Build Your Connected Campus with Salesforce for Higher Education
In today’s educational landscape, building and maintaining strong connections with students, alumni, and donors has become a critical priority. To achieve this, it’s essential for colleges and universities to integrate their various systems and establish a clear strategy for leveraging data to drive lasting impact. However, managing the constant influx of new data alongside existing historical data can be challenging. Dependence on old legacy systems can result in unwieldy data silos, impeding the adoption of new technologies and tools.
Being able to provide students access to curriculum means connectivity is vital in managing enrollment, online communication and more, not to mention ongoing support from staff and faculty around that curriculum. Many institutions need to solve the connectivity challenge using a responsive approach that can meet real-time requirements and support eLearning options.
Within a single institution, various departments may have unique needs and important applications. It’s crucial to have a centralized platform, such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Student Information System (SIS), to effectively manage the flow of information between these departments. Using a cloud-based integration solution is also imperative, as the transition of data, applications, and intelligence tools to the cloud has made it the most practical and effective approach moving forward.
Institutions Creating Their Connected Campus
Salesforce is a complete CRM that offers the full range of features and functionality that helps institutions grow revenue and enhance relationships with its constituents. By providing solutions specifically for higher education on an enterprise grade platform, Salesforce understands the mission to help students succeed and to drive greater visibility, accessibility and transformation across the entire campus using the world’s best technology.
A great example is Berklee Online, which offers 200+ music courses, 50+ certificate programs, 8 undergraduate programs, and 4 graduate majors to thousands of students from more than 140 different countries. Using Jitterbit, Berklee connected Salesforce to Ellucian Colleague ERP, its learning management system (LMS), and other financial applications. Each application offered a functionality that the other applications did not. Berklee did not wish to replace their current applications; instead, they used a best-of-breed approach. They used Jitterbit as a hub and spoke model to share relevant data from each system into Salesforce and treat that as their source of truth. Data connected from multiple systems can be accessed and displayed in real-time through APIs. Doing this provided Berklee a 360-degree view of their student body.
Berklee now has a connected, virtual campus where student information is always up-to-date and accurate. Berklee connected student information with marketing tools, learning management programs, and internal data, using the Jitterbit API Integration Platform, and can now count on having the right data in every application.
In other scenarios, Salesforce is deployed alongside the institution’s ERP or SIS to supplement the data processes that need to happen outside of internal systems. Financial transactions as well as recruitment utilizing third-party data are important factors in an institution’s success. Taylor University, a coeducational, interdenominational Christian liberal arts college located in Upland, Indiana, connected their marketing automation solution, as well as their financial aid system, through Salesforce for a connected experience for both students and staff. This approach of leveraging Salesforce as a centralized source of data and using an integration platform like Jitterbit to connect Salesforce to every campus system is also a strategic cost savings initiative. Barton Community College in Kansas, said, “[With Jitterbit], we were able to get rid of a whole piece of software to save the college money. Not having the cost of software and people for data entry is about a $100,000 a year in savings.”
Salesforce Higher Education Data Architecture
Many universities and colleges still have legacy and on-premise systems that are filled with data that’s difficult to connect with Salesforce and other cloud solutions. Deciding how to integrate multiple applications is a strategic decision that requires full consideration of your institution’s priorities. Salesforce helps institutions modernize important components of their data management through its Education Data Architecture (EDA). Salesforce provides a community-driven data architecture and a set of best practices designed to deliver value across your entire tech stack by building on core objects specific to higher education and automation. Jitterbit is EDA Ready, meaning the Harmony platform has been tested and certified to meet this Salesforce Education standard.
Jitterbit makes connecting even the most complex enterprise applications simple with a standards-based approach that includes native support for the major transports and protocols needed to reach your systems.
All of these connectivity capabilities are available within a single application, which means you can complete multiple integrations without ever leaving the UI.
Jitterbit supports custom objects and fields in Salesforce and can integrate and manipulate all data into these objects through Insert, Upsert, Query, and Delete. Jitterbit uses the integration framework of the SOAP and/or REST API of the force.com platform. Users can confidently carry data from SIS systems into EDA while permitting the SIS or external application to be the system of record or vice versa.
A Single Platform with Limitless Opportunities
This is where the Jitterbit integration and workflow automation platform becomes an essential solution to your institution’s data silos. You can control and monitor integrations, APIs, and low-code apps directly from one centralized console.
Jitterbit can deliver the real-time, relevant information that students, staff, and faculty need to perform successfully. Connect all types of SaaS, cloud, on-premise apps, data, and devices seamlessly together, in a scalable manner.
Jitterbit enables institutions to integrate thousands of applications and data sources as well as create and publish APIs from existing systems. Organizations never have to make changes to production systems or install additional adapters because connectivity is decoupled from the source and target systems. Additionally, you can leverage the API functionality to create, manage, deploy and consume APIs. This is particularly helpful when connecting Salesforce to peripheral applications that do not provide an API.
Jitterbit also provides a visual studio, as well as Citizen Integrator features, so that non-technical users can quickly and easily self-implement, saving valuable time, resources and money. By bringing all your systems and applications together, recruiting, enrollment, finance, operations, LMS, fundraising and more, universities and colleges are able to provide a nurturing experience for the student with a complete view and control of their data while also enabling the business side to not miss a step and build toward the future.
Download the White Paper and discover:
- How Jitterbit can help you quickly and easily connect Salesforce to your various legacy or SaaS applications, creating a 360-degree view of your student and alumni data.
- The 7 major benefits of establishing a connected campus experience.
- Real-life examples of how Jitterbit’s higher education customers have successfully connected Salesforce to their back-end systems to streamline recruitment, admissions, eLearning, student engagement, and more.
