Higher Education is at a critical moment in history. Student support needs rose dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, amid a mass exodus of higher education personnel flocking to jobs in the private industry in pursuit of better work/life balance, higher wages, and attainable goals. Small to mid-size institutions have been especially hard-hit, as remaining staff attempt to fill the massive gap between student expectations and available support. Data silos made prevalent by technology sprawl, manual processes that break rather than bend with volume, and reactive support are the new norm, resulting in a worsening student experience. Vendors have limited incentive to offer affordable solutions, leaving institutions that serve traditionally disadvantaged or low-income populations behind.
Nowhere is this disconnect between technology and support staff more apparent than when prospective students attempt to enroll in a new college or university.
Institutions are procuring advising technology with the goal of supporting students throughout their journeys from prospective students to either certificate completion, graduation, or transferring to a new institution. Institution leaders are consistently disappointed that the advising technologies they procure to facilitate student onboarding are not effective at managing student interactions until students are enrolled and a permanent student record has been generated. This process misses out on invaluable information about the prospect and their interests, and it fails to record past interactions recruiters and support staff have had with them. Institutions that do procure technologies focused on prospective student advisement often lose that robust student data when students enroll. In both cases, institutions are unknowingly adding to the core challenges they face. These data management challenges during student onboarding detract from the mission of accessfocused institutions, which impedes their ability to efficiently get new students enrolled.
Watermark Insights (Watermark) is taking an active role in solving this challenge. A highperforming institution requires people, processes, and technology to work together symbiotically to ensure that staff and students are successful. Anticipating student needs is a critical part of the onboarding process. This paper describes one Demonstration Project focused on solving this critical higher education challenge. The learnings of this partnership between McDowell Technical Community College (McDowell Tech) and Watermark are outlined below. The goal of this project is to help move higher education forward, create a sustainable future for the industry as a whole, and establish better outcomes for the students we collectively serve.
A high-performing institution requires people, processes, and technology to work together symbiotically to ensure that staff and students are successful.
Watermark partnered with McDowell Tech starting in November 2021 to tackle this challenge of lost data along the prospect-to-enrollee journey. Watermark provides higher education software to support continuous improvement through a suite of software products focused on student success and engagement, planning and assessment, curriculum management, and faculty success. Watermark enables higher education to operate more strategically and effectively, maximizing the educational impact for the institutions it serves. Watermark also recognizes that solutions cannot be created within a vacuum, which is why the partnership with McDowell Tech was essential to properly address the concern of lost data along the prospect-to-enrollee journey.
An alignment in values and mission made the partnership with McDowell Tech a clear fit for this project.
Watermark leadership had worked with McDowell Tech’s President previously in other large-scale, student support efforts, further reinforcing that this was the right partnership for the project.
“McDowell Tech enriches our community with access to studentcentered, affordable, high-quality, lifelong learning opportunities that promote workforce development” (Accreditation, 2022).
McDowell Tech is a community college, located in Marion, North Carolina that serves approximately 1,200 students each year. McDowell Tech offers curriculum programs and a range of Continuing Education options including Adult High School, Law Enforcement Training, an Annual Fire & Rescue College, and Human Resources Development Services, along with ongoing development of options as needed for the community. McDowell Tech serves the historically underserved community of McDowell County. Over 15% of the service area population over 25 years of age has less than a high school education.
McDowell Tech is actively working to decrease this number. The strong partnership and goals alignment between McDowell Tech and Watermark has led to the success of this project as elaborated below.
Over 15% of the service area population over 25 years of age has less than a high school education.
While every prospect and student has different needs, there are a few overarching trends that lead to an ideal student experience. In the recruiting phase of the prospect-to-enrollee journey, the prospective student needs to be able to easily access information about the institution. If they’ve decided that they’re interested in the institution, they will need to receive timely and thorough communication when they desire it. The prospect wants clear and concise steps to follow in order to apply to their chosen institution. Next, as they move through the pipeline toward enrollment, it is important that the student feels that the institution knows them as an individual. They don’t want to continuously repeat their story. Instead, they prefer for the institution to have a system where their story is easily shared with the support staff. They also want information that is specifically targeted to meet their needs. Once they’ve enrolled at the institution, they desire holistic student support from their entire support team. There needs to be transparency, so that no matter who the student talks to for support, all of the staff knows the student’s story and experiences.
