student Application Assessment
- Staff members had to go back and forth with documents stored in different systems to double-check whether what the student filled in the form matches with their document supported.
- The current process of assessing students based on numerous criteria, including country of origin, age, marital status, English proficiency, and academic results manually was time-consuming.
- Also, a final decision on an application was only made after consulting multiple people, which was also be time-consuming without a system in place.
The solution
The answer to the problems is the Student Application Management Solution, a Salesforce Higher Education solution that Girikon worked alongside the client to develop.
From the perspective of the applicants, the Solution provides them with an intuitive form that is quick to fill and logical to follow but still ensures that the applicants fill in all the required information.
From the perspective of the admission team members, Student Application brings all students’ data in one place and enables them to track applications, work collaboratively, and save time.
- For Prospect Management, the Pardot forms and landing pages help the client easily capture the prospects and track their activities. The Prospect scoring system helps them prioritise their Prospects and nurture them accordingly.
- The current Enquiry system is streamlined, integrated, and synced with other related platforms used by the client.
- In the Salesforce Environment, the student admission team members can view all information about an application, including their personal and contact details, course information and education and employment history. They can compare that information with documents uploaded by the applicant, which are also conveniently stored in their Salesforce instance. The progress bar also indicates which stage the applicant is at during their application journey.
- Besides the Submit for Approval button, which helps team members collaborate on a single application, the Application Triage View enables team members to have a comprehensive view of all applications during a selected period. Priority Flag, Classification and Status allow staff to pay more attention to cases with priority, cases at risk or cases about to close, thus focusing effort on applicants that need more support.
- Admission Engine is also one of the star features that save team members plenty of time. Typically, an institute’s admission staff must go through the process of considering multiple parameters to classify applications based on risk levels, and the client was not an exception. That typical assessment process can be quite complicated and time-consuming, as visualised below:
Meanwhile, running the Admission Engine in Girikon’s Student Application Management Solution only takes seconds to classify an application.
- Thanks to Conga-Composer Implementation, when an application reaches the Conditional/Offered Stage, the system will automate the sending of a Conditional or Full Offer letter to the applicant. Also, Conga-Sign allows applicants to sign letters quickly online and updates admission staff when the letters are signed.
The Outcome
In summary, Girikon’s implementation of the Student Application Management Solution greatly improved the experience for both the client’s applicants and admission staff. Applicants can now save a lot of time filling the form, signing documents and waiting for application updates. They can also receive immediate attention as the Solution allows staff to prioritise important cases. On the other hand, as collaborative workflows have been established and many of the administrative tasks can be automated, staff members can process more applications in a shorter time while still establishing supportive relationships with applicants, leaving a positive impression on prospective students.
Customer Satisfaction
“As we were the first higher education institution in our region to adopt the EDA with the Student Success Hub (SSH), there was a lengthy scoping phase for this project. Girikon were excellent in assisting us with discovering our needs and how Salesforce could meet and exceed those needs.”
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