While universities have always relied on alumni for donations and industry placement for students, corporate relationships are now more vital than ever before. From technological and theoretical advancement, thanks to university-industry partnerships, to the priceless experience and knowledge gained by students during industry placement, it can be hard to put a total value on any university’s corporate relations.

However, according to Chair of Universities Australia, Professor Margaret Gardner, “boosting university-industry engagement could add up to ten-billion dollars to the Australian GDP.”

Managing big data with small teams

Even though corporate relations are now big business for universities, most university corporate relations teams are small, if existent at all. Small teams can be agile, but it does make it harder to trawl through vast amounts of big data. And when it comes to dealing with big businesses or big accounts, that’s precisely the kind of data that gets results.

Luckily, each student who passes through your university represents a wealth of data. From their early days as a potential student to their initial application; right through their studies, and to their eventual place among other alumni.

Once your student has reached alumni status and is now a potential corporate partner, every piece of their data is going to help you better form a lasting partnership.

Simple information, such as the school they originally studied at (which you have on their original application), through to their course and classmate information, right through to where they stayed on or off campus; if you’re not utilizing every piece of the student’s experience to form a partnership, then you’re missing out on a massive opportunity.

While all of this data can represent an endless stream of work for a poorly equipped faculty, a powerful Salesforce Platform can allow even the smallest of teams to track, manage and maintain all of your university’s corporate partnerships.

From simple details, such as pairing a faculty member from the same graduating year as your potential partner, right through to finding people who were in the same college or dorms, or even using Salesforce Marketing Cloud to better communicate with the potential partner in their language, on their preferred device or media; Salesforce can help you put your best foot forward, and support every step thereafter.

How Simplus can help

At Simplus, we’ve already helped several universities make the most of their corporate relations, by partnering with each establishment and tailoring a unique Salesforce Solution for their needs.

Beyond the immediate benefits, such as optimizing alumni lifetime value, and minimizing staff time spent on menial tasks like data collection and reporting; Simplus will also help set you up for the future so that your current corporate relations can begin setting data points that will assist with your future corporate partnerships.

So if you feel that your university can benefit from a single view of all of your current and potential corporate partnerships; as well as the ability to easily track and manage the entire student experience; then talk to one of our experienced team or get in contact with David Bowker directly.