Shifting to a CRM model that bridges departments across the university will have its complications, Wheeler said, because Indiana’s current data management model has created autonomous department chiefs who will now integrate with other decision makers.
“Officials are very empowered here, so this is a bit of a cultural change,” he said, calling the CRM implementation a “daunting undertaking… “Some have [become accustomed] to a departmental system and they’re not thinking about it as an enterprise system. … That means we have a lot of disparate data sources that we need to get our hands around.”
Timothy Gilbert, senior vice president of Campus Management, said college IT officials who have helped implement department-by-department CRM software have become more willing to examine a system-wide system that helps track a person through his or her entire relationship with a school, providing a more “holistic view of the student and employee life cycle.”
“More and more colleges and universities are envisioning CRM as a strategy to be utilized throughout the lifetime of their constituency,” Gilbert said.
Texas A&M University’s Kingsville (TAMUK) campus switched to a school-wide CRM system when officials there documented consistent struggles with managing student enrollment information.
Employees who headed new student outreach efforts had little communication with staffers from financial aid, admissions, and the registrar’s office, according to a TAMUK report. And a TAMUK office that handled international student admissions functioned separately from all other departments.
Bringing an enterprise CRM system to campus reportedly reduced late student applications by 10 percent and increased student applications by more than 200 percent.
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