Implementation of CRM Recruit in SETU and benefits delivered

This presentation will provide an overview of the implementation of a unified recruitment and admissions system, CRM Recruit by Ellucian, across Carlow and Waterford campuses in South-East Technological University (SETU) and the business benefits that SETU are deriving from the implementation.

This implementation of CRM Recruit supports SETU's International Recruitment activities.

The previous situation in SETU was:

• There was no Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage prospective leads and as a result there was a lack of proactive engagement with prospective applicants.

• There were two different application processes, one in SETU Carlow and one in SETU Waterford which were not fit for integration purposes and required significant manual input.

The scope of the project included:

• Implementation of single instance of CRM Recruit accessible by both SETU campuses.

• Implementation of out-of-the box CRM Recruit functionality configured for SETU requirements

• Integration with Touchnet payment gateway with enablement of single sign-on for SETU users

• Implementation of Alive 5 for chat and related services

DXC and Ellucian were contracted to deliver the project under Asiera’s governance. The project commenced in July 2024 and the solution commenced live operation on 22nd November 2024.

6 months after the CRM Recruit implementation, SETU reported that the solution had delivered the following benefits:

• Efficiency and Transparency: The new system has significantly enhanced operational efficiency and transparency.

• Programme Applications: Over 4,500 applications have been initiated, streamlining the process for students and staff.

• Document Collection: Successfully collected over 12,500 application documents, ensuring a more organised repository.

• Recruitment Onboarding: Onboarded 450 recruitment agents and 125 recruitment agencies.

• Application Reviews: Conducted over 2,500 application reviews, ensuring timely evaluations.

• Academic Review Teams: Established more than 30 teams with initial training and on-demand follow-up training.

• Email Automation: Automated over 45,000 emails, reducing manual workload and ensuring consistent communication.

• High-Quality Communications: Automated 7-10 high-quality communications to students, facilitating timely interventions in recruitment, admissions, and conversion.

• Departmental Prompts: Automated weekly prompts to heads of departments, ensuring timely actions and responses.

• Improved Workflow: Seamless onboarding of recruitment agents and agencies has expanded SETU’s reach. Automated prompts and communications have enhanced engagement with students and departments.

• Time Savings: Saving approximately 10 minutes per application, reducing the overall processing time from 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

• Automated Responses: Uses workflows for general inquiries (auto responses), we’ve created a suite of templates to improve response times and we now have a chatbot which is helping answer common queries - further reducing time required for each prospective/applicant/student.

Qualitative Comment from SETU - "The implementation of our new system has revolutionised our admissions process, significantly enhancing efficiency and transparency. By automating thousands of emails and streamlining application reviews, we have saved approximately 10 minutes per application, reducing the overall processing time by 50%. This has freed up valuable time for our staff, allowing them to focus on more critical tasks and improving our engagement with prospective students and academic colleagues.”