Modernizing Technology to Eliminate Pain Points for Students, Faculty, and Staff
For this month’s episode, Kathy Lueckeman joins the Top of Mind family. A tech leader within her own right, Kathy most recently served as chief strategy officer at Olivet Nazarene University (ONU). After completely transforming ONU into a modern campus, Kathy is here to give an inside scoop about the cultivation and success of that […]
5 Key Salesforce Trends for Higher Education
Salesforce held its 10th annual Education Summit in mid-April 2022. While the event was virtual for the third consecutive year, it was packed with exciting innovations specifically designed for higher education. The Education Cloud, the heart of the Salesforce platform, is the foundation for these innovations, including purpose-built development and solutions—many of which leverage recently […]
Salesforce’s Traction on Demand Acquisition Is Unsurprising and Not Significant for Higher Education
On February 25, 2022, Traction on Demand announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by CRM market leader Salesforce. Traction on Demand is currently a Salesforce partner firm specializing in Salesforce consulting, application development, and implementation services. The statement indicated that the company would become part of Salesforce Professional Services with […]
Five Things Higher Ed Leaders Should Know About CRMs
In the last decade, constituent relationship management (CRM) has grown exponentially in both capability and user adoption across higher education. The market is progressing from primarily departmental to enterprise CRM, which requires deeper forethought for institutions, especially during selection and implementation. Higher education leaders considering a shift in their campus CRM strategy should keep the […]
Impact of the Salesforce Acquisition of Slack
In December 2020, Salesforce announced the multibillion-dollar acquisition of Slack. At the time, few details were released regarding how the two companies would operate or the potential impacts of the merger. Roughly seven months later, the acquisition is complete, and the future landscape is more evident. Current State When Salesforce announced the completion of the […]
Verticalization Strategies of Megavendors: How is Higher Education Faring?
Application megavendors are reaching a level of maturity in their core cloud applications—in delivery, operations, marketing, and business models. They have stabilized the delivery of core applications in many ways: Continuous delivery: Delivering new functionality without disrupting their customers’ business Flexibility: Implementing configurable applications that work in most industries Reliability: Minimal unplanned downtime using modern […]
Modernizing CRMs for Student Success
The COVID-19 Pandemic expedited the timeline for technological modernizations at many institutions. As the fall Just like on-campus students, remote learners expect a quality student experience from their higher ed institution. Providing a quality experience coincides with modernizing and simplifying virtual services, yet the work toward this can not be done until institutions understand what […]
Enterprise CRM for Higher Education: Part 1 – Architecture
While most institutions have invested in at least one departmental CRM solution, higher education is seeing a growing trend of institutions taking a more holistic approach and deploying CRM applications across enterprises. This movement is gaining momentum as the demand for higher education to optimize its relationships and engagement with its constituents continues to increase, […]
Modernizing the Student Experience with Marilyn Smith
Tambellini’s Alex Freeman sat down with Marilyn Smith, Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer of George Mason University (GMU), to discuss the university’s student experience redesign initiative, data warehousing, constituent relationship management (CRM), their new state-of-the-art instructional building on campus, and more. GMU is a Tambellini Member and Smith serves on the […]
See. Feel. Change. The Evolution of Change Management.
As someone who’s implemented new technologies in higher ed for more than a decade, my on-going joke is that I use my public relations degree daily trying to convince people I’m making their lives easier with technology, not harder! As a fast-talking, multi-tasking technologist who embraces change, my lessons learned over the years have been […]
