Salvaging investment in CRM software for a private college

Three months after Salesforce was installed, our private college client needed urgent help making sure the investment delivered a return and assessing which functionality was genuinely required.

Guided by third-party IT consultants, our private college client made a significant investment in Salesforce. The vision was replacing manual communication processes with automated systems and eradicating delays in the application process. Potential students were increasingly frustrated by long waiting times and the college was missing out on students as a result.

The introduction of Salesforce didn’t resolve the college’s issues, however. Legacy databases weren’t fully integrated, teams weren’t on-board with new processes and much of the functionality the college had been advised to buy into was going unused.

Inneall was commissioned to conduct a review of Salesforce integration and to make recommendations on how the college could maximise its use. Our client believed in the benefits Salesforce could bring, but needed help making sure the promises of process automation, real time customer insights and shared knowledge across sales and marketing teams was delivered.

The first stage of work was understanding our client’s existing processes and full CRM objectives. Through this analysis we developed clear insights into the customer journey, from lead generation to initial data collection, the steps involved in the application process, and ongoing communication until registration on a course was complete.

This knowledge highlighted several Salesforce modules that the college had no need for. We recommended a large scaling back of Salesforce that would save the college significant sums. We also proposed integration strategies that would bring all customer information together and encourage teams to transfer complete sales and marketing activity to Salesforce.

With our recommendations approved, we supported our client with a multi-disciplinary team. A system integrator who successfully streamlined website data capture with the Salesforce database, and a front-end web developer who made the customer experience on the website simple, glitch-free and on-brand.

With Salesforce meeting our client’s real requirements, investment in the software quickly started to deliver a return. Teams felt confident in the system and managed their customer journey communications through the CRM. The number of applications to the college increased and a higher number of leads converted.