GoldMine Premium Edition and Bradford College CRM Case Study

As CRM in the Education sector becomes more and more popular, so does making sure you choose a business partner that understands the needs of educational institutions.

Bradford College appointed Concentrix as their new CRM business partner to help improve employer engagement, streamline internal processes and provide a solid, reliable CRM system.

Summary

This case study describes how the Concentrix CRM solution enabled Bradford College to:

  • Use technology to support employer engagement, the Train to Gain initiative, and help them achieve the Training Quality Standard
  • Provide users with a solid, reliable system which they could extend throughout the organisation
  • More effectively engage with local employers and compete with other training providers
  • Reduce silos of information through a central database
  • Efficiently capture, store and report on accurate, relevant data

Bradford College is one of the largest Further Education Colleges in the UK, and the largest provider of higher education outside of the university sector in England. The college has been delivering quality education and training for over 175 years. It's earned a national reputation in a variety of areas and offers a wide range of educational courses.

As well as receiving the TQS Part A certification, Bradford College has also received TQS Part B's in Healthcare and Beauty and Complimentary Therapy demonstrating they have expertise delivering in these sectors. The College is also working towards securing the Part B in Building Services Engineering.

Key Strategy

One of Bradford College's key strategies is to engage with the local business community to provide training for employees. By developing its employer facing unit, Total Training Solutions, Bradford College offers services to business to help them improve productivity and competitiveness by ensuring staff have the right skills to do the best job.

Total Training Solutions specialise in the design and delivery of cost effective, tailored training solutions to meet the needs of individual businesses. It offers a range of training services to employers, including Train to Gain.

Objectives

For organisations in the education sector, an effective CRM system is a vital component in a successful employer engagement strategy, as well as helping towards a variety of quality standards and accreditations. To support the Colleges Employer Engagement Strategy, the Train to Gain initiative, and to help achieve the Training Quality Standard, Bradford College approached Concentrix.

Before approaching Concentrix, Bradford College had had a rocky start with CRM. The college had invested in a CRM system with another business partner (unrelated to Concentrix). Unfortunately, the other business partner had not managed the project well, leaving the software poorly configured and staff inadequately trained, with limited in-house system administration and insufficient support. The results were an ineffective CRM system that was largely unused.

Getting CRM Right

Concentrix has a long list of satisfied clients in the education sector. It was through strong recommendation from another academic institution that Bradford College decided to contact Concentrix.

To ensure the colleges CRM project was successful, the first stage of the project was Concentrix undertaking a full scoping exercise. This included an analysis of the college's database, their existing systems, software and IT infrastructure, the objectives of their CRM strategy and potential future requirements.

Recommendations

Bradford College's previous CRM business partner had installed an old version of the popular CRM system GoldMine from FrontRange Solutions (GoldMine Corporate Edition). As an independent CRM specialist, Concentrix was able to take an unbiased view of the CRM software Bradford College was using, along with its implementation, configuration and design.

Although Concentrix had successfully implemented GoldMine Corporate Edition in many organisations throughout the UK, after investigating the college's requirements fully, Concentrix recommended they upgrade to a later, more advanced version: GoldMine Premium Edition. Concentrix also recommended that they build a new database for the College, which Concentrix would design and configure specifically to the college's requirements.

The CRM Solution

GoldMine Premium Edition has an easy to use, intuitive interface. It's a fully functional CRM solution built specifically to provide users with the information they need quickly and easily, while boosting productivity and providing a fully comprehensive view of the customer.

Because the College had previously purchased an older version of GoldMine, Concentrix could provide significant discounts on upgrade licences. So, rather than move to completely new CRM software, Concentrix recommended GoldMine Premium Edition as the sensible solution for the employer engagement team at Bradford College.

Concentrix deployed the new system using their proven CRM project methodology. Before implementing GoldMine Premium and building a new database, Concentrix produced a scoping document and deployment plan, and archived the existing database. Configuring the new system included adding a number of new fields specifically to help Goldmine support the College's Employer Engagement Strategy more effectively.

During the project, Concentrix paid special attention to user training, ensuring all of the staff who were to use the system were not only comfortable and fully competent with the software, but were also fully aware of the benefits it would deliver. In this way Concentrix worked with Bradford College to achieve buy-in from the users; an essential component in the success of any CRM project.

Concentrix also delivered administrator training, which meant the college would no longer be dependent on a third party for the day to day running of the system.

The Results

Concentrix implemented the system on time and on-budget, completing the project in plenty of time for the College wide TQS inspection. Above all, through comprehensive training and well-executed change management, all users 'bought in' to the system. The new CRM system soon became an integral part of users daily working life.

As well as having a centralised source of information, the new system has delivered greatly improved business processes increasing the efficiency throughout the department. Because Concentrix configured the software and database so it captures the correct data, users can quickly and easily enter and rely on the information for comprehensive and accurate reporting.

The redesigned, reconfigured, redeployed and upgraded CRM system now provides the tools the employer engagement team needs to achieve their goals. In fact, Bradford College has been so successful it was awarded the Training Quality Standard - the highest training accolade possible and endorsement of its excellent work with employers.

The Future

Just eight months after implementing the system for the college's employer engagement team, Bradford College contacted Concentrix to extend the system to its Health and Safety department. This included specific configuration of GoldMine Premium to the department's particular requirements, including screens that only users within that department could access.

Today, Bradford College is talking to Concentrix about potentially extending the use of GoldMine Premium to other departments, making the system web-accessible, and streamlining processes within the organisation even further.

GoldMine Premium

More about GoldMine Premium Edition

Download a PDF of this case study

Learn more

Find out how CRM can benefit your business

Get in touch with us!

Visit the Bradford College website.