Forget Facebook Groups - Now THIS is Cool
Azorus gets it. They’ve found one of the most out-of-the-box uses of technology I’ve seen in a while. Imagine, if you will, a magical land that eliminated days worth of time dedicated to manual, error-ridden, data-entry after college fairs. Suddenly you have you admissions staff freed up to focus on things like customer service and creating an engaging experience for prospects.
Azorus makes this a reality. Their Digital Recruit system utilizes a digital ink pen to capture prospect information as the student fills out your inquiry form at a college fair. At the end of the night, you plug the pen into our USB drive, download the data, and go through a verification process - a half-hour of work tops. Once the information is downloaded into the system, students are automatically sent a personalized follow up email. You also have the ability to set up a communications plan that with automatically trigger future personalized messages.
Of course, something like this doesn’t come without a hefty - about $18,000-$20,000, plus $1,500 for each pen, to be exact. That’s a nice chunk of change. But this is the type of system that admissions offices SHOULD be investing in because it will save so much more money in the long run by operating more efficiently , while also providing a better user experience for the prospect.
I can’t remember the last time a piece of technology (especially a CRM!) made my jaw hit the floor when I learned about it. This one did. If you work in admissions and you don’t give this some serious consideration, you are truly out of your mind.
Disclaimer: Azorus isn’t paying me to say this. They didn’t even ask me to do this. I just think their system is super cool 
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January 23rd, 2009
Interesting.
There’s also a less expensive way to do that given the fact that high school students are now pretty keyboard savvy, you get 4 or 5 laptops connected to the internet (with Wifi accounts) or even a few smart phones and ask your prospects to fill out your form online on the spot. Tell them they’ll get a chance to win something to make it more interesting for them.
January 23rd, 2009
In theory that would work - in practice not so much in my experience. It assumes access to WiFi, which is lofty at best. Plus, Laptops also take up rooms on tables and at college fairs, you only get a very limited amount of space. Additionally, it doesn’t have the communications followup this has.
January 23rd, 2009
Thanks for the ‘props’ Karlyn! And yes, we didn’t pay her for those kind words!
For more detail of what is included, here’s a link - http://www.azorus.com/quickstart2.html
Picking up on the discussion between you and Karine, I’d like offer a clarification. This solution has the pens, but we also provide the same inquiry form on the recruiter’s laptop. If wifi is available, the upload of pen/laptop data can be easily done at the event, while at lunch, or back at the recruiter’s hotel. Like Karine suggested, most schools using this do have some kind of promotion along with it.
Thanks again for the positive feedback.
January 23rd, 2009
I agree. We’re also finding that many of the schools in our region that we actively recruit at purposely do not offer WiFi as students will use it with their phones.
The pen thing is cool though. Do you have a contact with them?
Paul
January 24th, 2009
Well, what I meant is that it involves a bit of investment to get a subscription with your own Internet access - if laptops aren’t an option, a few iPhones - would probably do the trick. Granted the communication part implies that you do have some kind of CRM in place accessible from the Web, but you can also spend 20 to 30 grands if your institution has them…
Sorry, I can’t help myself, always have to think about cheaper solutions
January 24th, 2009
Right, but it’s not cheaper when you figure out the communications planning involved. Time=Money. Also, submission of inquiry forms via the web usually require data entry, which is precisely what this system gets rid of.
I’m not saying this is the greatest solution ever - just pointing out that it’s not quite as simple as using an iPhone.
January 25th, 2009
I’ve heard of these before and it sounds great, but with the crowd of students and parents that appear at high school college nights or large college fairs we would need several pens at least or have a long line of people waiting. It seems like a big investment that would have to be closely monitored so no one walks off with it, it is much easier for students to grab the inquiry cards, fill them out and mail them in. Or preferably to fill out an online form from home, but the inquiry cards are important. If the pen system was affordable and plentiful for counselors then we could hand them out to large crowds and not have everyone on top of each other. I think its a great idea, I don’t know how helpful it would be with a large group.
