The work of educational institutions is much more than just teaching: there’s a vast layer of organizational work to enable it all. In corporations, that work would be done by hefty managerial personnel, who would in turn need advanced tech to streamline the process. Some universities and schools are actually hiring more people besides the teaching staff, but using tech is a more viable alternative. Salesforce has been offering its own products for a while now to fill the niche – and using Salesforce for education is now a widely recognized option.
The question is, which Salesforce? There are several solutions provided by the company that are used in various scenarios. In this article, we’ll provide a general overview of when educational organizations may want to choose the different products and how to make them work.
Challenges and tech solutions
Running an educational organization is no small feat, and the reality that outsiders sometimes ignore is that the administrative and business aspects of doing so take up nearly as much effort as teaching. Of course, listing all the possible challenges faced by universities, colleges, and schools would fill an entire book, so we’re just going to focus on some of the most commonly cited ones that technology can help solve.
Student retention, particularly in colleges, is an easily measurable metric, and one that raises a lot of concern. High dropout rates are anything but pleasant, and it’s a common problem: in the US alone, around 40% undergraduates do not complete their degrees. This has become an even more pronounced tendency with the spread of online learning fostering a sense of isolation. What technology currently proposes as a solution is improving student engagement with a combination of CRM systems and real-time data.
However, data is itself a tough nut to crack, especially seeing as how educational organizations tend to suffer from silos quite a lot. It’s estimated that less than a third of education professionals can really share and access data across departments. Meanwhile, using a more centralized approach can facilitate planning and real-time monitoring of things like enrollment trends or resource allocation.
Speaking of resources, budget constraints are another common problem, so institutions undergoing digitalization are now more than willing to start with financial management software and then build everything else around it. This is not the only possible way, though.
Other important challenges include:
- the tendency for education to be an “easy target” for cyber attacks
- teacher and staff burnout, making retention harder
- difficulties tracking the student-centric metrics and linking the insights to actions (degree building, course enrollment, etc.)
All of this calls for a centralized approach with software that is as integrated as possible, so a giant CRM like Salesforce that allows to process data in real time under one hood is often a viable solution.
Salesforce for education: what choices are there?
Over the past several years, Salesforce’s presence in the education sector has grown quite noticeably. In the US alone, there are over 4,000 educational institutions that use Salesforce tech for at least some functions. This isn’t limited to just Salesforce CRM, though. In fact, there are three main ways in which Salesforce caters to the industry:
- EDA (Education Data Architecture), which is a standardized data model/framework that allows to build custom applications
- Education Cloud, which is essentially the (very wide) selection of most typically needed functionalities bundled together in a single platform
- Other products, like Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, etc. used in cases where there’s a pinpointed problem that needs a powerful solution.
There are quite a lot of success cases, too. For example, around 89% of leaders in higher education state that Salesforce and similar CRM solutions help with student success and retention, which is understandable: centralized data makes it easier to track progress and identify at-risk students early on.
Education Cloud and other products
As of now, Education Cloud reflects Salesforce’s clear ambition to create an overarching all-in-one solution; recent announcements predict more AI-powered functionalities thrown into the mix, as well.
However, there are different other Salesforce products that are used as an alternative, with similar results but usually intended for solving more specific problems. Here’s a short overview of both Education Cloud and these alternatives.
As mentioned, Education Cloud is a large toolkit designed specifically for the industry, and centered around the idea of solving the main challenges institutions face today. It offers quite a lot for student success tracking, as well as admissions and enrollment management. There are features for alumni and donor management, as well. While the platform also offers some of the features typically associated with marketing automation and financial operations, the philosophy is clearly such that Education Cloud is the go-to platform in and around the administrative and academic operations.
Which means that products like Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Financial Services Cloud and others can be a more viable option in some circumstances: especially so when it’s about large institutions, with complex marketing and operational needs, or with very specific financial management routines.
The rule of the thumb here is: the closer you are to the academic side of things, the more likely you are to be happy with Education Cloud; the farther away from that focus your challenges are, the more likely you are to benefit from other Salesforce solutions.
Top 9 areas of Salesforce use in education
To get a general understanding of how different products fit the niches, it’s a good idea to look at the more practical areas of application. Here are some of the most intriguing use cases that involve different Salesforce solutions for solving common problems in education.
Admission and enrollment management
This is where, by now, Education Cloud is gaining more and more traction: the platform offers a lot of functionalities to track prospective students through the enrollment funnel, allowing to automate things like inquiry management, applications, and set up admission workflows, with personalized follow ups sent to applicants and real-time progress tracking. This automation allows to increase application completion rates by up to 25%.
At the same time, when a more nuanced marketing campaign is in order, it makes more sense to use Salesforce Marketing Cloud, where you can segment the audience and use omnichannel campaigning to raise response rates by up to 1/3.
Student support and retention
With student support and retention, there are two possible ways to follow, depending on the strategy. One way to go is to use Education Cloud’s potential in aggregating student data, so you can be proactive in working with at-risk students individually (in fact, you can set up alerts and use predictive analytics).
