The vendor is required to provide to implement an enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) system to track prospective students from inquiry to enrollment.
- The CRM system will integrate seamlessly with our student information system (sis) i.e., Ellucian banner, document management system i.e., Laserfiche, and common app applications, streamlining communication processes while managing application workflows and document data.
- Beyond improving student services, a CRM will strengthen recruitment, retention, and alumni engagement by providing data-driven insights for informed decision-making.
- By ensuring timely and relevant interactions, it boosts operational efficiency and enhances overall institutional effectiveness, benefiting both students and staff.
- Admissions and enrollment management - undergraduate & graduate level:
• Track student stages across the enrollment funnel (prospect → inquiry → applied → admitted → enrolled) with send communication based on the stage.
• Automated communication workflows across various mediums (email, SMS, WhatsApp or similar for drip campaigns) for the entire student funnel, lead scoring, alumni and donor engagement funnel.
• Multiple pre-configured enrollments tracking and communication analytical dashboards with the ability to create multiple customized dashboards based on user role-based profile with intuitive GUI.
• Multiple pre-set reports to track student stages through the complete enrollment funnel (prospect to enrollment) with the ability to create multiple customized reports and assign access based on user role-based profile.
• Ability to segment and categorize student stages by academic college and by degree program.
• Deliver a customizable online application module for development and portal customizable by student stage to display stage status to the student and additional enrollment information as a purl or similar unique web landing page authenticated to the student.
• Ability to create and manage online applications with multiple and overlapping terms.
• Ability to manage various document types with upload, and drop/drag capabilities for the user and administrative document management capabilities
• Ability to create a mobile optimized, customizable and dynamic admissions application and inquiry forms.
• Ability to process fees with integration to multiple payment gateways, including but not limited to PayPal, Cashnet, trans act and similar.
• Deliver an event management, module with customizable capabilities that include event registration, registration waitlist, confirmation and cancelation tracking, check-in, and automated confirmations and reminders.
• Appointment scheduling capabilities
• Ability to send uploaded application and supplemental documents to document management system, adobe sign and DocuSign or similar.
• Ability to create and manage multiple users by role-based profile, with the unique ability to assign a student record by location code to users by profile.
• Ability to create and launch various communication plans delivered as blast and drip campaigns across all student stages simultaneously.
• Deliver pre-configured and additional customizable email templates and SMS templates that support use of graphics, video and plug-ins, google analytics and tracking codes.
• Ability to store and utilize lead scoring data to customize communication plans.
- Data management, integration & security
• Integration with ETAMU'S SSO for user accounts, preferably SAML
• Local users (admin & service accounts) must be compliant with ETAMU password policy for administrative & service accounts - 16+ character complex password, password history and MFA
• Role-based access control is native to the application.
• There are well-define roles with associated permissions that provide features and functions in the system.
• End-users are segregated by principal type.
• Robust procedural support for on-boarding and off-boarding users. less clickity-click.
• Robust data retention administration for the ETAMU administrators of the application
• SaaS providers must be state-ramp level 2 certification must 2.7 can furnish audit reports to ETAMU such as soc 2
• End-to-end encryption for data in transit and confidential data at rest.
• Support for a system use notification on login screens
• Session locking - 30 minutes of inactivity
• Session termination - once a user has logged out, the user session should be automatically terminated.
• Other events which might trigger automatic termination of the session include organization-defined periods of user inactivity, targeted responses to certain types of incidents, or time-of-day restrictions on system use.
• Audit trails include at least all of the following: login, logout, actions performed, and source ip address.
• Audit trails provide visibility into user activities aiding in detecting potential security incidents.
• Activity logs are available and accessible to customer administrators
• Retention of audit logs is 90 days or greater
• Must have a voluntary product and service accessibility templates (VPAT) for accessibility
• Separate and dedicated function for addressing security related concerns like notifying about incident reports.
• Frequency of updates or new features to be a controlled release with a non-blocking user acceptance process
• Upon termination of any future agreement, provider will ensure that the provider can export logs at the request of ETAMU within five days.
• Data migration, backup, long-term storage and disaster recovery plans
• FERPA, HIPAA, and compliance with local, state, and federal regulations.
• Role-based access control and ability to program data permissions.
• Automated data retention and purge policies.
• Bi-directional data exchange with banner, middleware’s like axiom, constitutor or similar, document management system like Laserfiche or similar, financial systems, ERP, and other university platforms and applications for seamless bi-directional data exchange.
• Data access for reporting with audit trails and field level security.
• Audit log to track all changes within the CRM.
• Include separate testing and/or development environments.
• Upon termination of any future agreement, provider will ensure that ETAMU data is purged upon termination of the agreement with accommodations as necessary to comply with any applicable regulatory obligations.
