Getting Buy In: Maximizing your CRM when the players are always changing Presented by Dannette Gomez Beane and Janice Austin Hobsons University 2015

1. Getting Buy In: Maximizing
your CRM when the players
are always changing
Dannette Gomez Beane, Director, Office of Recruitment and Diversity Initiatives
Janice Austin, Director, Graduate Admissions and Academic Progress
Virginia Tech Graduate School

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

3. 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

4. Graduate School
• Blacksburg, Virginia
• 7 campuses
• ~10,000 applications submitted
• ~3,000 admitted
• ~7,000 Graduate and Professional enrolled

5. Hobsons® Connect at Virginia Tech

6. 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

7. 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

8. Challenge #3: Branding
Imagine your unit and the university
go through branding changes during
implementation.

9. 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

10. Success #1: Department Videos

11. Success #2: Model Departments
Proven success
20% increase in
enrollment

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

13. 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

14. Best Practices
How do you keep your users engaged?

15. Questions?