The recruitment phase is very similar to the retention phase of the student lifecycle. The student continues to desire all that was listed above, as well as a connection to campus. They hope to receive exceptional support and service in a timely and personalized way. Students who are more engaged and connected to their campus are at a higher likelihood to complete their current course(s) and persist on to the next term. In order to start tracking these goals and others that make up the ideal student experience, McDowell Tech developed its 2021- 2025 Strategic Plan Vision 2025. This document serves to quantify the ideal student experience outlined above.
There are a number of different challenges that McDowell Tech faced prior to this Demonstration Project that prevented them from creating an ideal student experience. These challenges are not unique to McDowell Tech, many small community colleges face the same or very similar difficulties. The overarching challenge was that McDowell Tech did not have one, consolidated source of truth for all prospect-to-enrollee data. This led to siloed knowledge and limited decision-making abilities. Next, many of the processes to attempt to gather and store prospect data were very manual and would break down at scale (ie: collecting individual prospect’s information and handwriting it on contact cards that were then distributed by hand to department heads). There was a lack of a unified student view because the knowledge about these prospective students lived mainly within the individual recruiter’s minds, which would sometimes lead to the prospect having to repeat their story multiple times. Nearly all of these processes were reactive rather than proactive. Finally, because all of the data was scattered, or not collected at all, insights were difficult to excavate. In order for McDowell Tech to reach the ideal student experience and specifically meet the goals outlined in their Vision 2025, they knew that they needed to make some changes to their processes, build partnerships, and incorporate technology that could support their needs.
Reaching the goals of the ideal student experience cannot happen overnight. Yet, through the right partnerships, McDowell Tech created a strategy to reach these goals. The key relationships that McDowell Tech specifically focused on are: high school partnerships, parents, community resources/organizations, and technology vendors for enablement. Tapping into the strengths of each of these partners increased the chances of success for every student.
McDowell Tech’s high school partnerships are facilitated through the Career and College Promise (CCP) program. This program’s success primarily relies on high schools that are willing to partner with them to support these students. Through CCP, eligible high school students are allowed to dually enroll in community college courses while completing their high school diploma. This gives these students the opportunity to get a jumpstart on their college education, setting them up for greater success. Additionally, this is a free program, and thus really benefits disadvantaged students who may have a difficult time paying for college. This is also a great feeder for McDowell Tech because many of these high school students then turn into full-time enrolled students at McDowell Tech after high school graduation.
The parent partnership goes hand in hand with McDowell Tech’s collaboration with high schools. Dr. Beverly Watts, Dean of Student Success at McDowell Tech, noted that “as soon as the high school parents are on board with CCP, the word spreads like wildfire” (B Watts, personal communication, October 3, 2022). While the high school students can build excitement for the program as well, Dr. Watts explained that it’s really important to get the parents on board because they still have a fairly significant amount of influence on their children and care deeply about their education. Once the parents are educated about this program, they are very likely to talk about it with the other students’ parents, which encourages those parents to enroll their children in the program as well. By including the parents at the beginning, students are more likely to receive educational support at home, boosting their chances for academic success.
McDowell Tech also built partnerships with community organizations such as CULA (Centro Unido Latino-Americano), to reach a broader base of students more effectively. CULA is a non-profit organization that serves the Latinx community of Marion, North Carolina, providing resources for food access, health care, foreign affairs, and education. By partnering with organizations such as CULA, McDowell Tech is able to tap into their rich knowledge of the Latinx community and more effectively serve this often underserved portion of the student body.
In order to accurately and easily document their efforts toward reaching an ideal student experience, the final relationship that McDowell Tech focused on was a technology vendor partnership. Watermark was chosen for this partnership because of its capabilities to track communications and follow a student’s progress from prospect to enrollee. Prior to this relationship, McDowell Tech did not have any technology to fill this function. Using Watermark’s software has greatly benefited McDowell Tech, and they plan to continue using this platform long into the future.
