During Dreamforce a few weeks ago, I connected with many Salesforce users in the Higher Education sector on all of the possibilities that Salesforce affords.  In particular, Salesforce1 Lightning and Communities Designer are two key tools that will play a significant role in helping Higher Education institutions add more value. Soon, colleges and universities will gain more self-service options to build customized branded community hubs as well as offer a simplified mobile experience to constituent users of Salesforce.

For Higher Education institutions, Salesforce can often be a large investment, but one that has a long-lasting impact to the success of the organization. Functionality such as workflow automation, robust marketing design and delivery, and access to critical shared data pools between campus departments have the potential to help (or are helping) higher education institutions lead in this fast growing market.

Here are the critical topics that need to be discussed and considered by colleges and universities for their Salesforce platform to be successful, sustainable, and innovative:

1. Roadmapping
   
   Higher Education Institutions desire an enterprise-level vision and strategy for Salesforce, but because of the organizational, political and cultural environment, they typically take a more discrete approach. Additionally, many groups within a higher ed organization have broad autonomy, not only in making business decisions, but also around budget and funding. Because salesforce makes it pretty easy to launch a new discrete org, we often find universities with multiple Salesforce orgs which are not integrated and living on the proverbial “data island.” Building a strategic salesforce roadmap with all levels of stakeholders helps Higher Ed organizations maintain consistency, scalability and sustainability with Salesforce even in a multi-org environment.
2. Appropriate Data Model
   
   Choosing the appropriate data model is one of the most significant decisions a Higher Ed institution needs to make to be successful with Salesforce. How you manage Contacts, Accounts, Engagements, Attributes, Preferences, Personas, Activities, along with other data objects, fields, and their relational tables, will affect current usage, as well as scalability in the future. A poorly designed data model can limit how you use Salesforce across the student lifecycle, as well as how you scale across campuses.
3. Governance
   
   This topic is critical to the sustainability and growth of an institution’s Salesforce platform, but one that is most often overlooked (or even ignored). As institutions find value in implementing Salesforce across broader and broader swaths of campus operations, the need to govern the platform amongst many disparate user groups, all with differing data needs, business processes, and innovation lifecycles, becomes even more critical to the success of the platform. 

At Bluewolf, we help our clients manage these thought provoking and challenging decisions, by leveraging our deep expertise with the Salesforce platform and higher education. If you are considering using Salesforce, or are interested in learning how to gain more value from your salesforce investment, please contact us. Or, download our State of Salesforce report to see how leading Higher Ed institutions are using Salesforce.