Student Experience CRM

CRM is not just software: It is an institution-wide approach that allows the university to speak to key populations with one voice and with smaller, customized, and tightly focused messages in response to the needs of students and others in the community. It allows us to all see the same, more complete picture of the students we interact with on their way to a degree.

Have a question or want to provide feedback? Get in touch with the Student Experience CRM team.

What is CRM?

The purpose of the CRM approach, as well as the software used to implement it, is to allow people who work with students to have a central point of contact and engagement to create, send, track, and monitor communications and personal interactions with students.  

The goals of a CRM include improving institutional effectiveness, collaboration across colleges and departments, unified relationship management, and actionable insights. For a deeper dive, watch this recorded session from the University of Colorado Boulder.

How will CRM benefit the OSU community?

   Serve the OSU community where they are, how they prefer to be contacted, and when they need access to information, tools, resources and training — all through a single, secure and consistent experience

   One-Stop for Information - Students will have access to a personalized interface where they can access information and take action across academics, advising, financial aid and more

   Automation will free employee time currently spent on routine business processes

   Insight into communications and interactions with students will improve OSU's ability to serve our students

  

Student Experience CRM is just one of several key projects in the OSU IT Strategic Roadmap. These programs represent work that is critical to deepening our capacity and creating new capabilities that will enable OSU to deliver on its core mission of teaching and learning, research and extension.

Explore the roadmap

Project Team

Steering Committee

  • Jon Boeckenstedt, Enrollment Management, Chair
  • Andrea Ballinger, UIT
  • Steph Bernell, Graduate School
  • Susan Gardner, College of Education
  • Alix Gitelman, Academic Affairs
  • Dan Larson, Student Affairs
  • Rebecca Mathern, Office of the Registrar
  • Prem Mathew, College of Business, Functional Team
  • Matt Hansen, UIT, Technical Team

Functional Team

  • Prem Mathew, College of Business, Co-Chair
  • Daniel López-Cevallos, Undergraduate Education, Co-Chair
  • Jeff Malone, Student Affairs, Project Manager
  • Alex Aljets, UIT, Additional Project Support
  • USSC and other representatives

Technical Team

  • Matt Hansen, UIT, Chair
  • Michelle Lewis, UIT, Project Manager
  • Kristin Benson, Office of the Registrar
  • Scott Emery, UIT
  • John Henry, Graduate School
  • Ed Lee, UIT
  • Malcolm LeMay, College of Business
  • Olga Loza, Ecampus
  • Hector Trujillo, UIT
  • Chris White, UHDS

Timeline

January – early March 2022 

  • The expanded membership of the Undergraduate Student Success Committee (USSC) compiled 192 potential use cases for a CRM across four broad categories:  
    • Degree Progression and Completion 
    • Financial Supports 
    • Health and Wellness  
    • Student Engagement and Experiential Learning  
  • Potential use cases analyzed to identify cross category connections toward developing story-based vignettes to inform the authoring of the Request for Proposals (RFP) 
  • 14 story-based vignettes drafted and feedback solicited via USSC members, Student Affairs members, ASOSU and other student groups 
    • 66 faculty/staff responses  
    • 32 student responses  
  • Elements of a potential CRM Advising Dashboard considered and vetted by members of the Academic Advising Council, Advising Technology Committee, and the Council of Head Advisors 
  • Feedback consolidation and vignette finalization document shared with RFP authoring team  

Mid-March to mid-April 2022  

  • Authoring Team crafted RFP and sent to Procurement  
    • Review by Student Experience CRM Steering Committee 
    • Review by IT leadership 
  • RFP published, open for vendor responses  
    • Crafting scoring rubric and demo scenarios 
    • Vetting both with stakeholder groups 

Next Steps

  • RFP in progress
  • Summer 2022 – June 2023: Phase 1 System Implementation (Broad campus engagement opportunities to be included, detail TBD) 
  • July 2023 and beyond – Phase 1 (elements TBD) live and continual additions and improvements  

Frequently Asked Questions

In our current state, many departmental systems exist that provide some level of CRM functionality for students. But the distributed nature of these tools, their purpose, and their adaptation causes us to effectively have no CRM at all. The multitude of tools creates confusion and poor student experience and service levels, often leading to problems for students, faculty, and staff that might have been easily avoided. Some issues with our fractured systems include:

  • Messaging originating from different sources can be redundant, confusing, bothersome, and sometimes even contradictory.
  • Integration with other campus-wide systems can be non-existent or inconsistent across installations, leading to communication channels that are independent and not visible to others who don’t have access to—or even knowledge of—that system.
  • Critical points in communications might be missed when students get most of their information from a CRM with a narrow focus.
  • There is no central repository of interactions that can be used for research purposes, to understand challenges like retention, academic progress, or even whether messages are getting through to their intended recipient.
  • Rapid, ad-hoc communications (in times of emergencies, for instance) are difficult to manage and coordinate.
     

The steering committee will recommend a software solution by the end of this academic year so that purchase and implementation can begin this summer and over the course of next academic year.

We will identify, acquire, and implement a single, campus-wide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for post-enrollment uses that will replace the myriad of systems currently in use.

  

Want to learn more about Student Experience CRM?

If you have questions, comments or feedback, please reach out to the Student Experience CRM team.