For more details about all of these relationships, see the report “Postsecondary Success Demonstration Project: Research of Support Network Extension Beyond Institution Boundaries to High Schools, Community Resources, and Parents” written by McDowell Tech in partnership with Watermark at Watermarkinsights.com.
Before developing a new technology for McDowell Tech, Watermark met with them to understand their current business processes. Many vendors are tempted to skip past this step and move immediately into designing the product, however, to know what you should build, you must first understand the needs of the industry. Watermark asked McDowell Tech to verbally lay out their current student recruitment process, from the first point of interacting with a potential student to the day that they begin classes at the institution. Out of these discussions, Watermark developed a Current State Process Map (Appendix A), identifying which department was responsible for each step of this process. Laying out tasks by department clarified how much cross-departmental work occurred. This demonstrated the importance of having one centralized hub for this data that all key stakeholders could easily access. By laying out the process, McDowell Tech identified where there were gaps in outreach, and where prospects are likely to fall out of the pipeline. Additionally, a couple of months into the grant work, Watermark developed a second process map that laid out the Future State Map of the prospect-to-enrollee journey and where the system under development could support their process (gray boxes distinguish system enhancements) (Appendix B). Outlining the current state is key in laying the groundwork for any development project and helps give a clear path forward. Unfortunately for many small institutions, like McDowell Tech prior to this Demonstration Project, prospect-to-enrollee metrics do not exist and therefore can’t be used as a baseline. (Note that a Process map was created in November 2022 to show the progress that was completed in the past year, see Appendix C).
At Watermark, we believe that student success starts before enrollment. This begins with engaging prospective students as well as applicants, ensuring that students feel welcomed and supported from the first point of contact. The ideal student experiences, as outlined above, can only be reached if the institution is focused on the prospective student’s experience from their very first interaction. The CRM Lite functionality, which is outlined within this section, ensures prospective students are receiving personalized communications from their first encounter with an institution. Additionally, these features support student success throughout the entire student lifecycle. Specifically, advisors will have a more comprehensive understanding of the communication that is sent to their advisees, advisors will have ample data about the prospect after they convert to an enrolled student, and they will have much greater insights into where prospects are on the prospect-to-enrollee pipeline.
The ideal student experience can only be reached if the institution is focused on the student from the very first interaction.
CRM Lite was built to meet not only the needs of McDowell Tech, but the needs of small to midsize institutions throughout the United States. There are six modules that make up the CRM Lite functionality, and each of these modules were designed, built, deployed, and implemented at McDowell Tech. As an early adopter of this product, McDowell Tech tested and provided feedback for each iteration of the functionality. We built a unique product because we believe that what was currently in the industry didn’t work, especially not for community colleges such as McDowell Tech.
Prior to this grant, McDowell Tech faced a number of business challenges. First, their prospect and student data collection contained numerous cumbersome processes. They were spending too much time searching for the needed information, which interfered with their ability to provide an ideal student experience. To solve this challenge, Departmentlevel apps (Instruct, Recruit, and Advise) were added to the Student Success & Engagement (SS&E) platform. Now, as a user enters SS&E, Watermark’s student success software, they will only have access to the tools, student information, and data that is necessary for their position at the institution. A unified solution is great, but we also understand having to filter and search through endless mounds of data from other departments isn’t efficient. Each department needs the ability to support their own unique processes and procedures, and SS&E provided that flexibility through Department-level apps. System administrators can turn the different modules on or off within SS&E to align the solution directly with department-level needs.
Each department needs the ability to support their own unique processes and procedures. Student Success & Engagement provides this flexibility through the Department-level apps Instruct, Recruit, and Advise.
For example, recruiters can enter through the Recruit App and have access to the recruiting tools needed to engage effectively with prospective students. Meanwhile, advisors will enter through the Advise App and similarly will have access to the tools needed to successfully support the enrolled students they are advising. While individuals enter and use different apps, a single foundation of data is being used to ensure a holistic view. The department-level apps are unique to SS&E in the marketplace and we believe it is the way forward because it allows department-level engagements while working with a single source of foundational data shared across the institution. McDowell Tech’s users have responded really positively to this change in their system. They appreciate the way it has streamlined their processes and has minimized any noise or distractions, thus allowing them to spend more time supporting the students.
