Nick Zinser, Director of Enrollment Systems at Northeastern University, shares insights on how they are using Salesforce to achieve a culture of success.
Northeastern University boosts campus collaboration and student success with Salesforce
1. Student Success: Creating a System of
Engagement using Salesforce!
Nicholas Zinser, Director of Enrollment Systems!
Northeastern University!
@nzinser!
1
3. Northeastern University – An Overview!
• Founded in 1898, Northeastern is the sixth-largest private university in the
United States
– Received the largest number of undergraduate applications in 2011.
• Our core tenets include
– Experiential Learning
– Interdisciplinary/Translational Research
– Urban Engagement
• Located in the heart of Boston where Back Bay, The Fenway, The South
End, and Roxbury meet
• Scene from last Saturday morning
– Instagram.com/Northeastern
3
4. Northeastern & Salesforce!
• Implemented Salesforce in 2006 for Advancement/Alumni
– Within 18 months, student-focused projects were being proposed and
implemented
• Currently, there are nearly 600 CRM Users across all University divisions
• Person Account implementation, 60% of our custom field limit currently
used
• Integrations are a core tenet of our Salesforce success
– Banner ERP
– Exchange
– Blackboard
– SQL Server databases
• Turned the enrollment funnel upside down
– Started with alumni
– Moved to current students
– Now beginning to focus on applicants and inquiries/leads
4
5. Student Success!
• Retention is what we think of when discussing student success in terms of
persistence to graduation!
– We want our retention to look like this:! First-‐Year
Reten-on
120.00%
100.00%
80.00%
60.00%
First-‐Year
Reten8on
40.00%
20.00%
0.00%
2008
2009
2010
2011
– It probably looks more like this:! First-‐Year
Reten-on
96.0%
95.0%
94.0%
First-‐Year
93.0%
Reten8on
92.0%
91.0%
2008
2009
2010
2011
5
6. Salesforce & Student Focused Projects!
• Northeastern lacked the capacity to effectively identify and intervene with
students who showed signs of poor academic performance, attendance, or
other issues in a timely, consistent manner across campus!
– Every percentage point increase in the rate of graduation is worth $1 million to
the University!
– A solution was needed to help identify and intervene with students who
matriculate and then find themselves unable to adjust to the academic rigors of
higher education!
6
7. Salesforce & Student Focused Projects!
• The College of Engineering (COE) developed a system in 2001 to provide
a safety net for freshman engineering students!
– Technical and security issues made scaling this to a university-wide solution
impractical if not impossible!
• A basic pilot application was put in place for Fall 2005 across all colleges
for select freshmen-level courses!
– Faculty were asked to use both the university-wide (feature poor) and
engineering applications (feature rich) for students!
• The university chose to deploy a new, expanded application for the Fall
2007 term to cover all undergraduate students!
– Received a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation!
– Salesforce was chosen as the application platform!
7
8. Salesforce & Student Focused Projects!
• Salesforce provided the platform to meet many of the critical success
factors as defined by a user task force made up of faculty, advisors, and
administrators!
– Web-based, user-friendly tool that is highly customizable!
– Easily integrated to provide visibility to near real-time data updates!
– Ability to track and view student interactions !
– Allow for the ability to increase communication between faculty and advisors!
– Automatic email based on database triggers, customizable by college!
– Easy-to-use, real-time reporting!
8
9. Strategies To Improve Student Success!
• The goal is to have the students persist to graduation!
– Continue the affinity for your institution!
• Campus collaboration becomes key to this success!
– Faculty have a role based upon classroom observation!
– Staff have a role from advising and service perspectives!
– Data stewards can help provide data to support these efforts!
• Salesforce has been the key element for us in this success over the last
4+ years!
9
10. Advisors & Salesforce!
• A series of applications have been deployed in Salesforce to empower
Advisors with a common set of data and functionality!
– Faculty Advisor Communication Tool (FACT)!
– Advisor Notes!
– Appointment Calendar!
• While originally targeted just to academic advisors, some tools are
applicable to other types of advisors!
– Career Services Advisors!
– Co-op Advisors!
– Disability Resource Center Specialists!
• Salesforce provides the foundation for these apps to change the way we
do business!
10
11. Faculty Advisor Communication Tool (FACT)!
• Northeastern launched FACT to a small sample of first-year courses to
evaluate its impact on early intervention from academic advisors!
– UI was a separate app from our existing LMS!
– Creates a case for Advisors to act upon!
– Standard Salesforce CRM functionality (Notes, Attachments, Tasks) are used
to support this endeavour!
• Rebuilt FACT UI in Blackboard in Summer 2012!
– Easier to use for all faculty!
• Meets the faculty where they are – in the LMS!
– Became a textbook use of the Service Cloud!
• FACT case submissions have increased!
– Retention has increased during this time period!
11
12. Advisor Notes!
• Rather than use Cases as the sole method of tracking interactions with
students, the Advisor Notes project created a separate list for creating
entries!
• Allows for some categorization and some free text entry to makes notes
on a student appointment!