Another approach is to use Service Cloud for advanced case management in handling student inquiries and issues. For example, it is used for creating self-service portals with faster response times, or for handling complicated cases on an individual basis.
Student and alumni engagement
Speaking of self-service portals, they are now also a good way for fostering student engagement with the institution. Portals can integrate features like course registration, career services, and the like.
Additionally, Education Cloud supports alumni engagement by centralizing data on graduates’ career progress, donations, and event participation. Institutions can use this data to foster stronger connections through targeted outreach and invitations to networking events or giving campaigns.
Another product that yields itself well to these uses is Experience Cloud. Portals made with it are typically ones that include discussion forums, peer collaboration tools, and dashboards. Finally, Marketing Cloud is often chosen for alumni campaigns with personalization, something that can increase donations the way a marketing campaign would.
Communications and donation management
Alumni and donors relationships are, of course, an entire area of management, so larger institutions might need software to handle this sort of data, too. We’ve already mentioned how Marketing Cloud is used for campaigning, but Education Cloud can also be used for a 360-degree view of each donor and personalized communications. It offers some pipeline management features, especially good for prioritization, and you can also use it for personalized email campaigns.
An additional way to handle this is the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), which is often chosen for recurring donations and endowment tracking.
Facility management and maintenance
This is where Service Cloud is the platform of choice, with automated workflows for maintenance requests. Staff and students can log facility issues—such as broken equipment or HVAC problems—through a centralized portal. Service Cloud automatically assigns requests to the appropriate team, tracks resolution progress, and notifies stakeholders upon completion. Institutions using Service Cloud report up to a 30% reduction in maintenance response times.
For resource optimization, Field Service integrates seamlessly, allowing facilities teams to schedule, dispatch, and monitor maintenance staff efficiently. A college campus, for instance, could use Field Service to optimize technician routes, ensuring faster issue resolution and reducing downtime for critical resources.
Course suggestions, degree building
This is an area where the overall edtech trend of personalized learning pathways is finally aligned with the desire for custom competencies building. Education Cloud has accommodated this development by capitalizing on its ability to centralize student data. Its features allow advisors to analyze academic history to recommend courses or remind students to enroll in courses that are needed for graduation.
AI is becoming a centerpiece here, with predictive analytics used to recommend optimal course combinations, while also keeping things realistic (like alerting about possible schedule conflicts).
Financial aid and scholarships
When it comes to financial aid and scholarships, the actual routines can vary greatly from place to place, so one can hardly expect a single solution to cater to the entire world. Depending on what aspects of the workflow require more focus, you can either go with Education Cloud or Service Cloud. The former provides foundational tools for organizing student eligibility data, that is, matching students with appropriate programs or scholarships (and also automating some of the communication along the way).
Meanwhile, Service Cloud excels in case management for inquiries, and is the platform of choice for the more unique cases, e.g. when the aid is managed via a third-party organization. Through a dedicated portal, students can ask questions about application statuses, award details, or missing documents. The system assigns tickets to appropriate staff and tracks resolution times, ensuring students receive timely support.
What’s really valuable is also Salesforce workflow automation, which streamlines approval processes, ensuring applications are reviewed and finalized efficiently. For example, applications can be routed automatically to different departments for validation, with notifications sent to students at each stage.
Event management
This is where you need to balance between the needs of event management as such, and the peculiarities of the educational sector. As usual, Education Cloud excels where data is required, like organizing alumni reunions or campus tours, with metrics displayed on dashboards.
At the same time, some aspects are better handled with Experience Cloud, which facilitates virtual and hybrid events, webinars, and such, while tracking RSVPs or managing feedback. In cases where events need significant campaigning, Marketing Cloud can be used for targeted emails and SMM, providing an increase in attendance.
Faculty and staff communication
Staff communication is as important as student communication, especially in the era of burnouts. To target the most important cases, Service Cloud is perhaps the best choice, helping manage inquiries fast and efficiently. Whether a faculty member has questions about IT issues, HR policies, or classroom resources, the system ensures their cases are logged, assigned, and resolved promptly. Automated workflows reduce administrative burdens while improving resolution times.
At the same time, Education Cloud allows to centralize staff profiles, so that it’s especially good for distributing updates about policies, deadlines, events, and the likes, while keeping it all aligned with what happens at the student side.
Salesforce products also facilitate feedback collection and reporting. Institutions can use forms and analytics tools to gauge staff satisfaction, identify communication gaps, and refine strategies. For instance, surveys deployed after staff meetings can assess the clarity and impact of institutional announcements.
Conclusions
The flexibility of Salesforce solutions ensures that educational organizations can adopt the technology at their own pace, customizing it to their unique challenges. From automating donor outreach to creating AI-powered course recommendations, Salesforce fosters innovation and efficiency across the educational landscape.
Ultimately, embracing such technology is not just about keeping up with modern trends—it’s about building a resilient and adaptive educational ecosystem that meets the evolving expectations of students, staff, and stakeholders. Lionwood, being a company that focuses on creating unique, custom solutions for specific cases, is ready to offer its expertise in Service Cloud and other products when it comes to integrating your tech with the giant powerhouse that is Salesforce.
