CRM and student records systems integration for a college of further education

Overview

On a daily basis, Bedford College manages the records of over 40,000 students, which they have gathered by manually entering information such as personal details and enrolled courses into the Tribal EBS student record system. Having recently taken the decision to use the Radius CRM to help with their marketing and enrolment processes they needed to be able to synchronise the records between the two systems in order, not only to avoid having to enter everything twice but also to ensure that both systems are kept fully up-to-date with minimal human intervention.

As there was no off-the-shelf solution to this problem they asked HeadChannel to help with the integration of the two systems, enabling them to maintain and support regularly automated synchronisation.

Process

To achieve the desired results, we designed and built a server application which works in the background, requiring no action on the part of the college staff.

Synchronisation takes place every evening and gathers data from three different modules. It updates existing records and creates new ones by matching data from the two systems using predefined parameters. The synchronisation works in both directions, so records can be updated in either system.

Benefits

Systems integration is the ideal solution for organisations which cannot give up on any of the systems they use. The integration of EBS and Radius has enabled Bedford College to:

• Save time – there is no need to enter data manually in both of the systems as the regular synchronisation provides a smooth data flow between them
• Maintain order – each synchronisation is followed by a report presenting statistics concerning both updated information and potential unmatched records, which allows staff to resolve any issues with incorrectly entered data quickly and easily
• Improve productivity – with clear insight into student records, the college can focus on encouraging greater uptake of courses.

Success story

The college is now able to track with far greater accuracy the levels of interest and subsequent enrolment, fees paid and unpaid and the popularity of the various courses without having to worry about keeping the student records system updated as this is now handled automatically in the background. Following the implementation of this system, Bedford College is now considering growing the application and automating other processes such as SMS messaging.

Project facts

• Team – Developers 5 (Team leader 1, Mid backend dev 3, Frontend developer 1), QA 1, BA 1, PM 1
• Project management – Waterfall
• Technology – .Net Framework, REST API, Entity Framework, MS SQL Server, Autofac