Education institutions have evolved. Coming into the early 2000s, educational institutes adopted technology slowly by offering sophisticated computer labs for students to use, learn from, and benefit from the internet. As this became normal and students started to have their own devices, and the internet became more affordable, institutes evolved to using technology within the classrooms.
Fast forward to 2020, and schools had to be moved entirely online. While virtual classes haven’t been a strange concept for over a decade now, there were still significant challenges in moving the entire infrastructure online. The internet infrastructure, for one, is not universally accessible, nor is it on par across all regions.
While everyone accommodated the new ways of learning, the challenges on the administrative side of it were significant.
Schools faced challenges with graduation, keeping their doors open to alums, holding any kind of events, maintaining any of their clubs, and so on. All they could successfully manage was conducting classes. But just classes are not enough for anyone to get a rounded education.
Now that in-person schools are back on, many of these challenges are somewhat solved, but there is still room for streamlining all these elements so that educational institutes can get ahead rather than play catch up with the changing world.
This is where a Salesforce for education comes into play. Salesforce Education Cloud is a robust tool with layered, careful architecture to serve all entities involved.
Each segment has its relationships mapped out for itself, intersecting where required. Let’s see that better.
From the Student’s perspective:
The student is the primary contact, so their relationships are parents, tutors, program advisors, academic advisors, and resident assistants. The student also has affiliations: their previous academic institution, clubs they are enrolled in, and their courses, as well as their internships (if/when they pursue them).
From the program’s perspective:
Within a school, there are numerous majors, which further break down into core papers, minors, and electives, which then further have papers based on the year.
The school can set up this entire hierarchy with Salesforce Education Cloud.
Let’s look at the workflow as operated from a student’s point of view:
Application for a course:
A student has to create an application account. The next step is to fill out all the required fields that make up their profile. This includes personal information, contact details, education details and so on. For education details, they also have to submit their official documents from previous schools, recommendation letters, and the course they want to apply to. While submitting the application, they also have to pay an application fee, which is managed by a payment gateway integrated within the portal.
Once this application is submitted, it goes for review. Within the review process, the reviewing authority might want to set up an interview with the applicant. This can be either in person or virtual. Salesforce for universities provides a feature to enable this. The applicant would receive an email to check their application portal for an invite or a booking link for the interview. Once the interview is done, the application remains under review for anything else that needs to be checked, after which it is either accepted or rejected.
If accepted, the applicant again gets an email to check their application portal for the decision. When they do that, the decision has an offer letter. Once the student accepts that offer, their account converts to a student account which gives them the required pages for picking classes, paying fees, etc.
Student account:
As an applicant converts to a student, their role on the CRM side changes, giving them the student access to the institute over that of a guest/applicant user. Once they are a student, they have access to their course details because they will now have to choose their minors, electives, and so on. They will also have to select their classes based on credits and semester requirements. Once they select the classes, they can pay for the term.
Additionally, schools often require students to have a few basic health checks in place as well as vaccines. Students can upload their vaccine certificates in the portal, which the school can then verify.
This was the basic interaction a student has within the portal. After this there is much more that can be done. Salesforce for schools also includes event management. Whenever there is any school event, like a field trip, and the like, students can get those details in their account and they can register for the event from it.
Apart from that, there are also clubs at any school, like an astronomy club, chess club, and so on. These clubs can also be managed within the education portal. Students can sign up, attend meetings and events, etc.
The student account is a place for the student to get all the information and support about their course, activities, etc.
They can also manage student housing details, meal memberships, and funds from this account.
Miscellaneous uses:
- Manage ID card details
- Manage attendance
- In-house medical details and interactions
- Manage assignments, and test scores
- External scholarships
- Manage Internships
Alumnus account:
Once the student graduates, they no longer need the kind of account that a student has. However, they need a standard interaction point from which they can be connected to the college and the entire alum community.
The alum account also lets them give back to the school in terms of donations and connections. The school provides industry connections as well as connections to alums who are willing via the portal.
Salesforce for education thus becomes a well-rounded tool for schools as it lets them streamline all interaction points with a student from the minute they apply to the school to much beyond their graduation.
Salesforce Education Cloud can be a perfect Learning Management System (LMS) where learning can be end-to-end digitalized and streamlined from enrollment and progress to its effectiveness for the candidates.
About CRMJetty:
CRMJetty has years of experience working with the Salesforce platform. If you’re looking to revolutionize your school to take it to the next level, hire Salesforce developers from us who can configure your Salesforce Education Cloud LMS so you can streamline your institution.
Not only does it help smooth workflows, but it also helps analyze patterns, enrollment rates, donation rates, plan campaigns, and so on.
We have certified Salesforce developers with 2 to 5+ years of experience and a well-planned interview process for you to onboard them. Within 24 hours, you can have a team ready to work on your project.
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