• Upon termination of any future agreement, provider will ensure that ETAMU data is portable as a record in a standard format that can be imported into another application.
- Support and reliability
• 24/7/365 customer support. want
• Phone/zoom support – for urgent issues, 24/7 or during business hours
• Email support – for non-urgent tickets, with a defined response time.
• Live chat – useful for quick troubleshooting/questions.
• Preferably ivy chatbot integration or similar.
• Knowledge base and FAQ – self-service options for common issues.
• Dedicated account manager/tech support – for high-priority cases, technical configuration and strategic support.
• Industry-standard uptime and system reliability expected to be 99.9% 3.8 industry-standard uptime and system reliability expected to be 99.99%
• Scalable multi-campus deployment with platform extensibility
- Philanthropy and engagement
• Comprehensive donor and alumni profiles
• Relationship tracking (family, employer, past giving, membership, interests)
• Contact history
• Engagement tracking
• Pledge and donation tracking (one-time, recurring, major gifts)
• Campaign and appeal management
• Integration with payment processors
• Matching gifts and corporate giving management.
• Auto response and receipting options during payment processing
• Giving society management
• Event management and rsvp tracking
• Volunteer management
• Personalized communication and stewardship plans
• Donor impact reporting and recognition
• Wealth screening and predictive analytics
• Pipeline tracking for major gifts
• Task automation for follow-ups and stewardship
• Email and direct mail automation
• Texting capabilities
• Social media and digital engagement tracking
• Personalized outreach based on donor history and interests
• Real-time dashboards for fundraising progress
• Custom reporting tools for donor trends
• ROI analysis for campaigns and events
- Marketing and communication
• drip campaigns and email design according to ETAMU brand standards
• API endpoints to facilitate connections to forms, and to expedite data updates from non-CRM sources (website, mobile apps, other platforms)
• Social media and digital engagement tracking.
• Speed to lead capability - with scripted and branded communications
• CC and BCC functionality for automated emails.
• ROI analysis for campaigns and events.
• Ai-driven chatbots and virtual assistants with unified student interaction tracking
• Ability to create 'views' for each area utilizing the platform to keep it clean and organized so the owner can see everything but each area can only see their pieces
• Enhanced predictive reporting to optimize inbound marketing efforts in tertiary markets.
- Data duplicate management
• Preventing duplicates from entering the CRM database in the first place by implementing validation rules or checks during data entry.
• Automatically detect and merge duplicates based on predefined rules, ensuring data cleanliness without manual intervention.
• Manual review and merging of duplicates at specific times, such as after importing data or merging databases into a single, accurate record.
• Use of matching rules to compare fields like email addresses, names, or phone numbers to identify potential duplicates.
• Identify potential duplicates by comparing records based on predefined criteria.
- Reporting, analytics & ai
• Predictive enrollment modeling to forecast student enrollment trends based on historical data.
• Ai-driven lead scoring to prioritize high-potential applicants.
• enrollment funnel analytics to track conversions from inquiry to enrollment and optimize recruitment efforts.
• Ai chatbots & virtual assistants to automate student inquiries, application tracking, and support.
communication recommendations where ai suggests personalized outreach (email, SMS, push notifications) based on student behaviors.
• Real-time dashboards with interactive views of key performance indicators (KPIs) for the student enrollment funnel, showcasing conversion rates throughout the student lifecycle (from inquiries to enrollment).
• Ability to export reports and integrate with third-party analytics tools
• ROI analysis for marketing & outreach to assess the effectiveness of recruitment campaigns, events and optimize marketing spend.
• Easily select, sort, and filter data by elements, categories, statuses, and workflows, including user-defined fields.
• Create data subsets with sorting, totaling, and subtotals.
• Import and export data in standard formats (excel, pdf, csv, text, etc.).
• Create, save, and run queries for standard and custom tables.
• Generate and customize visually appealing reports based on queries.
• Customize reports with logos. printable and exportable for use in presentations, ppt, google slides etc.
• Ad hoc reporting for querying data and supporting workflows and decision-making.
• Include standard, modifiable reports (e.g., rosters, enrollment funnel, financials, leads).
• Real-time query execution, ensuring reports reflect up-to-date information
• Mobile access to data for review.
• Schedule and run multiple reports concurrently.
• Email report outputs for scheduled reports.
• Include customizable dashboard components for reporting.
• Ai-based transcript and document assessment.
• Allow users to choose preferred means of communication.
• Allow data to be read from an API.
- Event management
• Ability to create ad hoc, secure, online registration forms for special events, conferences and forums by linking to existing websites.
• Ability to import and export registrants for upcoming conference or event from standard formats (e.g., xlsx, csv, etc.).
• Create categories for a registrant and conference which define stages in the workflow process.
• Automatically update registrant status based on defined events
• Ability to track registrants and update scoring based on attendance.
- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: April 24, 2025