Student Experience CRM

Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) is a type of software used to organize, build and maintain strong relationships. However, 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.

About the Project

Oregon State University believes both student satisfaction and success are closely correlated with high-quality personal communication and engagement between students and faculty, advisors, staff, and other members of the OSU Community. This project implements a new software platform that will act as a hub to support these types of interactions. Once fully implemented, students will be able to personalize their preferences, receive more tightly-focused and relevant communications, and interact with the people and services they need throughout their education (e.g. advising, financial aid, etc). Faculty, advisors, and staff will have consistent tools to better reach students, automate and assign tasks, and will be better able to collaborate across colleges and departments.

 

 

 

Benefits of a CRM

   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

Current Project Status

The Core Team, with guidance from Attain, discussed the pros and cons of various rollout strategies and made a decision that all Statement of Work functionality will be delivered to all user groups in June 2023. Appointment functionality will be delivered in June 2023 but advisors will be provided a longer period to transition to the feature. This decision allows Attain to initiate several change management deliverables including an engagement strategy, training plan, and sponsor roadmap. Attain is currently facilitating 2-week sprint cycles to finalize requirements for the June 2023 delivery. In Week 1, the work group leads clarify and confirm the requirements for the current sprint and meet with Attain’s Change Management Lead to discuss the current state processes. In Week 2, Attain demos the requirements, receives feedback from leads, and meets with specific work groups to further refine the requirements before the Core Team reviews and signs off. The Integrations Work Group will wrap up Banner mapping this month and the team’s focus has shifted to building and validating integrations. Final negotiations are underway for the texting and calendar sync resources. The GenderMag Student Profiles are complete and additional students have been recruited to beta test the profiles prior to User Acceptance Testing. The Core Team will meet with Salesforce and Attain representatives to discuss business and governance structures.

Meet the Project Team

Steering Committee

  • Alix Gitelman, Academic Affairs
  • Andrea Ballinger, UIT
  • Dan Larson, Student Affairs
  • Matt Hansen, UIT*
  • Prem Mathew, College of Business*
  • Rebecca Mathern, Office of the Registrar*
  • Steph Bernell, Graduate School

Core Project Team

  • Hector Trujillo, UIT
  • Jeff Malone, Student Affairs
  • John McQueen, Graduate School
  • Matt Hansen, UIT, Co-Chair*
  • Prem Mathew, College of Business, Co-Chair*
  • Rebecca Mathern, Office of the Registrar, Co-Chair*

Project Support

  • Manmeet Singh Khetarpal, EPPMO, Business Analyst
  • Tracy Oulman, EPPMO, Project Manager

Work Group Leads

View the full work group roster (PDF)

Name Stakeholder Work Group
Brett Jeter, College of Engineering Reporting | Functional
Carolyn Boyd, Student Affairs Communications | Functional
David Sorensen / Marty Main, Office of the Registrar Integrations | Functional
Jane Reynolds, OSU-Cascades Case Management | Functional
Joe Chambers, UIT Integrations | Technical
John McQueen, Graduate School Communications | Technical
Keith Raab, Financial Aid Reporting | Functional
Kristin Benson, Office of the Registrar Advisor Navigation | Technical
Lakshmi Srinivasan, College of Engineering Reporting | Technical
Malcolm LeMay, College of Business Events & Involvement | Technical
Mary Chuinard, College of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Science Advisor Navigation | Functional
Maureen Cochran, Student Affairs Events & Involvement | Functional
Michael McDonald, UIT Student Navigation | Technical
Niki Weight, College of Education Student Navigation | Functional
Olga Loza, Ecampus Case Management | Technical
Regan Gurung, Center for Teaching & Learning Classroom Connections | Functional

 

Frequently Asked Questions

The Student Experience CRM project will create a new, single, university-wide approach to communicate and engage with all Oregon State University students from enrollment through graduation.  The scope includes undergraduate and graduate students and degree and non-degree seeking students. Recruitment and alumni initiatives are outside the scope of this project.

Oregon State University has historically lacked an agreed upon and coordinated university-wide approach and tool for communicating and engaging with current students.  In this absence, many units have built and acquired tools with the best of intentions and needs of students firmly in mind.  As a result, OSU now has over 90 separate instances of CRM software. Maintaining a collection of separate CRM instances is costly and complex to maintain.  It also impacts OSU’s ability to provide the comprehensive and seamless student experience offered by many peer institutions. After several years of review and discussing options, the decision to adopt a unified system and approach was announced in February 2022 by Provost Ed Feser (Read the Announcement/business case). Provost Feser acknowledged that, while some units will be affected by near-term disruptions, the long-term benefits of a single, university-wide CRM approach outweigh these disruptions.  

Project Charge

  • Provide unified and coordinated support to current students as they transition through their experience at OSU – from matriculant, to undergraduate in different programs and degree paths, from undergraduate through graduate studies (if applicable)
  • Send communications from a central system to ensure students receive critical information and do not receive redundant and contradictory messages that often occur with multiple, narrowly focused CRM systems
  • Integrate with existing university-wide systems so appropriate data, including communications, is visible and accessible to those providing student care and support
  • Establish a single repository of interactions to support OSU’s retention and academic progress goals
  • Allow the university to coordinate and execute rapid, ad-hoc communications in times of emergency and when rapid response is necessary
  • Enable the university to reach students with one university voice when necessary
  • Enable units and programs to reach students with focused, customized and tailored messages that support each OSU student working to achieve their educational goals

The Core Team completed contract negotiations with the selected software vendor (Salesforce) and implementation partner (Attain) in November 2022. A work plan and kick-off activities will be next areas of focus. A project roadmap is expected in January and will be updated here when it becomes available. 

The project’s key performance indicators are focused on:

  • Cost & Complexity. Reduce the costs and complexity associated with maintaining separate platforms for student communication and engagement activities.
  • Student Experience. Provide students with timely, useful and seamless communications and engagement opportunities from enrollment through graduation.
  • Student Support & Academic Progress. Provide students, staff, and faculty with a single, common tool that supports academic progress and centralizes interactions.

  

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