Higher EdInsight

Yes… alpha­bet soup for sure so let’s clar­ify. WHAT YOU NEED IS WHAT YOU GET CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT for HIGHER EDUCATION. So what does this mean? Let’s start with what’s hap­pen­ing in higher edu­ca­tion… at least from a very high level perspective.

Today’s Higher Education lead­ers are fac­ing dizzy­ing change in the demo­graph­ics they serve and the envi­ron­ment in which they deliver. They must pro­vide higher lev­els of ser­vice demanded by an increas­ingly sophis­ti­cated, dis­cern­ing, and tech savvy stu­dents. They face intense com­pe­ti­tion in a glob­ally flat mar­ket. They must man­age inter­nal stake­hold­ers, who are reluc­tant to embrace change. They must sat­isfy exter­nal stake­hold­ers, who have increas­ingly aggres­sive expec­ta­tions for insti­tu­tional account­abil­ity. And they must do all of this with dimin­ish­ing direct fund­ing, while cut­ting expenses and tight­en­ing bud­gets. It’s a tall order! So… for today’s higher edu­ca­tion lead­ers, oper­at­ing in this envi­ron­ment on a “busi­ness as usual” approach will ensure one thing… insti­tu­tional extinction.

According to indus­try analyst’s who study the higher edu­ca­tion mar­ket, the need to change is here and now. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “the num­ber of US sec­ondary school grad­u­ates will start declin­ing in 2010 and reduce the pool of qual­i­fied prospec­tive stu­dents. Furthermore, the set of edu­ca­tional options avail­able to tra­di­tional and non-​traditional stu­dents has expanded greatly, neces­si­tat­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of insti­tu­tional value more effec­tively in order to stand out from the prover­bial crowd. When tak­ing these fac­tors together in a con­text of flat or declin­ing insti­tu­tional bud­gets, a clear argu­ment for the more per­va­sive adop­tion of CRM begins to emerge.” Datamonitor, 2009 Trends to Watch: Education Technology

So, in light of the changes ahead for higher edu­ca­tion, it does seem likely that CRM will now be embraced as a pri­or­ity. The chal­lenge of course is the def­i­n­i­tion of CRM which can be every­thing from email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns to con­tact man­age­ment over the web to enter­prise stu­dent life­cy­cle man­age­ment. Deciding what CRM is sup­posed to be is almost as daunt­ing as the pain CRM intends to solve. A highly selec­tive uni­ver­sity in the UK with an over abun­dance of appli­ca­tions requires a dif­fer­ent approach from a State col­lege in the US that finds itself star­ing at a 5 year decline in appli­ca­tions and enrollment.

In my next blog let’s con­sider the prag­mat­ics of acquir­ing and imple­ment­ing CRM and the notion of “what you need is what you get”.