CRM Strategy from Plymouth University

Last week, we were delighted to receive a visit from Rupert Frankum of Plymouth University. Rupert was the technical manager for Plymouth's project to replace their old student recruitment and admissions processes with a modern system based on a CRM platform You can see a shorter presentation that Rupert and his colleague Paul Westmore gave at this year's UCISA conference on the conference website.

Rupert gave an excellent talk, covering many aspects of their project. For me, the highlight was the discussion of their CRM vision, which used an analogy of a Rubik's cube to give an image of how common technical components can support different parts of the recruitment process. This explained the issues, and how they can be addressed, in an engaging and effective way.

This visit was timely for us. We have been building a business case for a CRM platform for several months, and the University is currently reviewing how we manage (or fail to manage) student recruitment. We need a compelling explanation of how this technology can enable a real transformation of the face we present to the outside world, to become more responsive and to meet people's individual needs. Rupert's presentation set us a high standard to aim for.

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