C(a)RM before the Storm

I’m not sure if it was the mention of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or the opening from our friendly vendor but the heavens opened up at a recent event at Teesside University with a huge encore of thunder & lightening.  The day itself provided an opportunity for delegates across the education sector to meet up and discuss CRM with a particular focus on its role in supporting employer engagement.

Melvin James from Diagonal Consulting compered the event, reflecting the fact that the Consulting organisation was a key partner for Teesside in enabling the institution to align their business and CRM process requirements, taking into account the change management involved, with customisation of the chosen product.

Dominic Watts (Business Manager - Higher Education at Microsoft) began with some observations on the Higher Education (HE) economy and the role of IT.  Dominic noted that in the future less money will be coming into HE from the public purse with that from the private sector likely to increase.  Inefficiencies within institutions lead to further revenue loss however IT can act as an enabler, reducing ineficiencies and supporting us further in our engagement with external employers.

Dominic alluded to difficulties in trying to capture (share) information across our institutions, particularly activities undertaken by academics - which was by no means intended as a criticism.  The problem exists in trying to make technology that supports this activity ubiquitous and seamless thus reducing workload and effort.  This is one area where a CRM can be of benefit.

Karen Clegg (Deputy Director for Academic Enterprise) showcased the work of Teesside University who had chosen to implement Microsoft Dynamics.  She gave an engaging overview of the challenging journey Teesside had undertaken in getting to the point of having an agreed CRM process, a system - endorsed by IT, senior management and marketing - with users across several functions and departments and, critically, an organisational structure and culture capable of making effective use of the sytems and processes. A new marketing and account management infrastructure was a key part of this.

The result is that Teesside have created a solid foundation on which to realise their ‘Customer First’ strategy. Integrating approaches to knowledge transfer and employer engagement activities, and leadership from Academic Enterprise seem to have facilitated this. Karen emphasised that, while the system is the key tool, effective CRM is all about processes.

In line with the point made by Dominic Watts, Teesside University approached implementation of the system using a ‘3Fs’ model:

  1. Familiarity.  As you’ll have guessed from the name the tool is a Microsoft product and so is designed in a similar manner to Word, Excel etc.  The added benefit is that a toolbar to access Microsoft Dynamics can be added to Outlook meaning the user is likely to have it available at all times.
  2. Functionality.  To put it bluntly there’s a lot i.e. managing contacts, task lists, history, marketing, search (and saved search), export to html dynamically, dashboard etc.
  3. Flexibility.  Modules are constantly being developed for the product and their is a growing community around the tool itself. Links can also be made to other systems i.e. Agresso at Teesside University.

Needless to say, in this case Teesside chose Microsoft Dynamics, but we would emphasise that it is not the tool you choose that’s important but what you do with it!  And more importantly, what you do before you choose it….

Teesside highlighted a number of benefits to the institution in standardising CRM processes and system usage across key functions, including:

Lessons Learned at Teesside University include:

As mentioned in a previous post (on employer engagement) readers may find a recent toolkit, the CRM Self-analysis Framework to be of great value.  The toolkit was developed by the University of Nottingham following the JISC CRM study by the KSA Partnership, which helps institutions work through their approach to CRM.

Many institutions are grappling with the same issues on CRM and by all accounts some have made considerable progress in embedding the business philosophy of CRM. It may be the case, though that the holy grail of academics using the system remains elusive in most cases yet…….

June 5, 2009 | Filed Under Events | Author Andrew Stewart 

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