Another challenge that McDowell Tech faced was the lack of a centralized location to store information about prospects. SS&E previously focused solely on the enrolled student by importing the necessary data from the institution’s Student Information System (SIS) and Learning Management System (LMS).
McDowell Tech now has one central hub to store all prospect data and can ensure all appropriate people have the information that they need.
This is why we built in the capability for the institutions to import prospective student data. This can be completed individually by completing a form, via CSV (Comma-separated values) file, or via a data feed that is automatically pulled in from the institution’s student information system (SIS). Now, as McDowell Tech travels to community events or visits high schools, they can collect prospective student information like their name, contact information, and high school data, on an Excel spreadsheet and then easily upload it to this centralized location. Additionally, prospects’ information can be entered individually straight into SS&E. Finally, this information is then easily reviewed and absorbed by the next staff or faculty member who will be interacting with the prospective student, thus decreasing the number of times a prospective student has to repeat the same information and the more knowledge the entire support team at the institution will have about that student. McDowell Tech now has one central hub to store all prospect data and can ensure all appropriate people have the information that they need.
In an interview with Watermark, Dr. Brian Merritt, President of McDowell Tech, said they previously were “lacking a consistent method of communication with students” (B. Merritt, personal communication, October 26, 2022). This led to students receiving duplicate messages through various platforms, each in a different format, with varied tones. This did not create a positive experience for the prospects or currently enrolled students. To help unify this communication, Watermark built Outcome-aware Campaigns. The campaigns feature allows McDowell Tech to design and build engaging and personalized messages, incorporate specific calls-to-action, and then send this communication to a targeted group of prospects or enrolled students. These campaigns can be as varied as encouraging prospective students to submit an application, to asking students who are enrolled in Biology 101 to schedule a meeting with their advisor. Competing products employ campaign functionality that only tracks open rates and click-through rates. At Watermark, we believe this falls short of tracking the most important aspect of these campaigns, which is the call-to-action and the resulting outcome. Institutions want to know if the prospect or student completed the request, and if not, the institution wants the ability to follow up with the student. Because we track the complete lifecycle of the prospect-to-enrolled student, we are then able to build out the capability to track the completion of these calls-to-action.
In one of the more recent campaigns, McDowell Tech’s call-to-action was encouraging current students, who had yet to enroll for the Fall term, to complete their Fall registration. They were very successful – 111 students enrolled in classes as a direct result of this campaign (27.75% of the 400 campaign recipients)! These campaigns provide the personalized communication and encouragement that students need and desire, as well as clear instructions for what actions need to be taken next. McDowell Tech built a personalized campaign and sent it to the represented cohort at the same time, which reduced a large amount of manual work. This campaign encouraged students to register early to make it easier to prepare for the semester. Understanding their schedule earlier gives students more time to obtain course materials, meet with their advisors, and arrange childcare, putting themselves at a greater likelihood of completing their course.
As a direct result of McDowell Tech’s fall registration campaign, 111 students enrolled in classes, which was 27.75% of the total recipients.
These campaigns greatly benefit the institution’s overall success. The sooner the students register, the more that the institution can adequately prepare for the coming semester. Additionally, advisors can spread out their workload if the students flow in steadily over the course of four weeks instead of all within the last two days prior to the start of the semester. The institution can also clearly analyze those who did not complete the call-toaction and easily follow up with that group of prospects or students accordingly, thus increasing enrollments over time. Finally, there was measurable ROI for the institution. Only looking at tuition fees, the campaign was the catalyst for approximately $73,000 of additional revenue. McDowell Tech spent two to four hours learning how to use campaigning within the SS&E platform, which translated into an incremental implementation expense. Now that the team is familiar with this tool, the overall expense for campaigns will dramatically decrease in the future.
These campaigns have already made a large impact on McDowell Tech’s students as well as the institution overall. According to Dr. Merritt, “This project showed the importance of having one point person who is responsible for the communication with the students from prospect, to enrollment, to graduation, thus creating a consistent experience. The deeper we got into this project, it accelerated the awareness that this needed to be under one roof” (B. Merritt, personal communication, October 26, 2022).
