Babson Executive Education implemented Pivotal CRM to streamline operations and improve data accuracy by consolidating disparate databases that created administrative burdens. The new system enhanced sales and marketing efficiency, providing a centralized view of customer and prospect information, and significantly reduced time for reporting and invoice generation. As a result, Babson Executive Education experienced increased productivity, better customer engagement, and plans to further utilize the system across other departments.

1. Babson Executive Education
C a s e
Innovating the Educational Experience
Customer Details Babson executive education streamlines its operations and
Babson College
advances its marketing effectiveness and resource planning
s t u d y
www.babson.edu/bee
using Pivotal CRM.
Country or Region
United States Founded in 1919 by successful investment companies that partner with Babson
banker and entrepreneur Roger Babson, Executive Education to design and deliver
Industry
Babson College has become one of the world’s an executive development program that
Education leading business schools, consistently ranked meets the unique management development
Customer Profile among the likes of Harvard and Wharton. needs of their organizations.
One of the world’s most highly regarded Located in Babson Park, MA, Babson College To build relationships with its large customer
schools for business, Babson Executive has three major educational divisions and base and continue to add new customers,
Education’s custom solutions are ranked
#5 worldwide by Financial Times (2007).
several departments within each division. Babson Executive Education markets to existing
The organization offers innovative and practical Consistently garnering recognition and praise, customers and new prospects, targeting senior
leadership and professional development Babson College was named “Hottest for HR and Learning and Development staff and
solutions to top-level executives of major Business” by Newsweek in its “College Guide senior executives. With its large contact base
corporations and government organizations. ’08 25 Hottest Schools” feature. Known for and individually targeted custom courses,
entrepreneurship and innovation, Babson Babson’s sales cycles tend to be long, typically
Business Situation College has also become a leader in providing requiring substantial interaction over five to
Babson Executive Education was experiencing custom educational solutions to companies ten months. Therefore, the reliability of contact
data fragmentation and redundancy: it retained
worldwide and is ranked among the top and customer information—including details
information about participants in several
disparate databases, causing administrative
executive education schools in the world by about enrollment, course evaluation, and where
burden and lack of confidence in data accuracy. both BusinessWeek and Financial Times. prospects are in the sales cycle—is paramount.
Solution For Babson Executive Education, that praise With enrollment steadily increasing, Babson
Babson Executive Education implemented
helped yield thousands of enrollments last Executive Education recognized that the
Pivotal CRM, easily customized with a year. But its staff and management know disparate customer databases in use would
registration system that suits how they offer that ensuring continued success requires increasingly hinder its ability to grow without
their programs. This solution provides a central strong relationships with clients and insight adding more and more staff to manage
database to capture valuable customer, into enrollment data, as well as streamlined data and operations. The same contact and
prospect, enrollment, and course evaluation processes that keep redundancies and customer information was often being entered
information and offers an effective integrated administrative overhead to a minimum. manually into five separate systems—the
tool for sales and marketing activities.
Recognizing that a system that provides reliable registration (enrollment) system, the sales
Benefits customer, prospect, and enrollment data is database, a financial database, and two
• Amalgamated disparate data, providing necessary to make this possible, Babson e-learning systems—creating time delays
greater accessibility and decision support Executive Education turned to Pivotal CRM. and increasing the chance of error and
inconsistency. Most challenging for Babson
• Eliminated data redundancies and
streamlined operations, lowering
disparate data Highlights Need for Executive Education was the fact that the
administrative burden and saving Operational efficiency registration system was separate from the
significant staff time The majority of Babson Executive Education’s database used by sales and marketing staff for
revenue comes from corporate clients seeking opportunity management. Important contact
• Improved data accuracy and customer
custom educational solutions for their senior or profile information would be updated in
communications and increased management
confidence and participant satisfaction management, designed to address specific one system but not the other, creating data
problems the company is facing; these gaps. Reporting was also arduous because
• Created an efficient and scalable of the disparity between the systems. Babson
infrastructure to support growth customers include the US Navy and several
Fortune 100 companies. The remaining Executive Education realized it needed a central
• Substantially improved reporting capabilities,
revenue is made up by open enrollment in system and database that could provide
reducing time required to generate reports
standard executive education course offerings, one unified view of customers and prospects
by 90% to serve those clients more effectively and
research memberships, and the Consortium,
• Reduced time required to ship course a collaboration of non-competing global reduce redundancies.
packages by more than 90%
• Reduced time to generate an invoice
from as much as 4-5 days to real-time
and allowed for greater customization
of invoices than the standard financial
reporting package
• Increased marketing effectiveness, allowing
more targeted activity
Pivotal CRM | Case Study