January 25th, 2009
Lisa, what you’re overlooking here is the amount you save by eliminating hours of data entry that happen with the cards and with filling out forms online, which are rarely set up to dump into the database. That would more than pay for the system in less than one recruiting year for larger schools. Also, let’s acknowledge that most college fairs don’t have the large crowds you’re describing - some do, but they are the exception to the rule.
April 23rd, 2009
These strategic marketing/communications decisions all come down to budget. As colleges attempt to trim costs, admissions travel is one area up for review. Increasing outreach via social media (low cost) is a very effective alternative to supplement reduced travel. Adding $!8,000+ to the cost of travel for what most administrators might view as a “toy” just won’t fly in today’s budget restricted world. Good luck in selling this concept to the VP of Public Relations or Marketing I’m sure the readers would be interested to know which, if any, colleges are incorporating this technology.
April 23rd, 2009
A bit snide there Robert, huh?
April 23rd, 2009
The college admissions offices need some realistic suggestions as to how to be more effective in their work. Many have difficulty in dealing with the basics such as responding to inquiries within a 24 hour window, or planning an effective campus visit experience. Suggesting they consider an $18,000 outlay in order to be more efficient in processing college fair leads is poor advise.
ROI is nearly impossible for these offices. I know of no way to justify to an administrator that an expenditure of this sort would result in enrolling a single additional student at the university. And without that measuring tool, the expenditure just isn’t going to happen.
If the school has the extra cash to spend on the electronic pen concept, placing those funds in professional development for the admissions staff or a salary increase would be a better investment. At most schools, an investment of this size is equivalent to 60% of first year salary for an admissions counselor. Let’s take that money and hire a counselor who’s sole responsibility is to establish a technology outreach component to the marketing plan (separate from the IT department). Focusing on social media, organizing and keeping student blogs current, and developing a more effective admissions microsite should be priorities.
April 23rd, 2009
Because goodness knows that if a college can afford it, it shouldn’t invest in long term infrastructure that will substantially reduce operating costs.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it! Have you gotten it out of your system yet or do we get another rant?
April 23rd, 2009
How will this concept reduce operating costs? How much savings will be realized? Over what period of time? These are the questions an administrator will ask.
April 23rd, 2009
Robert, I think I spell that out pretty clearly in the post. Do I think this is a vital investment for an office to make? No. But you just don’t understand ROI or admissions if you say that you can’t demonstrate ROI on this type of tool.
April 23rd, 2009
@Robert
Depending on the school, a rough calculation might look like this…
25,000 inquiry cards
3 minutes each to process
75,000 minutes to process (1,250 hours)
1,250 hours @ $8/hr (aprox min wage)
$10,000
Thus, assuming student workers do this work at minimum wage, and take zero breaks, and no-overhead cost or lost opportunity costs for slow responses are included, a school taking in 25,000 cards is currently paying about $10,000 a year to manually enter this information.
The value of this tool is optimized when the CRM platform is tied to it. Not only does the cost of this system decrease as much of the cost is included in a CRM implementation, the value to the school and the students is broader as well.
With the CRM engine behind it, students can automatically get content specific to their academic/extracurricular interests via email, portal, and Facebook. From that form, the communications plan that the school has created can be executed automatically. Reducing administrative time so that schools can focus on higher value activities such as what you’ve described, while acting on student inquiries automatically in a self-service model, empowers both the student and the department.
A few of the schools using this:
Ryerson University - captures ~8,000 inquiries at a single show each year. 1st choice apps up 50%
University of Warwick (UK) - consistently ranked top 4 school, with goal to be top-50 in world by 50th birthday (2015)
StFX University - Consistently one of the best ranking schools in Canada; has the most active alumni foundation in the world
Mercyhurst College - private school in Erie, PA.
