Integrating Student Success Operations Within Your CRM: A Getting Started Guide

The Challenge: Expanding Your CRM Beyond Admissions

Your admission CRM flywheel is turning in high-gear, and it is time to expand your enrollment technology to support your campus's Student Success efforts. But where do you start?

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The most critical first step is clearly defining what student success looks like on your campus, from an operational perspective. Your definition will guide how your CRM is implemented, informing decisions about whether your current database can support these efforts, if you'll need to procure a secondary database, or seek out a different vendor altogether.

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A shared definition of student success ensures alignment across teams, clarity in decision-making, and appropriate prioritization of resources, all of which are critical factors for improving retention and overall student outcomes.

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Three Practical Steps to Define Student Success for CRM Implementation

As your institution prepares to implement a CRM to serve your current student population, start with these three concrete steps:

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Step 1: Convene Key Stakeholders

Bring together leaders and practitioners from:

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• Enrollment Management
• Academic Advising
• Faculty & Academic Affairs
• Student Affairs & Student Life
• Institutional Research/Effectiveness
• IT/Systems Support

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Conduct structured working sessions to agree on measurable definitions and dimensions of student success like increased retention, graduation rates, equity in outcomes, student engagement, or career readiness.

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💡 Pro Tip: Start with your headline, then work backward. Introduce your stakeholder group to next year's headline: "Awesome U increases first-year retention by 3%" - then pose the question "What would have to be true for Awesome U to increase first-year retention by 3%?" Every topic of discussion in these meetings from here forward works to serve that question.

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Step 2: Map Definitions to CRM Capabilities

Once your team agrees on your institution's student success priorities, match each priority with specific CRM functions. Leverage your Campus's CRM experts from Admission or Advancement to better understand where and how these functions may fit the bill for supporting your current students:

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Examples of CRM-Supported Student Success Initiatives:

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• Early Alerts & Advising: Automate advisor notifications for at-risk students.
• Student Engagement: Track event attendance and student involvement in clubs and organizations.
• Retention Initiatives: Monitor intervention outcomes, success coaching conversations, and persistence data.

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💡 Pro Tip: Create a clear CRM capabilities checklist to ensure alignment between your success goals and the technology functionality you enable. Again, your in-house experts will be valuable partners here, but don't put the cart before the horse by discussing how current functionality or solutions would need to adapt. Jumping ahead to this conversation can incite fear, defensiveness, or create unnecessary barriers. We're talking capabilities, not implementation.

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Step 3: Prioritize an Iterative, Phased Implementation

Don't attempt everything at once. Define phases simply and clearly. Your model might look something like this:

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Phase I: Quick Wins

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• Advising appointment scheduling and documentation
• Basic early alert workflow

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Phase II: Expanded Engagement

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• Student portal integration
• Advanced analytics and risk scoring

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Phase III: Strategic Optimization

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• Predictive modeling
• Campus-wide retention campaigns

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Navigating Privacy: Practical Guidance for Advising Data

One of the conversations we frequently see enrollment leaders experience friction in their pitch to bring CRM to success, retention or advising is privacy and data access. Student success efforts often raise valid privacy concerns about advising notes and documenting sensitive student interactions.

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Clear definitions and expectations around data governance, access, and controls at the early stages of the planning process can help identify system requirements and capabilities that will be critical in procurement, and can uncover business practices that may need more thoughtful review and refinement in order to realize the benefits of the CRM.

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A common example: In access to advising notes, there may be valid reasons to mask or protect the content of the note, but the existence of the interaction may be a critical data point in your early alert risk model. If the fact that the interaction existed is not recorded in the CRM, the system's ability to accurately assess risk factors may be severely limited.

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Plan for these hurdles now by:

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• Identifying non-negotiable privacy practices and solving for them
• Establishing clear role-based permissions
• Providing training for faculty and staff on appropriate data documentation
• Developing internal communications explaining how privacy is maintained and why collaboration is beneficial to student outcomes

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💡 Pro Tip: Engage your Registrar or compliance office early in CRM planning to establish clear guidelines and ensure FERPA compliance from day one.

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Measure Impact and Refine Continuously

Finally, use your defined student success goals to establish CRM usage metrics and dashboards that continually monitor performance. Track metrics like:

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• Reduction in advising appointment no-shows
• Improvements in early alert response times
• Increased student retention or persistence

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💡 Pro Tip: Regularly share these metrics across campus, and use them to inform adjustments and further CRM optimization.

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Ready to Transform Your Student Success Strategy?

Kennedy & Company's experienced consultants can help your team:

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• Refine your definition of student success
• Map student success goals to CRM functionality
• Plan and execute phased implementations for immediate impact
• Address privacy and compliance effectively
• Build practical measurement and continuous improvement strategies

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Connect with us today to get started with practical steps tailored specifically to your institution's student success goals.