AuthOr: Vishal Jindal - HCL Technologies · WHITEPAPER JUNE 2014. ... 360 STUDENT RELATIONSHIP MANAEMENT OR HIHER EUCATION JUNE 2014 ... through external agencies etc. However, there

WHITEPAPER JUNE 2014

www.hcltech.com

This paper focuses on how Educational institutes can increase their customer retention and attract brighter students by implementing an all-encompassing Student Experience Management platform.

AuthOr:

Vishal JindalSME – HCL’s Education & Publishing vertical

360° STUDENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION | JUNE 2014

© 2014, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

CONTENTS

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3

Industry and market pressures: Gartner’s Nexus of Forces .................................. 3

Higher education industry challenges.................................................................... 4

Multiple players – aligned towards a single goal – customer centricity ................. 4

Stakeholder lifecycle – changing roles and experiences ....................................... 5

Nexus impact on the student lifecycle – Social, Mobile, Data, Cloud, and IoT ...... 7

Scenario One – College/ Course Marketing Campaign Lifecycle.......................... 7

Scenario Two – Enrollment .................................................................................... 8

Scenario Three – Student Performance Identification and Intervention ................ 9

Conclusion – Capabilities Summary ...................................................................... 9

About the Author ................................................................................................. 10

About HCL ........................................................................................................... 11



INTRODUCTION Educational institutes have traditionally used CRM systems for acquisition and enrollment of students. However, when it comes to preventing student churn, these systems are ineffective. Moreover, CRM systems are largely tools for the sales team and they ignore the role that the faculty or alumni can play to close the leads. The environment has also completely changed, with prospective students more likely to hangout in social channels, from where the real leads are generated.

So, is the college sales team listening? What role can IT play in enabling them? Can relationship building extend to the student experience? How can college administrators effectively intervene and prevent students leaving in between the courses? How can big data, mobile and social technologies help? These are some of the questions, which this white paper attempts to answer. In the changed ecosystem, disruptive technologies can play a vital role in helping institutes connect with their students outside the learning cycle and create a win-win situation for all the stakeholders including administrators, students, parents and teachers.

INDUSTRY AND MARKET PRESSURES: GARTNER’S NEXUS OF FORCESThe impact of SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) technologies on businesses is well known. It is even more significant when the CRM system is going to deal with students. If Facebook was a nation, it would be the third largest country in the world and it would become the largest in the next two years. Hence, it is important to recognize the importance of the evolving ecosystem while designing any customer acquisition strategy.

Gartner defines Social, Mobile, Data, Internet of Things and Cloud as the new nexus of forces that will disrupt the world. For example, most institutes rely on old-fashioned methods for student acquisition such as education fairs, direct mailing, list generation through external agencies etc. However, there is a need to look at other channels because mobile phones have 95% penetration in the student segment and most of them are active on Facebook or LinkedIn.



Having established the challenges posed by the changes in the consumer behavior, let us have a look at the challenges posed by the industry.

HIGHER EDUCATION INDUSTRY CHALLENGESThe business of education, in general, follows an inverse cyclic process. In the last few years, economic recovery has actually put pressure on educational institutions as positive economic conditions encourage people to work rather than focus on upgrading their skills. Similarly, government policies on federal funding or restriction on foreign students can anytime make life difficult for institutes. In this environment, the main challenges are the following:

y Increasing student retention and the number of graduating students with successful outcomes – Attracting more and better talent, improving the experience and enabling better results

y Increasing enrolment, reducing the cost of lead generation and improving the rate of closure

y Improving the productivity of sales and marketing, by focusing on qualified opportunities with the highest probability of success

y Transitioning exiting students to lifelong learners, alumni engagement and collaboration for staying in touch with the industry needs

y Improving access and affordability for all the students, enabling bundling and dynamic pricing of programs, personalizing programs and offering students incentives for better performance

y Developing education related products and services that are not dependent on government funding, utilizing analytics to create better services, incorporating feedback from all valuable stakeholders including students, teachers, employers and parents

y Reinforcing the institution brand image positively, enabling marketing programs across social, print or online channels, improving experience at all touch points

y Fostering a culture of engaged and motivated faculty and staff, providing them with better growth, training and learning opportunities

This paper focuses on the approach, business and IT teams must take for the successful implementation of CRM in educational institutes with the goal of influencing the challenges listed above.