Similarly to the previous challenge that was listed, much of McDowell Tech’s communication with prospects and enrolled students was quite siloed. Emails were sent to prospects from one staff member’s individual email. This means that this communication is only known by the sender, receiver, and those who were CC’d (if applicable). Oftentimes, the prospect or student’s entire support team (faculty, advisors, coaches, etc) could benefit from knowing the information that was passed between the sender and receiver. To solve for this siloed communication, Watermark built Message Logging and a Gmail Plugin. Any messages that are sent within the messaging functionality within SS&E can be logged, or saved, to the messages tab within the student’s record. This is an optin feature, and senders are encouraged to use their best judgment to ensure privacy.
“We understand better the gaps in our communication and we see a path forward for developing a communication plan that is comprehensive and personalized through the integration with technology.” —Chuck Bowling, Title III Activity Director
Here is an example of how Message Logging integrates into existing workflows. If a message is sent to Olivia Student by Brent Advisor, and Brent Advisor logs this communication in Olivia’s record, then the next day when Joan Faculty is going to meet with Olivia, Joan Faculty is able to view the message that Brent Advisor sent, further enhancing the holistic care for the prospective student or enrolled student. The Messaging tab where these messages are logged is secured by role to ensure visibility for only those that need the information. Additionally, we know that some users will send emails from their institution email instead of utilizing the messaging feature within SS&E. Therefore, we built a Gmail plug-in that allows the sender to again log, or save, the email message to a specific individual’s recording with SS&E. This creates a more transparent view of communication for the entire support team.
According to Chuck Bowling, Title III Activity Director, in an interview with Watermark, “We understand better the gaps in our communication and we see a path forward for developing a communication plan that is comprehensive, and personalized through the integration with technology” (C. Bowling, personal communication, October 31, 2022). As mentioned within the ideal student experience, these prospects and enrolled students have expressed the need for the personalized communication that Message Logging and the Gmail plug-in feature provide.
There are countless different business processes at McDowell Tech in which a prospect or enrolled student completes a number of steps to reach an end goal, but unfortunately not all key stakeholders have visibility into where the prospect or student is within this business process. For example, McDowell Tech previously did not have insight into where a prospective student is in the pipeline from inquiring about attending McDowell Tech to eventually enrolling at McDowell Tech. Most of this knowledge lived inside the minds of the recruiters or potentially on disparate spreadsheets and documents.
McDowell Tech will have visibility into where a prospect or student is within the pipeline. Staff can send specialized communication to that person to move them closer to their end goal.
For a second example, McDowell Tech may focus on re-engaging students who have stopped out. Similarly to enrolling a new student, there are many steps that the student and staff members need to complete in this business process in order a re-engagement to reach the eventual goal or re-enrollment of this student. However, again, it was difficult for staff members to have clear visibility into where the student was in the pipeline. To solve this challenge, Watermark built Pipelines and Opportunities. These pipelines will contain configurable stages to track the progress of the prospect or student through the pipeline. In order to move on to the next stage, the prospect or student will need to have completed a certain step(s). Anyone at McDowell Tech with access to these pipelines will have visibility into where a prospect or student is within the pipeline, and they’ll be able to send specialized communication to that group and help them move closer to their end goal of that pipeline. Finally, they will be able to assess how well the process is performing and if adjustments need to be made to the process at any point throughout the pipeline.
Finally, McDowell Tech found excavating insights to be quite difficult, especially when data is strewn across multiple different platforms. It is challenging, if not impossible, to truly make data-backed decisions without easy access to clear data. This is why we expanded our reporting functionality, specifically to include clear reporting of the prospect to enrollee pipeline. McDowell Tech can report on every stage of the pipeline:
McDowell Tech recently started reviewing this type of data on a quarterly basis, however, it has to be pulled from multiple locations and is located on a spreadsheet that is quickly outdated. McDowell Tech is very much looking forward to streamlining their decision-making capabilities by utilizing these reports to understand where the prospective students are falling through the cracks and how they can focus their outreach on specific aspects of the pipeline.