April 23rd, 2009
Thank you Toby
April 23rd, 2009
One thing I’d like to add to what Toby said. To process 25K cards would take 156+ man days to complete. If you used student workers, who are limited to 19 hour work weeks… it would take over 460 man days to complete the entry cards.
Seeing what our recruiters do, this would be something nice for us to have down the road. Given that, we are like most schools at the moment… adding new enhancements has been halted for the most part due to expected budget cuts.
April 23rd, 2009
Thank you Paul….also, my apologies back at Robert for being a bit snide myself. It’s been one of those days. But I hope that Toby and Paul have been able to demonstrate that you can show an ROI on something like this quite easily.
April 23rd, 2009
Lastly (I promise), as the discussion recently focuses on the reductions required to make this viable, there is also another side to the value equation.
Certainly, the dollars and sense piece of this discussion is important from an investment perspective. But, like any investment, you expect returns; decreasing operational costs being one of them. The other, is tied to increases.
When attending a college fair, alongside 20 other schools fighting for a decreasing student population, you have to be not only efficient, but also effective.
A student offers you their information as a sign of trust, and a willingness to explore a relationship with you. The schools that take that card, or electronic data, and respond quicker, with more personalized information demonstrate higher respect and more genuine interest in meeting that student’s needs, and in building a relationship with him/her.
The goal of all this, while certainly to decrease operational challenges, is to start better relationships with more students faster. That small increase at phase 1 of the recruitment cycle can have important ramifications come the next fall when schools attempt to fill classes with the most qualified students.
April 23rd, 2009
Toby breaks down the ROI information quite well. Thank you.
Student worker minimum wage is 85% of federal standards, i.e. $6.16 as of July 2009. Overall cost savings given your formula would be about $7,700.
I guess I’m having a tough time understanding how the “pen” system can add value other than the potential $7,700 savings. If I’m entering the reply card data by hand and have the CRM system already in place, why would I want the “electronic pen”? What new data is captured that is not already entered manually?
Again, if the system costs $18,000 to $20,000 and each pen cost $1,500, total initial capital outlay would be in the vicinity of $25,000+. How do you justify an expenditure of this amount with an projected savings of $7,700?
It would be interesting to get Mercyhurst’s feedback.
April 23rd, 2009
Overall, a health discussion. Thanks to all!
April 23rd, 2009
@Robert
The clarification you asked for is that our CRM is used in either situation. However a full CRM instance allows you to execute your entire communications plan. In either situation, the card data you collect electronically does not ever need to be re-typed, or uploaded.
You might want to read Ryerson’s case study to see how this ties into their CRM program. http://www.azorus.com/files/download.html?file=pdf/case_studies/azorus_crm_story_ryerson.pdf&type=pdf
As per my above comments, there are several values; streamlining a burdensome process (savings), meeting the needs of students faster/less effort (savings), and attracting more students (revenue).
The one side of the coin, which I’m not sensing that you’ve taken to, is the marketing leverage you have by its use. When all your competitors are asking for ink on paper, and take 3-4 weeks to send students a letter from the dean, while you’ve sent personalized, branded content to their inbox before they get home from the event, you most certainly stand out above the others.
If your school is the one getting more interest, and executes on the promise of treating students like people, not numbers, then you should expect not only more inquiries, but more relationships. The CRM behind this allows you to identify interested students, as well as the most qualified ones, helping focus again on moving more of the best students to apply, and enroll.
While I enjoy any conversation on our offerings, using Karlyn’s blog as a conduit to ’sell’ the value of this program isn’t comfortable. Thus, this will be my final comment. I would prefer to take this offline if you have other questions. Feel free to contact me by email tkeeping@azorus.com and we’ll setup a call.
April 23rd, 2009
Hats off to them for pushing the limits of technology, though I’m not particularly impressed by this specific data entry worfklow efficiency implementation.
(It should be noted that the e-mail portion relies on their CRM system, which likely has a *much* higher cost.)