MULTIPLE PLAYERS – ALIGNED TOWARDS A SINGLE GOAL – CUSTOMER CENTRICITYIn the education scenario, students are the customers, but the supporting cast such as the faculty/teachers is very important as well. The faculty can play an important role in turning around a joining decision for a prospect, by writing a forceful blog or interacting with the student directly and educating them on the various options. Similarly students in the study process or the alumni can perform the same role and



help the sales team to improve the enrollment rate. While everyone works for the student, they have their own goals to manage as well. For example, the sales team need to manage their leads and provided with appropriate research on the prospects. The faculty has to manage their careers and qualifications. While the core functions are handled by separate systems, the relationship management system enables the stakeholders to manage their tasks. Similarly, administrators can be provided with a dashboard on all the students, which would help them to track their inclination to stay put in their respective courses by analyzing the data that comes from a multitude of systems including the student information system or the learning portals.

The importance of catering to multiple stakeholders listed in the table below can never be over emphasized.

StakeholderInstitute Goals for the Stakeholder Student Centric Functions

Sales Rep/ Sales support

Meet targets, maximize revenue, high service level and student conversion

Provide correct information, help select courses, connect with the teachers, students and the alumni

Faculty Meet student outcomes, credentialing, training, and career management

Mentor, guide and advise, on academic and non-academic choices

Employer Qualified talent pool, latest research, and partnership

Guest lectures, inform students about the industry and the opportunity for joint industry research

Parents/ Guardian

Track student learning, feedback from the faculty, and financial support enablement

Dashboard to track progress, connect with financial institutions, students and faculty

Admin Manage programs, ensure smooth processes, take preventive and corrective actions

Ensure implementation of student friendly policies, identify individuals who need help, facilitate good academic and non-academic experience

Alumni Connect with alma mater, and contribute to the success of the institute

Mentor and advise prospective students, participate in events, bring industry involvement, and help in placements

Understanding the stakeholders and their respective goals will help us to design a system that is student centric and cater to everyone’s needs.

STAKEHOLDER LIFECYCLE – CHANGING ROLES AND EXPERIENCESEvery stakeholder has a lifecycle, and undergoes different phases. The image below illustrates the lifecycle of a student, faculty and an administrator.



Student Prospect Experience

Orientation Experience

Academic Experience Alumni ExperienceNon-academic Experience

Faculty Recruting Experience

On-boarding Experience

Career Development ExperienceEx-faculty ExperienceTransaction/Interaction/Classroom

Experience

Admin Recruiting Experience

On-boarding Experience

Career Development Experience Ex-employee ExperienceTransaction/Interaction Experience

The needs of the stakeholders evolve with every stage and exert different demands on the system. For example, when studying, the system is required to generate appropriate interventions if there is a possibility of the student leaving the institute. Similarly, during orientation, the student should be able to transact, select the courses and maybe pay the fees online.

The relationship management system should capture multi-dimensional experiences at any one point of time namely brand, content, transactional, analytical and communications.

A snapshot of these dimensions, which are the functionalities/ features of the system, across the lifecycle of the stakeholders is given below.

ATTRACT & ENGAGE ENROLL STUDENT PLACEMENT ALUMNI

EDUCATION LIFECYCLE

ROLES/ACTORS

STUDENT

SALES REP

FACULTY

PARENTS/GUARDIAN

ADMIN

Social conversations N channel campaigns SEO/ SEM

Application Filing Payments Interactive Course Catalog

Performance tracking Experience Feedback Exchange with students

Placement training Job board Interview process

tracking & results

Social connect Placements Guest faculty

Schedule management Target segments Bundle suggestions Research

Facilitator Suggest the right course Price recommendation

Get student friendrecommendations

Visibility toplacement progress

Market feedbackas input to sales

Social conversations College comparisons Financial plan support

Payments Financial planning

Trackingstudent performance

Staff collaboration

Visibility toplacement progress

Invitation tograduation/ events

Course planning Facility readiness Catalog preparation

Data feeds Payment processing Billing and receipts

Collect feedback Facility management

Placement management Alumni management Records maintenance

Hangout sessionswith prospects

Input to sales

Mentoring Faculty training Student feedback

Counseling/ Mentoring Training

Alumni networking Collaboration platforms

Faculty recruitment Class allocations Career planning

Similarly, the dimensions should be captured at every level of the lifecycle, creating enough data points to generate insightful knowledge and appropriate action.

The requirements should be captured for end-to-end lifecycle featuring all the stakeholders as illustrated above. It is interesting to see how interactions happen between pairs of stakeholders – students and teachers, sales and prospects, alumni and students, faculty and parents, admin and students and so on.

It is also the time to map technologies to the identified feature set. These technologies will enable the functions to come to life. How will sales interface with the students?



Should there be an online chat? Alternatively, should the prospects send emails to the administrators? The nexus of technology forces seem to make everything possible.

