Varsities, colleges turn to CRM

Higher education institutions are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) technology solutions to differentiate themselves in a bid to compete more aggressively with one another to recruit and retain the “right” students. The overseas experience should contain lessons for South African and African institutions that are similarly competing to recruit students.

The report, CRM in the Higher Education Market by independent market analysts Datamonitor, predicts IT revenue from CRM solutions in the higher education markets of the US, UK, Germany, France and Australia will grow from $184.9 million in 2007 to $324.5 million in 2012. This growth will be driven by both the purchase of new solutions and the expansion of existing installations.

“CRM solutions enable colleges and universities to significantly improve the quality of their relationships with students at every point in the student lifecycle, from a prospective student applying for admission to an alumnus making a donation to the annual fund”, says Nicole Engelbert, Lead Analyst for Education Technology at Datamonitor and author of the study. “The next five years will see a dramatic increase in the number of institution-wide CRM implementations in higher education in the US and abroad.”

CRM enables institutions to create a 360° view of the student experience

Colleges and universities have historically targeted CRM to support specific processes, such as campaign management, in the admissions and development offices. Fuelled by developments in the consumer market, student expectations for institutional services are rising fast and prompting institutions to extend their view of CRM to include a larger and more diverse set of processes and departments.

“Institutions increasingly recognize the value of creating a 360° view of the student experience to their recruitment, retention and development initiatives”, says Engelbert. “By capturing data and information about each student interaction, CRM provides educators with powerful insight and tools to ensure that future interactions contribute to rather than detract from creating more positive relationships with students.”

While corporate-sector CRM solutions are a good start, higher education has unique requirements that must be addressed

Translating a corporate sector CRM solution into one that meets the specific needs of higher education is a far more complicated task than simply changing references to customers and sales to students and admissions in the end-user interface.

The degree to which CRM vendors have successfully made these changes varies considerably and has given rise to a large and diverse competitive landscape. The current landscape, however, is likely to evolve.

Engelbert concludes, “Over the short-term, there is ample room in the higher education market for a diverse set of CRM vendors. But with the increasing adoption of more sophisticated CRM strategies, enterprise-class applications with strong analytics and the ability to support the entire student lifecycle are likely to prevail as they are better suited to long-term institutional needs.”

The report

Datamonitor's report, CRM in the Higher Education Market examines the market, strategy and technology forces driving adoption of CRM solutions by higher education institutions as well as explores the nuances of the competitive landscape for vendors. This report also forecasts spending on CRM through 2012 by institutions in Australia, France, Germany, the US and UK.