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These results are parts of my research “The State of Using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems in the student Recruitment Phase at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)”.

Following the last article “Customer Relationship Management and Customer Knowledge Creation”, we will continue to explore the way Customer Relationship Management (CRM) impacts the process of Student Recruitment in Higher Education Institutions.

CRM in Higher Education Institutions

Implementing CRM solutions has become a strategic must-have for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), especially the ones that want to compete internationally. In their research at North Carolina Community College, Seeman and O’Hara demonstrated that CRM could help universities become more student-oriented, manage student data more efficiently, and provide services that meet students’ expectations to improve their retention, satisfaction, and loyalty. Wali and Wright also showed that an effective CRM program could improve the service quality of a university in the North UK by providing personalized support for their international students and hence enhanced their satisfaction and advocacy intention. Additionally, Pember, Owens, and Yaghi encouraged HEIs to use CRM systems because of their ability to help institutions such as Central Queensland University to make informed decisions to make their students’ learning experience better. Furthermore, Gholami found that CRM implementation could influence HEIs’ efforts towards sustainable development via his research in a Malaysian university.

Industry magazines such as Destination CRM also emphasized the values of CRM systems to HEIs. Britt argued that such systems could help universities to manage HEIs’ stakeholders (such as students, parents, employees, administrators, alumni) and nurture relationships with them more effectively. CRM systems enable HEIs to personalize communications throughout the whole lifecycle of students. For example, they can send an automated message to congratulate a student on her achievements. And by integrating with class management systems, CRM can provide a complete view of every student to help academic advisors to keep track and intervene when necessary, to improve student learning performance and experience. Such a “360-degree view” of applicants and students can be available at a centralized dashboard for HEIs’ staff to find the most updated information, from the time they started interacting with their marketing channels until they graduated and join the university’s alumni.

Based on CRM, Ackerman and Schibrowsky developed the concept of Student Relationship Management (SRM), which essentially describes the adoption of CRM philosophy in HEIs. Student lifecycle has 11 stages which are pre-application, application, pre-registration, registration, induction, teaching and learning processes, pastoral care, employability and career services, graduation, alumni processes, and post-graduation marketing. Those stages can be grouped into 3 main phases: Before the students start their academic journey, when they study, and finally after they graduate. At each phase of the student lifecycle, HEIs have one or many departments to interact with their students. For example, the Recruitment team needs to promote their universities with different Marketing and Communications activities, the Admissions department has to handle the applications, or the Career Service team to equip them with the necessary skills and exposure to the working world. The interaction between students and multiple other stakeholders of HEIs is therefore complex but can be facilitated by applying CRM solutions.

The knowledge gaps

Although plenty of proactive HEIs understand the benefits that CRM can bring to their organizations, many of them are yet to deploy such systems. The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers conducted a survey on 603 education institutions, in which reported that only 64% of those participating organizations used CRM. A survey conducted on 176 HEIs in 2015 showed that 59% of the participated institutions did not use CRM, and the main reason was the lack of knowledge. Even though there are many studies on CRM, the number of research projects on CRM in HEIs is limited.

The focus of the literature is on the time that HEIs already recruited their new students, which is marked by the registration stage in JISC’s student lifecycle. There is a lack of study on the phase before the students start their academic journey in the universities. That phase includes the first three stages of the student life cycle, which are pre-application, application, and pre-registration. It is time for HEIs to recruit new students by attracting and converting prospective students into official ones with various marketing and sales strategies. Within the scope of this research, that phase is called the Student Recruitment phase. HEIs could not improve their service or develop sustainably without having new students. Hence, the Student Recruitment phase is essential for HEIs, and yet there has been no relevant study in that period. CRM systems are used mainly by the Recruitment and Admissions departments. The importance of CRM systems in the Student Recruitment phase is also emphasized by the fact that many CRM systems on the market possess recruitment and marketing features such as leads management, marketing automation, and marketing report. Moreover, many major players in the CRM industry such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics also have strong dedication for the Higher Education market and develop multiple functions for HEIs. There is a gap between the theoretical literature and the contemporary state of using CRM systems.

In the next article, we will discuss the state of using CRM in Vietnamese Higher Education Institutions in their Student Recruitment phase. Through the research, we will see what types of CRM systems those HEIs have been using, what types of customer knowledge they create with those systems, and which advantages they gained from using CRM systems in that context.

Reference:

  1. Ackerman, R. and Schibrowsky, J. (2007) ‘A Business Marketing Strategy Applied to Student Retention: A Higher Education Initiative’, Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 9(3), pp. 307–336. doi: 10.2190/CS.9.3.d
  2. Britt, P. (2018) ‘Colleges Can’t Cling to Old CRM Technology’, CRM Magazine. Available at: https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=127678 (Accessed: 28 April 2019).
  3. CRM Dynamics (2019) ‘CRM for University Admissions’. Available at: https://www.crmdynamics.com/crm-for-university-admissions/ (Accessed: 1 May 2019).
  4. DestinationCRM (2019) ‘CRM News and Advice for Educational Institutions’. Available at: https://www.destinationcrm.com/Categories/ReadCategory.aspx?CategoryID=279 (Accessed: 1 May 2019)
  5. Gholami, H., Saman, M.Z.M., Sharif, S. and Zakuan, N. (2015) ‘A CRM Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainable Development in Student Relationship Management: SD in Higher Education’, Procedia Manufacturing, 2, pp. 51–60
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  14. The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (2015) ‘2014-2015 State of CRM Use in Higher Education Report’, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO).
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