NEXUS IMPACT ON THE STUDENT LIFECYCLE – SOCIAL, MOBILE, DATA, CLOUD, AND IOTThe picture, given below, attempts to map the required feature set to the Mobile, Data and Social technologies. The lifecycle is more detailed during the ‘Attract and Engage’ phase, which is broken up into lead generation, application, eligibility and orientation phases. This is done to address all nuances of the enrollment cycle. ‘Creating a successful student’ phase is equally important, because it is necessary to retain them.

STU

DEN

T LI

FEC

YCLE

Appointment Set Application Received Acceptance Class Start Graduation Employed

Lead Generation& Inquiry Visit & Apply

Financial &AcademicEligibility

Orientation& Scheduling

Creating aSuccessful

StudentEmployment Alumni

DA

TASO

CIA

LM

OB

ILE

Brand TrendCareer TrendCandidate ScoreUp Sell/Cross Sell

Sentiment Trend

Application & Status Campus BuddyOrientation Scheduling

The new Portal

Sentiment TrendStruggling Student Identification

Job IdentificationJob Trending

Job Opportunity Alerts Forever Friends

Personalized Program / Scholarship Identification

Counselor Enablement

Digital CampaignsAgent Training

Lead GenerationMarketing Campaigns

Appointment RemindersVisit InformationSentiment

Channels of Engagement

Broaden the conversationAlumni MentorshipFaculty Mentorship

Process Engagement Employer InteractionsInterview Competition

Reminders

Outcome Trend Engagement Trend

The term data refers to the big data/ analytics/ data layer, which is the call for action or for understanding how the process is faring against the goal or KPI (Key Performance Indicator) set for it. Some of the popular KPIs measured are institute brand, enrolment and churn probability, prospect and student profiling, job probability etc.

The social and mobile technologies are used to utilize the already existing user habits of mobile and social apps. Applications, which have familiar user interface, breed usage and interactivity. There can be social conservations between sales and prospects, teachers and prospects, teachers and students, alumni and students. The social apps are supported by a data layer, which is used to analyze and detect patterns in this maze of conversations.

This paper illustrates through three scenarios the end-to-end implementation of the concepts discussed so far.

SCENARIO ONE – COLLEGE/ COURSE MARKETING CAMPAIGN LIFECYCLEA new course is being launched, after receiving inputs from the industry and the faculty. The administrators create a course launch plan in the system including the release day, launch events, training schedule, and webinars.



Course Launch

Traditional AdvertisingWord-of-mouth/Education fair/

Magazines/News Papers

Web Landing Page

Sales team with Interactive content on key

aspects of the courseSocial Media Page, LinkedIn Poll

Video Testimonials by Alumni, Corporates, Analysts

Social Listening

Publish Voice of Customer on

Social Channels, Corporate website Publish Course ROI Analysis

to management

Launch and Aware Educate and Spread Establish and Grow

Digital Advertisingemail/Web/

Social channelsReviews & feedbacks

Modify the course based on reliable reviews

Campaign withinTarget Market

Course Promotion

Integrated customer viewLead generation to closure

Channels toprofessionally

promote courseAlumni, Corporate,

Ex-faculty, Publishers

Listen

AnalyzePublish

The launch is preceded by campaigns on Facebook, banner ads on the education portals, LinkedIn page and even tweets on the micro blogging site Twitter. A webinar is conducted to officially launch the course, and collect leads. Similarly, the sales team participates in an education fair, and collects lead. The leads collected by all the sources go into a common database where it is evaluated for eligibility and joining probability. Meanwhile, training is conducted for the sales team and the faculty. The alumni are also informed through emails, Facebook, and alumni web pages. The leads are tracked to closure. The course begins; testimonials and feedback from the students are posted on the website and on Facebook. As the course becomes popular, appropriate feedback mechanisms are created through sentiment analysis of the social channels, reviews from the industry and the alumni.

SCENARIO TWO – ENROLLMENT

http://www.brownmackie.edu

http://www.brownmackie.edu

Set evening time with Prospect

QualifiedLead

“Sales Agent”Joe

30 mins.

Social

Reviewed Brown Mackie, Like it!

Read Reviews/ Communities“Question about

Accounting course with knowledge of software”

Interactive demo of

Course and Institutes

Customized CourseBundle

Offer Discount

CustomerInsight

EVENING MEETING

“Sales Agent”Joe

Capture > Qualify > Convert

Institute selection

Done

Analytics

CRM Course Catalogue

MarketResearch

Personalized Content

Alumni Testimonial

How do we increase the conversion rate? Analytics can solve this classic lead management problem. This scenario elaborates the use of analytics to create personalization and increase the conversion rate. Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are still effective methods for increasing the traffic to the website or the mobile app. Once a visitor registers on the website, a lead can be profiled and appropriate content displayed. A prospect can be shown testimonials from existing students. An online



chat can open up and enable the prospect to discuss his/her needs with the agent. The agent will set up a meeting with the sales agent within the next 30 minutes. The time can be used to conduct a research on the prospect from various sources including previous interactions, social media behavior and the discussion with the chat agent. The sales agent is ready with his demonstration for the online course, and even creates a customized course for the student. Such proactivity and preparation helps close the lead quickly.

