Education Cloud Features

What is education cloud?

Education Cloud is a CRM for education that unifies prospects and student data into a single source of truth and deliver personalized experiences at scale.

Education Cloud provides a 360-degree view of student and institutional data. This means that staff can see everything related to a student and their academic journey, including what and where they study, the staff they interact with day to day, and much more.

Salesforce Education Cloud is a powerful technology suite that provides solutions to drive learner and institution success.

Having all of this information to hand means that staff can focus on how to improve a student’s experience and offer them more opportunities for the future without worrying about the process becoming too time-consuming or expensive. After all, less time spent focusing on this equals more time for teaching and learning.

Why use salesforce Education Cloud?

The “typical” student of the modern world no longer looks like one specific thing, and it probably never will again. Changing economic statuses, fast-shifting work environments, and the continued boom of technology has transformed the student experience for everyone involved.

Teachers need to think not only about how a student progresses academically, but also about what affects them too. Mental health struggles, financial issues, technological constraints, and family situations are elements that are finally being recognized as part of what shapes a student’s success. Supporting students and delivering high quality education is a priority that has never changed though, which is why Salesforce’s approach is to make sure that these aspects – as well as the “more modern ones” – are met

• Eliminates inefficiency and support fees with one fully integrated education cloud-based management system for all school management functions.
• Secure “software as a service” (SaaS) design eliminates downtime by providing cost-effective, real-time system maintenance, support, and updates in a “private cloud” environment.
• Private cloud-based SaaS model greatly diminishes on-premises network operations center equipment, licensing and maintenance costs.
• Enables more efficient human resources management.
• The total cost of ownership for printing and copier use can be greatly reduced through automated on-line workflows and “paperless” processes native to a cloud-based integrated education management system.
• Increased productivity at every level of the enterprise with SaaS design provides secure access anywhere, anytime.

The Education Data Architecture (EDA)

Education Data Architecture (EDA) standardizes the starting point for educational institutions building out a CRM. It provides a core and common data model that supports the entire K-20 student journey. It’s an open source architecture anyone can view the source code in GitHub. It’s been developed in close collaboration with our customers, partners, and the K-20 community to foster common acceptance. Solutions built on EDA share the same open and flexible, extendable framework that accommodates a range of use cases and end-user customization. With EDA, you get an architecture along with preconfigured objects, logic and functionality, and automation, tailored for education right out of the box.

The EDA framework, supported by the Salesforce Platform, can serve as the foundation for managing data and data relationships across your entire institution, in departments like these:

• Advising
• Alumni and Advancement
• Business Enablement (Housing, IT Help Desk, Facilities, Security)
• Faculty
• Finance
• Marketing
• Recruiting and Admissions
• Registrar

What can the Salesforce Education Cloud do for institutions?

With the Salesforce Education Cloud, institutions are enabled to capture a complete view of learners, from K-12 in school, to higher education in college, and beyond. Using one integrated CRM platform for education, the entire institution can come together to create personalized learner experiences at scale. Which empowers institutions to move from siloed data to actionable insights, transforming learner engagements into lifelong relationships. It is the one-stop customer relationship management software to help you track all of your constituent relationships, from prospects and students to alumni and donors. Salesforce Education Cloud is a powerful technology suite that provides solutions to drive learner and institution success. It is an outline for education institutions that includes solution sets for Admissions & Recruitment, Student Experience, Advancement, and Institution Operations.

A CRM like Salesforce allows an educational institution to have visibility into every aspect of its relationship with its student, from financial aid information to courses, grade data, and so on.

Another powerful Education Cloud feature is that it provides institutions with purpose-built education products and solutions, as well as the latest innovation from the trusted Salesforce platform such as robust AI, analytics, integration capabilities and so much more.

How does Salesforce Education Cloud assist schools, i.e. K-12?

Education Cloud for K-12 is designed to enable schools to innovate quickly and meet the evolving needs of their constituents . The ‘K-12 Architecture Kit’, is a foundation for schools and districts to connect people, processes, and data. Aligned to the Ed-Fi Alliance Data Standard, the K-12 Architecture Kit provides an extendable data model that can flex as a school’s needs evolve with time. It enables you to create custom apps and templates, that support your unique educational model with simple clicks, not complicated codes!

Education Cloud for K-12 also supports schools with pivoting from classrooms to digital learning, to provide unparalleled student support, safety, and family engagement. Plus, you can always dive into a library of free tutorials and get the most out of the technology.