Simpler solutions impress me more, quite honestly. The more complex the solution, the greater the vendor lock-in, the more difficult (and costly) to make adjustments, and the more likely a breakdown or subtle bug will be encountered.
As a basic point, though, efficiencies can definitely be found in getting names of inquiries into a CRM, even without this technology, and $18k would go a long way toward implementing some relatively simpler approaches.
Let’s take the Azorus’ rep’s stated assumption of three minutes per inquiry card entered. How can that be improved, and at a low cost?
- Snail mail search mailing reply cards can include bar codes for easy scanning. (Search records have a unique ID number, or one can easily be appended.) The record pulls up, and the data entry person modifies a few fields at most. This can be done even with *old* CRM/ERP systems. I’ve even seen it done in Windows-based CRM/ERP systems with a locally coded and locally installed macro and an off-the-shelf USB barcode scanner.
- E-mail search mailings can capture that same unique ID number through links with the ID number appended as a url variable and Web forms that capture that url variable/ID number.
Drop the three minutes per card to one minute or less per card and you’re talking significant savings in time and wages. Automate the online Web form import and you’ve saved even more. In neither case is there a need for much money to be spent on implementation.
- Wowed by the pen and import? If the college fair card volume is that extraordinarily high (if a college has 25k prospects, most are from search, not college fairs), why not have software that scans paper cards filled out at fairs and import the info? No special form (which gets outdated when programs are added or removed, depending on the card design), and no fancy pen needed.
- College reps do have down time during travel. They can enter info from a college fair card into a school’s Web inquiry form. If this form doesn’t have some sort of import into a CRM, it can often be coded to happen. There are more impressive tech implementations, but this Web-form approach is very easy to implement. Maybe too simple - a vendor can’t make much money from that
- Then there’s the basic laptop idea, and “old” laptops (the kind IT has cycled out of staff usage) can be sufficient for the task of writing to a local (to the computer) database, which can later be uploaded to a CRM - no WiFi necessary. Old laptops don’t necessarily make a good branding impression for the school? How about a very trendy $300 netbook: low cost, low weight, small form factor, and easy on batteries. Writing to a locally-installed database that can import to a CRM (perhaps via a basic Web app if the CRM isn’t Web-based) isn’t rocket science for something as relatively basic as an inquiry card. And to the extent it has some complexity, spend less than $18k for an oustide developer to set it up!
Automatically trigger future messages? Call me a cynic, but I don’t have much faith that schools would work out the communication-flow nuances and/or develop (and consistently update) sufficient content for automated communication. Schools can’t manage to keep their own Web sites updated or blogs filled with content. Much less develop and implement a more static/traditional e-mail communication plan.
But if you must… many e-mail service providers (ESPs) offer autoresponders (including low-cost options like iContact and MailChimp), and their API hooks make for robust integration options with CRM systems. And some of these ERPs support dynamic content, so the student interested in engineering and volleyball get different info than the student interested in psychology and Greek life for the occasional e-mails where that is useful. (Kids are often interested in seeing all a school has to offer, not just the handful of items to which they’ve expressed interest.)
Why an ESP instead of a higher ed CRM vendor for pushing out the message? Let’s face it: e-mail service providers make their livelihood focused on getting e-mails delivered. That core mission isn’t competing with other CRM features for their attention. E-mail options directly through higher ed CRMs typically have some deliverability pitfalls, and on top of it are priced beyond what dedicated ESPs with APIs can provide.
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By the way, as a general thought in this age where kids have a tough time paying for school, the economy is in rough shape, etc. Money to student workers paying tuition at your institution, or money to a vendor to accomplish the same task? If the cost is similar, my vote is for supporting the student!
November 30th, 2009
Hi, Just thought I’d let you know your website is rendering weird in my K-melleon browser. Looks good from what I can see however.
December 28th, 2009
Thank you for writing this, I can not find an information which is so clear and through up to now. Erp, customer relationship management are my favourites, please check.