12
13. Appointment Calendar!
• Helps link the student to their advisor!
– Web app behind our myNEU student portal!
– Advisor creates blocks of time in Outlook for student appointments!
– Creates a profile in Salesforce and calendar entries sync!
13
14. Creating the System of Engagement!
• These 3 services helped change our use of Salesforce to create what is
known as the “System of Engagement”!
• A different term than a normal ERP description!
– “System of Record”!
• Tracks interactions and alerts!
– Provides a different type of metric!
– Brings structure to unstructured data!
• Fosters two-way communication between parties!
– Faculty to Advisor!
– Advisor to Student!
– Advisor to Advisor!
14
15. Salesforce – The Usable ERP!
• Another key element to student success can be found in Salesforce itself!
• As advisors and other administrators began to use Salesforce, the
integrations built to support specific applications took on greater
importance!
– FACT!
– Travel Registry / Crisis Management Team!
– Parent Office!
– Appointment Calendar!
– Graduate Advising!
• Northeastern went live with Banner Student in Fall 2009!
• Salesforce became the de facto ERP due to the large amount of
integrated data!
– Transactional information still occurring in Banner!
• Speed and access to data drive better student interactions !
15
16. The System of Engagement!
• Salesforce allows us to build this type of system by leveraging differing
case types!
– FACT Case!
– We Care Case!
– DRC Case!
• Data integration can be done once, then assigned appropriately through
Profiles!
– Student data from our ERP!
– Other web form systems (SQL Databases, etc.)!
• Remains minimally transactional at this time!
– Mostly a one-way integration from the source system to Salesforce!
16
17. Social Media Monitoring!
• Engagement can also be tracked across Social Media using tools such as
Salesforce Radian6!
• Provides a new outlet to engage your students!
– Meets the students where they are!
• Remember when we said that about e-mail?!
• If a solution to a problem increases student satisfaction, can it lead to
student success?!
• Engagement can be a fine line to walk!
– Once you start, you must continue!
– No need to comment on every post!
• Don’t feed the trolls!
– Though you may have the tools, avoid being Big Brother!
17
18. Data Stewardship!
• Data Stewardship Council created as part of Northeastern’s ERP
implementation!
– Representatives from all key data systems across the University!
• Facilitated by our Data Administration team!
– Focuses on documenting data uses across systems!
– In-depth discussions on different system uses of data!
– Provides standard terminology for systems to use!
• Shift in traditional “data owner” model!
– Sometimes ownership is dictated by regulation!
– Sometimes it is dictated by institutional history!
• Stewardship puts the onus on the system owner to provide meaningful
contextualized data to others for use!
• Northeastern is 18 months into our new Data Governance model!
– Progress has been made!
– Still have many more areas to explore!
18
19. Traditional Student Outcomes – The Data!
• Student retention has remained on an upward trajectory!
• Since 2008, first-year student retention has improved over 4%!
– Helping students to persist became everyone’s focus!
• In the same time period, the 5-year graduation rate increased as well!
– Given the work we do with Co-op and entrepreneurship, this represents hard
work in driving affinity for Northeastern, not just a degree!
• Remember that many of our students follow a five-year undergraduate
path as part of a normal course of study involving Co-op and global
experiential education!
– Our students traveled to over 70 countries in the last academic year for a co-
op experience, lasting six months!
19
21. Future Plans!
• Continue to expand the use of Salesforce!
– Focus on service delivery points throughout the University!
• Salesforce on every desktop at Northeastern!
• Integrate social media monitoring from Salesforce Radian6 into existing
case-management framework!
– Improve response times!
– Show responses alongside other case/note functionality we’ve built!
• Migrate graduate level inquiries and applications into Salesforce!
– Complete the student lifecycle view!
• Service Cloud Console activation for existing contact center!
– ACD integration!
– Screen pop of caller’s information!
– Record student interactions with Student Accounts, Financial Aid, Parking, etc.!
21
22. Owning The Challenge!
• Fostering a culture of ownership can be a daunting task!
– Forces us to collaborate with the “others” outside of our own department,
division, etc.!
• Students don’t want to run all over campus for a solution!
– Provide the right data!
• To the right people!
– At the right time!
• Create the expectation of ownership at all service delivery points!
22
23. Closing Thoughts!
• Creating a System of Engagement brings a standard voice and set of
procedures to your users!
• Student success can be measured in many ways beyond Year 1 to Year 2
retention!
– How are you making students successful prior to enrollment, during
enrollment, and after graduation?!
• Collaboration across silos helps foster a culture of success!
– There are no data owners, only stewards!
• To our students, we are all “The University”!
– Departments, reporting lines, and responsibilities are constructs we use, not
the students!
– Create a culture of ownership coupled with the data necessary to assist in
order to solve problems quickly!
23
24. Contact Information!
• Nick Zinser!
• Phone - 1-617-373-5830!
• E-mail - n.zinser@neu.edu!
• Twitter - @nzinser!
• Join the conversation in the Higher Ed Chatter Community!!
– If you’re not already a member, consider signing up!
– See http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/hechatter for more information!
24