At Watermark, which acquired Aviso Retention in December 2021, our teams recognize the benefits of having deep partnerships with the institutions we work with. For the Demonstration Project specifically, it was intentional for our team to create psychological safety for the collective project team. This included the Watermark team (implementation and engineering) as we built and rolled out new concepts where an existing blueprint does not exist. We explored together with McDowell Tech what processes were currently in place at the institution and how we might be able to modify those processes together to achieve better outcomes. These conversations are often very detailed, speaking about certain roles and responsibilities of personnel, and how changes to the product may adjust the way actions have been completed for years. Without creating this type of relationship and a safe space to explore, change is simply surface-level rather than transformational for the institution. We believe in an open, collaborative learning process, and psychological safety is a primary factor in achieving these results.
“Psychological safety can generally be defined as the belief that one is safe in the organization to take an interpersonal risk. If an individual, team, or whole organization does not feel safe, that will inhibit performance, learning, innovation, and risk identification. A lack of psychological safety reduces confidence and people feel afraid they will be rejected, punished, embarrassed, or socially ostracized. This results in decreased trust, and information sharing may be significantly impacted” (Ramirez and Baets, 2021).
As Dr. Merritt, President of McDowell Tech, noted that prior to this Demonstration Project, McDowell Tech lacked a comprehensive, high-level communication strategy. This is essential for a consistent student experience and for insights to be drawn by the institution. There were many individuals and departments within McDowell Tech that consistently communicated with the students in a variety of formats (texts, calls, emails, through SS&E). All of these individuals did their best to keep their prospects and students well informed. However, because there wasn’t a centralized communication plan, students were then inundated with communications from many different people and departments all within the same week or even day. Additionally, insights into what the student was actually experiencing from a communication perspective were difficult to excavate because each person only had visibility into the small amount that they were reaching out to the student.
Through this Demonstration Project, in conjunction with Watermark, McDowell Tech developed a holistic communication plan that is aided by the platform’s campaigns, message logging, and Gmail plug-in.
This communication plan will create a more consistent student experience and ensure that the prospects all receive the same important information.
Succession Planning is essential in higher education, especially when a new platform is being implemented institution-wide. The implementation team lead at McDowell Tech, Dr. Beverly Watts, Dean of Student Success, will be stepping away from her role at McDowell Tech at the end of 2022. She was essential to the implementation of SS&E at McDowell Tech and held much of the knowledge of the implementation, the product, and the institution’s usage strategy. If McDowell Tech did not have a succession plan in place or if Dr. Watts had not provided them with a generous lead time of her intentions to depart, they would have been left with a significant knowledge gap. Months prior to Dr. Watts’ departure, McDowell Tech developed a new core team of SS&E subject matter experts and held numerous training sessions to transfer this knowledge. McDowell Tech is establishing long-term success by now having multiple subject matter experts that others at the institution can turn to for guidance and leadership.
A third key learning is the importance of ensuring that the vendor and the initial client(s) are well aligned on an early-adopter mentality. There is a variance in vendor approaches to launching a new product and therefore, it’s key to be in open and clear communication with the first clients you are working with about what this rollout will entail. Some elements of the product may not be exactly what the client was expecting, or portions of the product may not work one hundred percent the way the client wants or expects them to work. This is common in SaaS products that are focused on achieving early feedback through quick releases and updates. However, it is essential that this is communicated to the client because they may not have worked in this manner previously, and/or their experience may have varied based on the product rollout. It is essential to work with clients who are okay with ambiguity, flexibility, and change when working on new product development. It is beneficial to all stakeholders, clients, and vendors, to receive open and honest feedback from the client about what is working well, what needs to be improved, and what features they would like to see enhanced. This involves resource time from the institution and must be taken into consideration when rolling out. Additionally, the vendor needs to consider the pros and cons of rolling out to additional clients, beyond the very first. This could benefit all stakeholders but could also present additional challenges as listed below:
Aviso Retention merged with Watermark in late 2021, which occurred during the grant period. The merger provided a significant opportunity for the grant if done correctly, and introduced risk if it wasn’t. Alex Leader was previously the CEO of Aviso Retention and was named the Chief Impact Officer at Watermark as part of the merger. To ensure the project’s success, Alex Leader worked closely with the Watermark executive team during the due diligence stage of the merger to outline the support required, and received confirmation of top-down support from the organization. This commitment from Watermark dramatically limited risks from the merger impacting the success of the Demonstration Project.
