Market Perspectives

The annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Digital Leadership Awards showcase the professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that contribute significantly to improved efficiency, productivity and the performance of their organization. This prestigious award recognizes leaders and pioneers who have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across their people, processes, information and technology.

Ventana Research has awarded Derek Dabrowiak at Technical College System of Georgia using Salesforce and TargetX its prestigious 2021 Digital Leadership Award in Customer Experience. This award recognizes the individual, organization and technologies that best exemplify leadership in applications and technologies that support the engagement with customers for any purpose. All award finalists in customer experience were considered for this prestigious award.

Providing a satisfactory customer experience continues to be a top priority for leading organizations, but increasingly they are realizing that they cannot do so while continuing to rely on their legacy customer relationship management (CRM) investment and existing processes and technology. Current tools used to manage marketing, sales and customer service activities are focused on internal efficiency and do not deliver the experience expected by customers along their entire journey of engagement with an organization. New digital technologies are changing how customer agents are managed and how they execute their tasks, enabling simpler yet more effective interactions with contact centers and placing more intelligence in customer experience processes. These new technology tools are making it possible to more effectively understand the complete voice of the customer, renovate digital commerce systems and enable a more effective digital subscription model.

Ventana Research selected Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) for the 14^th Annual Overall Digital Leadership Award for its leadership in reimagining the college-to-student experience using an application that is designed to adapt to its specific needs. Deployment of the TargetX CRM occurs in conjunction with the TCSG’s eCampus initiative. The implementation of the TargetX CRM provides an innovative solution to outdated processes. The project equips both students and faculty with modernized access to resources and support as they progress through the entire student lifecycle. The project goal is to expose constraints within the recruitment-to-employment pipeline by monitoring every step of the student journey. The TargetX CRM solution completely revamps operations across recruitment, admissions, and retention staff. The ability of all parties to view the entire lifecycle of a student or student type facilitates seamless collaboration between previously disconnected departments. Student information systems (SIS), learning management systems (LMS) and student communication tools have been merged into a single dashboard for all faculty to access, creating a more seamless student experience. The TargetX CRM provides a mobile-first design with end users in mind. Advanced reporting and insights now provide a clear and more accurate snapshot of student needs. In turn, insights into student behavior and preferences at an earlier stage foster a more personalized student experience.

With the implementation of the TargetX CRM, students and staff benefit immensely. A seamless line of communication between staff and student better serves the mission of TCSG by making student outcome an immediate priority. The ability to view the entire lifecycle of a student can optimize outreach and cater support on an individual basis. The TargetX CRM will also allow the organization to more efficiently utilize staff as much of the manual processes will be eliminated. Student enrollment, cross-department communication, and ease of access to information benefits most from the deployment of the TargetX CRM. In addition, TCSG expects to see major increases in efficiency in both its admissions and retention departments. The ability to edit student records, review and qualify pending documents, and communicate with students all on a single platform will greatly improve employees’ ability to maintain relationships and complete tasks.

Success is measured in the application of the CRM across all 22 TCSG institutions, and TCGS expects significant improvements across many areas. Outreach and prospect inquiries will be executed with greater ease. Conversion from incomplete to completed applications will vastly improve using its automated notification systems. TCGS expects significant enrollment increases as the process of vetting required documents becomes streamlined, and an immense improvement in student engagement with the deployment of mass and personalized automated communications. Finally, TCGS hopes to also experience a reduction in students lost from enrollment to graduation as it is able to closely monitor every stage of the student journey.

Customer experience is a software category in need of innovation and optimization, no matter what type of customer. Salesforce and TargetX addresses the challenges of enabling relationships among an entity and its constituents, and in this case, the college and its students. Organizations with the needs to establish a more engaging way to manage its customer or student efforts should examine how to use applications designed for their specific industry can provide the level of satisfaction desired.

Organizations looking to maximize the value of its business and technology investments across its people and processes should consider how customer experience can optimize its digital potential. If you have not examined how Salesforce and TargetX can help your organization, it is well worth your time. Congratulations, Derek Dabrowiak at Technical College System of Georgia, for your leadership.

Ventana Research offers expertise and research-based guidance on helping organizations adapt to the new generation of customer experience processes and systems to achieve the highest possible levels of satisfaction. Change is required to maintain competitiveness and to enable business resilience and customer readiness to achieve the outcomes your organization deserves.