ARCHIVED: Completed project: Lifetime Engagement - Constituent Relationship Management (CRM)

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Primary UITS contact: Alan Walsh

Last update: February 10, 2016

Description: Indiana University views the constituent relationship management (CRM) process involving its students, alumni, employees, and external patrons and partners as a strategic business process that involves multiple members of the university community operating in a well-defined relationship stewardship/management mode. IU's federated multi-campus nature adds some complexity, both at the initial stages of student relationships and as students move into alumni and possibly donor status.

Currently, we have several point solutions in place at various campuses and in various departments, and we continue to receive requests from additional departments and campuses for similar solutions. Continuing the point solution model does not address the need for a strategic "lifetime" engagement solution to help the university manage its relationships with prospects, students, alumni, and other constituents more effectively. Additionally, the point solution model is more costly to the institution as a whole with regard to licensing, maintenance fees, and staff required to maintain those solutions. Finally, the proliferation of CRM products across the institution further complicates our ability to integrate this data with other university systems.

As part of the overall Lifetime Engagement initiative, the CRM project will address this problem through a six-year, university-wide license agreement between IU and Campus Management Corporation (CMC), to provide CRM functionality for all campuses, the IU Alumni Association, and the IU Foundation, with no additional fees at the user, campaign, or department level. IU's license agreement, providing unlimited use similar to its agreements with Microsoft and Adobe, is the first of its type for CMC.

Outcome:

  • IU will be among the first, if not the first, major university in the nation to elevate constituent engagement to a university-wide platform with a full lifecycle model of data management.
  • This solution will provide a common CRM platform, and shared database of all constituents and their associated interactions and communications to give administration a 360-degree view of how an individual interacts with our organization as a whole.
  • This project currently includes the deployment of the following features: Constituent Interaction Management, Communications/Campaign Management, Event Management, and Analytics.
  • Additional functionality will be deployed as user requirements are gathered (e.g., Call Center integration, Parent relationship management, Personal Interest Pages, Preference Management, Communication Calendar, etc.).
  • Integration with other enterprise systems will also be deployed as user requirements necessitate (e.g., interface with SIS, interface with HRMS, interface with Benefactor, interface with Student Activities and COMPAS Scholarship Application, etc.).

Milestones completed:

  • Finalized contracts June 2009
  • Established Governance & Project Team structures Fall 2009
  • Implementation of Enterprise Environment and Upgrade to Version 8.5 Aug 2010
  • Accomplished the following implementations August-December 2010:
    • Services Implemented: Core Interaction and Communications functionality
    • Constituent Groups Implemented: Prospective Students (4 campuses), Alumni (550,000 records), IUPUI Suspects (pre-prospects)
    • Interfaces Implemented: SIS interface, Benefactor interface, PSAT Test Score Loads
    • Departments online with Interactions and Communications:
      • Undergraduate Admissions Offices on the following campuses: IUPUI, KO, NW
      • Undergraduate Admissions Offices in the following schools: IUPUI's School of Engineering and Technology, IUPUI's Kelley School of Business, IUB's School of Education
  • Accomplished the following January-December 2011:
    • Turned on Undergraduate Admissions for NW and SB
    • Migrated IUE Undergraduate Admissions from Hobsons to Talisma
    • Completed Advancement's Rules of Engagement
    • Completed Strategy and Plans for Lifetime Engagement Service Center
    • Prepared New Overall Budget Proposal include 9 organizations
    • Established Strategy for Preference Management
    • Turned on Analytics, iServices and Phone Workspaces
    • Developed Call Center Management enhancements for IUE Undergraduate Admissions
    • Started development of Personal Information Pages and Event Registration
    • Started Event Management pilot for IUPUI Undergraduate Admissions
    • Established new .Net development environment
  • Accomplished the following January-June 2012:
    • Kelley Direct: Turned on campaign and interaction management functionality for BL Kelley School of Business for Graduate Admissions
    • Tag Import: Added functionality that allows departments to add special tags to individual records that can be used in filters and searches when sending future communications
    • Generic Suspect Import: This feature will allow admissions departments to import student suspect records into Talisma from a variety of sources
    • Prospect Business Rules: Ability to automatically create People records when an interaction is created
    • Suspects to Prospects: Ability to convert a Suspect into a Prospective Student when a new email arrives. This also provides the ability to feed new prospective records to the SIS upon this action
    • Talisma Event Management: Implemented vended software in production
    • EAS Insiders Newsletter: Imported constituent list for people involved with the EAS project. We are now using the Talisma solution to send monthly emails to this group. The IUF communication specialist works directly with the Service Center in publishing and distributing these communications
    • Custom Development: Continued development of two IU specific modules: Personal Interest Pages (PIP) and Event Registration application
    • Harmonization of Alumni No-Contact Codes: Implemented a feed from Benefactor to map Alumni no-contact indicators to preference management dimensions. This is the first phase of what will eventually become a constituent-facing preference management service
    • IUS Undergraduate Admissions: Migrated IUS Admissions Offices from Hobsons to Talisma (Target end of May)
    • Enrolled Student, Phase 1: Implemented enrolled student interface to populate a limited set of attributes for enrolled students (Target early June)
    • Employee, Phase 1: Implemented employee interface to populate directory data for all employees (faculty and staff) for communication purposes (Target June)
  • Accomplished the following January-December 2015:
    • IU Advancement successfully deployed new Crimson system based on Blackbaud
    • Talisma upgraded to version 9.1 and continues to be used by six campuses for undergraduate recruiting

Future plans:

  • Continue defining Lifetime Engagement Policies, Practices, and Support
  • Continue deployment of CRM functionality to IU Departments
  • Continue population of Talisma with additional constituent groups
    • Full set of enrolled student data
    • Full set of faculty and staff data
    • Full set of data for external populations
  • Continue development & implementation of CRM functionality
    • PIP Pages deployment for IUE
    • Event Registration application for IUPUI Admissions
    • Interim Preference Management functionality
  • Continue management of CRM software and infrastructure
    • Upgrade to release 8.6 (Q2 2012)

Benefits: As a result of this common CRM platform, IU will be able to manage its relationships including pre-admit prospect management; active student relationship management, including involvement from IUAA and possibly IUF; alumni status relationship management; potential donor/donor relationship management; and others as defined.

IU expects to achieve additional benefits as follows:

  • A flexible, effective governance process that minimizes duplicate contacts while maximizing the value both to the student and the institution
  • Reduction of duplicative systems and efforts
  • Ability to leverage support models across all campuses
  • Development and management of campaigns at the campus and or department that are securely isolated
  • Maintenance of a single consolidated database of contacts and campaigns
  • Ability to be more strategic with communication by knowing when and what other communications may be hitting common constituents
  • Enabling executive institutional management to have Business Intelligence (BI) capacities that cross campus and other boundaries
  • Enabling a governance process regarding management of contacts and communications

In turn, this project supports several elements of IU's strategic plan for IT, Empowering People:

  • Advancement of IU's IT infrastructure supported by sound fiscal planning (Recommendation 1)
  • Unlimited availability/philosophy of abundance (Action 5)
  • Partnerships and creative exchanges with hardware, software, and service vendors (Action 6)
  • Maintain and refresh IT infrastructure by consolidating university-wide scale (multi-campus) services for software systems (Action 7)
  • Collaboration and communication systems (Action 11)
  • Student success (Recommendation 10)
  • Engagement beyond (Action 52)

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Last modified on 2020-07-14 14:03:46.