Getting Buy In: Maximizing your CRM when the players

are always changing

Dannette Gomez Beane, Director, Office of Recruitment and Diversity InitiativesJanice Austin, Director, Graduate Admissions and Academic Progress

Virginia Tech Graduate School

Agenda

• Who is in the room?• VT Graduate School instance• Challenges• Success• Lessons Learned• Best Practices

1. How many CRM users are on your campus?

2. How many communication plans do you have in your instance?

3. How many Record Access Accounts do you have?

Activity

Graduate School• Blacksburg, Virginia

• 7 campuses

• ~10,000 applications submitted

• ~3,000 admitted

• ~7,000 Graduate and Professional enrolled

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230 total Users• 4 Administrators• 84 Record Access Accounts (students, staff, faculty)• 59 Communication Plans• 28 Departments with no users, communication plans

Challenge #1: Onboarding

Administrators

AdoptersWannabees

Naysayers

Challenge #2: Turnover

Imagine having 230 players and they are always changing

Buy - in

Training

Utilization• Department Coordinators

• Department Chairs/Program Directors• Student Helpers• Administrators

Challenge #3: Branding

Imagine your unit and the university go through branding changes during implementation.

Challenge #4: SIS Integration

Departmental users wanted Banner data in CRM but…

• Internal IT support roadblock = time delays• Campus data stewards were resources but we are one of many on their task list• Obtaining necessary permissions to pull data into CRM (took 3 months)• Several conference calls between us, campus data stewards & Hobsons• Programming time + setting up secure file transfers + testing = 9 months

Takeaway: users were frustrated by lack of progress resulting in loss of buy-in

Success #1: Department Videos

Success #2: Model Departments

Proven success

20% increase in enrollment

Success #3: Leveraging the College of Engineering & Enrollment Management

Lessons Learned

1. Offer less large group trainings and more one-on-one consultations

2. Have at least three administrators at all times

3. Be creative to keep users excited

4. Hire and/or build capacity within your institution to manage the system

Best Practices

How do you keep your users engaged?

Questions?