SCENARIO THREE – STUDENT PERFORMANCE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERVENTIONThis is a compelling use case, because enabling a student complete the course is probably more important than acquiring a student. In the current environment of economic and cultural disparities, it can become difficult for a student to continue.

5

Student PerformanceDashboard

Admin

Counseling services

PotentialRemedial

Candidates

StudentLearning

portal

Learning Analytics

Personalize Content, Remediation Financial waiver, other assistance

Review performance

AcademicIssues

FinancialIssues

DepressionStress

Parents-Teacher meet

HealthConcerns

Retained Tracked for

future counseling

A

D

B

C

A

C

A

C

A

C

Continuous monitoring of the performance and feedback from teachers, peers and the student can be used to track signs of any possible churn. Based on criteria such as minimum score, behavior analysis, participation etc., students can be categorized into various degrees of churn possibility, and handled accordingly. Interventions can be both systemic and manual, and in most cases manual interventions yield the best results. The students are tracked and monitored until the churn score improves. This can also be a good method to measure the performance of the intervention methods.

CONCLUSION – CAPABILITIES SUMMARYEducation, specifically higher education, is passing through an uncertain period. Rising costs and fluctuations in the governmental policy has made it tough for the institutes. The way forward is to focus on the student. Technology provides a means for focusing on those who need education and presenting it in a way that creates the highest impact.



Finance Mgt

Course Comparison

Mobile Apps

Alumni

Faculty

Admin

Student

Parent

Employer

Placement Schedule

Lead Management

Telemarketing

Ecommerce/ payments

SEO/ SEM

Campaign ROI

Loyalty Management

Sales Rep Schedule Mgt

Document Mgt

Content Mgt

Social Sentiment Analysis

Enrollment Prediction

Churn prediction

Collection Analysis

Course Personalization

Financial Prediction

Product Enhancement

Student Performance

Marketing Effectiveness

SELF SERVICE

Application Mgt

Fee Calculator

MARKETING & ADMISSIONS

Emails/ SMS/ Mobile/ online

Campaign Management

INSIGHTS/ INFERENCES

Prospect Analysis

Price recommendation

COLLABORATION SYSTEMS

Chat Platforms

Social CRM

Instant Messaging/ Chats

Crowdsourcing

Advisory/ Mentoring

DATA SOURCES

Student Score

Campaign response

Fees/ Payment

Alumni

External Data

Student profile

Employer

Course/ Curriculum

Placement

Faculty

The key to building a comprehensive and robust relationship management system for the students is to follow the technology trends of the day:

y Collaboration/ Social ecosystem – Platforms for entities to talk to each other such as chat platforms, enterprise collaboration tools, public social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn

y Marketing Automation & Student hub – CRM, campaign management, segmentation and targeting, and lead management

y Mobile Apps/ Portals – Self-service portals for students, parents, and the faculty

y Insights/ Analytics – Ability to detect patterns and predict events

Supporting the data layer, bringing in intelligence from all parts of the institute – student information system, learning systems, customer care, external data, placement data and lastly but not least industry data.

Once the technology building blocks are in place, it is up to the stakeholders to execute the program.

ABOUT THE AUTHORVishal K Jindal is a Senior Business Solutions Consultant with the Education and Publishing vertical at HCL Technologies. With special interest in emerging technologies and their impact on publishing, Vishal has been actively working with some of the HCL’s top education and publishing clients on their consumer side digital experiences, supply chain and cloud strategies.

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ABOUT HCL

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its emergence on global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL has focused on ‘transformational outsourcing’, underlined by innovation and value creation, offering an integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and Business services. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 31 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare & Life Sciences. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of ‘Employees First, Customers Second’ which empowers its 90,190 transformers to create real value for the customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 5.2 billion, as on 31st March 2014 (on LTM basis). For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com

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HCL is a $6.5 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two companies listed in India – HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India’s original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of over 95,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 31 countries including over 505 points of presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading global 1000 firms, including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please visit www.hcl.com

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AuthOr: Vishal Jindal - HCL Technologies · WHITEPAPER JUNE 2014. ... 360 STUDENT RELATIONSHIP MANAEMENT OR HIHER EUCATION JUNE 2014 ... through external agencies etc. However, there