The Oakland Unified School District uses the Education Cloud to gauge individual student needs, track outcomes, and connect students to the services they need to thrive. Ever since having implemented the Education Cloud, the district has been matching students from referral to service about 36% faster.

How does Salesforce CRM help colleges and universities in higher education?

Salesforce.org has been focused on ensuring that education (more specifically, higher education at the College/University level) is connected by technology to enhance the whole experience. They strive to make life on an academic campus, uncomplicated, student-focused and connected in every aspect. They believe in preparing students for the future of work, fostering community-driven innovation, and bringing together institutions to reimagine the whole student experience.

Salesforce connects campuses with its cloud to facilitate all the services that a student in college needs, in one unified place. Plus, the cloud offers the options of personalized marketing and communication as well, so the colleges can engage with prospective students, current students, alumni, parents, and other stakeholders in a direct, real, and more meaningful manner.

Higher education providers are increasingly using Salesforce to engage, market, recruit, and retain students, alumni, and donors. As per a survey, 38% are using the ‘Education Data Architecture’ and 76% say that Salesforce makes doing their work easier. Innovative colleges and universities, including Stanford, University of Southern California, Purdue, Rutgers, UPenn, Notre Dame, and Michigan State have recently implemented the Salesforce Education Cloud to help modernize their fundraising, personalized engagement, and conduct AI-powered research.

What are the benefits/results of the Education Cloud?

As per insights from Salesforce.org customers and the Total Economic Impact Study by Forrester Consulting, the Cloud boasts:

• 11% increase in enrolment
• 38% faster response to student needs
• 40% increase in student engagement
• 60% reduction in Information Technology expenses
• 80% improvement in staff productivity
• 195% ROI with a 7 month payback period
• $2.4M total legacy cost savings
• Increase in alumni and donor involvement and funds

Salesforce Education Cloud Features:

1. A Holistic View Of Stakeholders :

Every interaction with all stakeholders such as prospective, current, and ex-students, donors & affiliates, is consolidated into a single view. The cloud collates all relevant information from across sources, using a mobile phone, social & cloud technologies. It provides a 360-degree view of students and engages them on the device of their choice. Detailed reports and dashboards are included as well.

2. Effective, Customized / Personalized Communications:

The Education Cloud empowers institutions by delivering outstanding digital engagement with relevant, engaging, and personalized messaging to stakeholders. It also centralizes and streamlines operations for teams across campus.

3. Marketing & Enrolment Automation:

The marketing automation feature of the Salesforce Education Cloud maps critical points like student journeys, campaign management, budget tracking, social marketing, and personalized messaging to be sent. While the enrolment process from the pre-lead stage to the final enrolment is taken care of by the Sales automation feature of the solution.

4. Grant & Loan Application Management:

Grant concepts, funding, budget tracking, and project updates to sponsors are automated and so is loan application management for internal and 3rd party partners for loan approvals. With this, the extended follow-ups and back and forth communication regarding the student loan processing is cut short giving everyone a transparent view into the status. 

5. Recruitment Made Easy:

‘Education Cloud for Recruitment and Admissions’ enables institutions to deliver a relevant and proactive outreach to prospective students. With the entire data consolidated in one single place, you can now recruit the right students, improve yield, increase recruiter productivity and boost performance. 

6. Supports Students:

The unique array of Salesforce Education Cloud solutions enables colleges of any dimension to boost their student engagement, deliver unified advising, streamline services, and unlock access to careers.

7. Multi-Department Collaboration:

Different departments across campus, need to work together to make things run smoothly. The Education Cloud provides a smooth, seamless experience for students connecting all the different departments, for an engaged and collaborative experience free from silos or frustrations.

8. Nurtured Relationships:

The Education Cloud helps you impress and grab your recipients’ attention, with your attention to detail, engaging them at a deeper level, nurturing your relationship with them. Departments can harness the consolidated solution to drive major grants & online fundraising, enjoy enhanced reporting with AI, and nurture relations further.

Is Salesforce Education Cloud free of cost ?

Through the Salesforce.org Power of Us program, qualifying educational institutions are eligible to access Salesforce products at a deep discount and can even receive a Salesforce org at zero cost, which includes 10 Lightning CRM Enterprise Edition Licenses for Sales and Service Cloud. Here are the detailed plans…

Salesforce Education Cloud’s Education Data Architecture, provides an education data model for a complete view of students, courses, programs, etc. The Cloud provides solutions across the student lifecycle, including- recruitment CRM, enrolment management, academic advising, alumni database, and more.