A key technical takeaway is ensuring that leadership aligns on which functional features are being added to the product, and understands the value of these additions. The new features needed to meet the requirements of the Demonstration Project, and at the same time match the vision and roadmap of the acquiring company. Additionally, it is important to make sure that both companies align on an intentional UX. The acquiring company must recognize the importance of developing an inclusive product, and Watermark already had this commitment. It was known prior to the acquisition that Watermark’s technical focus aligned well with that of Aviso Retention, which resulted in a smooth transition.
From a people and process standpoint, ensuring that priorities are aligned prior to the merger is essential to a successful continuation of a Demonstration Project. First, there needs to be clear leadership commitment from the acquiring company. After an acquisition, the new leadership will define the direction of projects company-wide. Ensuring both organizations’ visions align prior to the merger reinforces the leadership commitment. Next, personnel capacity comes hand-in-hand with leadership commitment. If leadership is committed to this project, they need to ensure that the personnel continues to have the capacity to do the work to complete the project. Along with capacity, it’s important that this work continues to be a high priority, even though there will surely be additional projects and goals of the acquiring company. Providing leadership with key milestone dates will help ensure this work is slotted into the preexisting roadmap. Finally, it is crucial to ensure that data governance will be handled similarly or superiorly by the acquiring company. This is key in the continuance of the project. Participating in an acquisition in the middle of a grant period could present challenges, but if there is leadership commitment, maintained personnel capacity, consistent data governance, and clear communication, these challenges can be overcome. The approach used for the merger during this study can be seen as an example to model others from if the scenario presents itself at a later time.
The Demonstration Project has validated that a market does exist for CRM functionality to be embedded within a student success technology offering. In addition to McDowell Tech utilizing the new capabilities, seven additional Watermark institutions have signed on, all of which believe in a single solution to support prospecting and enrollment, addressing the gap that exists at their institutions. Key feedback during presentations includes the ability to remove data silos between recruiting, admissions, and student success, a unified view of the student lifecycle, and the ability to see what engagement previously occurred. Vendor consolidation and a single institutional platform for staff to learn also led these discussions as important decision criteria.
While the Demonstration Project helped prove that a market exists for this concept, significant work remains. Student success solutions for the small to midsize market require additional investment to ensure product-market fit compared to pure CRM offerings. While the benefits of a unified system are obvious to institutions, a step back in feature capability is met with resistance from Recruiting and Admissions teams.
A goal of the project was also to understand the process of how a small institution could implement and roll out a solution with these capabilities. In the case of McDowell Tech and other early-adopting institutions, it is increasingly apparent that resource constraints exist, both technical and nontechnical. To deploy a solution such as SS&E at scale, investment in third-party organizations/teams that maintain deep knowledge of a specific product and how it is used for particular institution types would be required. Institutions also require ongoing, detailed support to help align change management goals and KPI reviews. Quarterly visits review progress and challenges faced, all while aligning with objectives found within an institution’s strategic plan.
To truly move the needle for small-to-midsize institutions, investment is required in both of the aforementioned areas. The initial investment by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made this Demonstration Project possible1 . However, additional investment will be required of both public and private entities including solution providers, non-profits, and colleges themselves. While this effort does seem daunting, the Demonstration Project brings higher education one step closer to offering student support at scale for underserved institutions and the students they represent.
This was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Accreditation, mission, vision, values and goals. McDowellTech. (2022). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://mcdowelltech.edu/about-us/accreditation-mission-vision-values-and-goals/
Ramirez, J. E., Baets, S. D. (2021). NeuralPlan: Project Management Planning, Forecast and Risk (1st ed., Vol. 1). The Institute for Neuro & Behavioral Project Management.
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