During the last decade, digital transformation has been the main challenge for numerous industries and service providers and it has also touched the education sector in all geographies.
Sri Lanka’s has over five million schooling population and the higher education sector is over Rs.200 billion market whilst education sector is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. However more than 11,000 schools and the both governmental and non-governmental higher education’s institutes are finding it difficult to manage their student data and maintain student related information.
To overcome this barrier and to aide Sri Lanka’s education sector to better manage their information systems and data regards to students, Singapore based SimpleCRM recently launched a new CRM software that has features including to track online enquiries, site-visits and follow-ups and manage and track enquiry-to-applicant-to-admission process.
CRM systems are software applications used to automate and manage communications with prospective and current students, employees, alumni, donors and everyone in an institution’s community. Customer information, such as lead’s or customer’s name, gender, educational background, telephone, email, marketing materials, social media and any other relevant information across different channels is compiled into a single database enabling easier information access, allowing to personalize and customize messages and the channels used to deliver the message to the student in a timely manner. Generally every interaction with the ‘customer’ is tracked by the CRM, all in one place.In today’s world higher education institutions (HEIs) are experiencing vital changes in the way they operate and interact with their ‘customers’, i.e. students, their parents, alumni, employers and staff members. Higher education clients are demanding more attention and instant service and so proactive universities are turning to technology – customer relationship management systems – to cater to this demand in an effective way.
In Sri Lanka, SimpleCRM aims to provide comprehensive and an affordable customer relationship management (CRM) softwares to especially the higher education sector.
According to SimpleCRM officials, utilizing a CRM system drives faster service. Emails and other types of communication channels may be automated in order to speed up response time. It may also help at identifying trends which become feedback for marketing, admissions or other departments included in the process. Furthermore, CRM systems provide real-time numbers, data, and graphs that may be useful in decision making. For example, the CRM system is capable of showing an exact number of interested male/female students that come from, any specific city or country.