Thursday, March 27th 2008
Patrick Sutton


This morning I participated in a discussion on the use of the electronic application in admissions and enrollment management. Romesh Fernando from Mount St. Mary’s College articulated his views on the use of the electronic application.

Mr. Fernando explained to a group of 40 or so admissions officers how he buys lists of student names, complete with fields such as GPA information, degree of choice, and email address, and then plugs this information into a 3rd Party software used for contacting students.

“We’ve been using Fire Engine Red for a while to manage ‘e-sponses’—or electronic messaging—to students. We upload the student information from the lists of names that we buy, and target students with a series of e sponses. When the students respond to the unique messages, they are directed to our online application, which we can pre-populate for the applicant using the data that we already have on that individual…. We still do not have full (automated interoperability) between the point where we collect the application and Datatel, where we manage the student’s data internally.”

Mr. Fernando went on to explain how his team takes the information from the completed application and exports from Fire Engine Red, and uploads a CSV into Datatel, which the College uses to manage student information internally.

As more companies vie for space in the education market, an overwhelming number of products have emerged that address specific needs such as email marketing, managing student prospects or providing all departments with access to student records. In some ways, the emergence of software that can address these specific needs is wonderful. On the other hand, solving specific problems using specific software packages can create interoperability issues.

Currently, there is no stand-alone software package that can manage student data from lead generation through the student life cycle. For the most part, back-end platforms like PeopleSoft, Sungard, Blackboard & Datatel have the capacity to communicate with 3rd party technologies like Fire Engine Red or other more advanced CRM solutions—but these platforms don’t have the complete functionality that schools need.

Over the next 12 months we can expect to see larger software platforms like Sungard begin to take a more full service approach. These comprehensive software packages will provide schools with a one-stop-shop to managing data accurately, from recruitment through alumni relations.

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