2. Finding the Right CRM solution enrollment are now generated seamlessly in Pivotal CRM,
Once Babson Executive Education had pinpointed its core allowing just one group-transaction record per course to be
needs—a system that would provide a centralized customer entered in the financial system. And with the integration of
and prospect database and more streamlined administrative their shipping system with Pivotal CRM, Babson Executive
processes—the organization commenced its search and Education operations staff can simply “push a couple of
evaluation process for a customer relationship management buttons” and shipment records are generated directly in
(CRM) system. Having had experience with the complexities the FedEx or UPS system; for sending course information
and pitfalls of in-house development, Michael Budd, IT packages, “what used to take half a day now takes ten
Technology Specialist at Babson Executive Education, wanted minutes,” remarks Budd.
a packaged CRM solution from a proven vendor. But Budd
With the integration of customer, prospect, sales, and
also wanted a system that would closely fit the needs of
enrollment data, Babson Executive Education is able to
Babson’s custom solutions.
manage their calendar of program offerings more effectively.
“
Management has easy access to a comprehensive view of
I can’t imagine another product out there that where opportunities are in the sales pipeline, and efficient
reporting assists the center with resource planning, such
would allow me to do the types of customizations as booking classrooms and equipment. Improved data and
we need in order to make our business work.
”
data access has greatly increased productivity: “The data is
a lot more accurate, and the ability to customize and create
Michael Budd business logic has been a huge driver of improvements in
IT Technology Specialist
Babson Executive Education
productivity,” affirms Budd.
Prior to the implementation of Pivotal CRM, Babson Executive
After researching 29 vendors, including a CRM system tailored
Education spent valuable time, money, and resources
specifically for the education market, Budd came to the
marketing to a broad audience. “We used to spend a lot of
conclusion that a system’s flexibility and ease of customization
time trying to get in touch with people we weren’t sure would
were more important than education-specific features. “I
need our solutions. Now we’re vastly more targeted in terms
looked at a CRM system tailored for executive education
of those we reach out to,” remarks Budd.
centers, but decided against it,” says Budd. “Any time we
needed to change anything with that system, we would have Pivotal CRM’s comprehensive data also helps Babson
to bring that vendor in and spend all kinds of money having Executive Education management understand which course
them customize it.” Of the 29 systems evaluated, Budd found topics are garnering the most interest, resulting in enhanced
that only a few of them were truly customizable. Pivotal CRM’s communication with customers and prospects, improved
flexibility and ease of customization made it the program’s service to participants, and more targeted program design.
choice; Budd recognized that it was scalable and flexible “For all the programs we offer, we have daily evaluations and
enough to provide an effective solution for other departments an overall program evaluation. Participant satisfaction has
in the College in the future, despite varied data and system increased since we implemented Pivotal CRM,” notes Budd.
needs. “This school is really striving to integrate its data,” says
Budd, “and I can’t imagine another product out there that Budd is pleased with the many improvements the
would allow me to do the types of customizations we need in implementation of Pivotal CRM has brought to Babson
order to make our business work.” Executive Education, and he maintains that the ability to easily
customize the system is its most important feature. Just like
Centralizing and streamlining for-profit businesses, educational organizations each have
Brings Many Benefits their own unique way of running their business—as evidenced
within the different divisions and departments at Babson.
Implementing Pivotal CRM brought all of Babson Executive
“Having a system for ‘education’ is less important than
Education’s customer and prospect information into a single
being able to customize it to your exact requirements,” Budd
centralized system, creating a common and consistent view.
emphasizes.
This information is now accessible to the many different users
who need it: the sales and marketing groups, operations and
administration staff, IT personnel, and management. Even
efficiency encourages user adoption
with customizations, Babson Executive Education deployed and allows for scalability
the system in a very short period of time, quickly achieving a Babson Executive Education implemented Pivotal CRM faster
significant increase in operational efficiency and a clearer view than expected, launching in May of 2003. Working with Pivotal
of prospect and sales data that improved the planning of their CRM implementation partner Porter Hill, they were able to roll
educational calendar. Reports that used to take several days out the system in a single deployment, building it out with
to pull together now take only a few hours. a fully customized registration system right out of the gate.
“It only took us a couple of months,” confirms Budd. Users in
Corporate clients now provide Babson Executive Education operations, sales, and marketing began using the system right
with a list of course participants in soft copy, which can be away, and Finance started using it within a year, finding value
easily imported into Pivotal CRM. “In a single step, Pivotal in it as well. “I have a program-based benchmark report the
CRM automatically registers all participants to the program Director of Finance uses constantly,” notes Budd.
they are taking,” marvels Budd. Operations staff can easily
export registrants to Microsoft Excel for importing into the
organization’s e-learning system, and invoices for open
Pivotal CRM | Case Study

3. With Babson Executive Education’s client base and the
number of solutions it offers continuing to grow, the scalability
and reliability of Pivotal CRM have also proven of benefit.
“We’re up to 30 users now. I don’t think we would have been
able to grow on the systems we were using before, and the
operations group loves it,” states Budd.
The cost savings are also significant: “In order to reach the
growth we’ve had so far, we would have needed a lot more
employees than we have now if we did not have Pivotal
CRM,” notes Budd. Babson Executive Education believes the
operational efficiencies it has realized with the implementation
of Pivotal CRM gives it an advantage over other institutions
offering executive education programs.
“ In order to reach the growth we’ve had so far, we
would have needed a lot more employees than we
have now if we did not have Pivotal CRM.
”
Michael Budd
IT Technology Specialist
Babson Executive Education
Looking ahead, Babson Executive Education’s plans include
additional customizations to further improve business
processes, access for mobile users, and upgrading to Pivotal
CRM’s next-generation 6.0 platform to provide an easy-to-use
.NET-based smart client and tighter integration with Outlook—
the latter a particularly important feature for the organization’s
sales users.
Budd has also customized Pivotal CRM for Babson’s
Center for Women’s Leadership. And with Pivotal CRM’s
flexibility and ease of customization, the entire college
could now have the opportunity to benefit from all the system
has to offer. “It makes sense for us to continue to roll it
out to other departments,” opines Budd. “Pivotal CRM’s
customizability makes it appealing for testing with other
departments on campus.”
Learn More about Pivotal CRM
To learn more about how Pivotal CRM can meet your organization’s unique needs, call us today at +1 877-PIVOTAL (+1 877-748-6825) or visit us
at www.pivotal.com.
Copyright © CDC Software 2007. All rights reserved. The CDC Software logo and Pivotal CRM logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of CDC Software.