The education industry is navigating global uncertainties and education-specific issues such as the need to improve enrollment and graduation rates, develop new strategies for staff recruitment and retention, and deliver on higher student and staff expectations for personalized experiences. At Salesforce, we are committed to helping institutions solve these challenges, and power the next generation of experiences for lifelong learners.
Drawing on our commitment to solve these challenges and power the next generation of experiences, we are thrilled to share the reimagined Education Cloud! It’s a transformative step in our journey together, enabling you to deliver experiences that build learner relationships for life. So what’s new? The Education Cloud has:
- A new data foundation built for current and next-generation learning models to drive the best possible learner outcomes
- A new capability model that allows for common services, such as appointment scheduling and application forms, to be used institution-wide
- A reimagined Recruitment and Admissions app that provides a modern, personalized experience to prospective students, recruiters, and admissions staff
We hear a strong desire from customers to bring best practices in other industries into education. Education Cloud now offers much easier access to innovation across Salesforce. It includes capabilities such as virtual appointments, case management, program management, care plans, and more that were built in collaboration with other industry teams at Salesforce, such as Healthcare and Public Sector. We are excited to accelerate the delivery and pace of innovation to our global customers using this collaborative cross-industry approach.
Generally available now, as part of our Salesforce Spring ‘23 Release, is Education Cloud for Recruitment and Admissions, which includes the following new features and enhancements.
Smart prospecting for recruiters
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According to the Salesforce Connected Student Report, the first contact in the student journey has to be meaningful in order to build a true sense of belonging. Education Cloud’s smart prospecting allows you to segment your prospects, assign them to recruiters and enable personalized prospect engagement at scale, from the very first interaction.
Transformed applicant experience
We know that students need holistic support from application to graduation and beyond. Education Cloud provides a transformed applicant experience that allows students to apply easily to multiple programs, track application statuses, and interact with admissions teams. We are confident this new experience will help to settle applicant nerves!
Learn more about Education Cloud for Recruitment and Admissions today
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Expanded appointment scheduling
Another way in which we want to help institutions in providing holistic student support is by expanding the use of appointment scheduling. Appointment scheduling can be used as a cross-campus service for virtual meetings with recruiters, and admissions interviews using built-in video functionality.
Streamlined admissions workflow
![](https://www.salesforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/blog-edu-spring-release-23-inline-2-updated.png?w=1024)
The report also revealed that 34% of staff reported their institution uses multiple systems, and it’s hard to find the data they need to do their job effectively. The streamlined admissions workflow makes application checklisting, reviews, document management, and decision workflows a breeze! Staff can spend less time in systems, and more time doing impactful work.
Care plans for students
Our research also tells us that students who have a great onboarding experience are 35 times more likely to have a great student experience. Care plans will provide students with practical, actionable steps to ensure a smooth onboarding experience, and reduce summer melt.
We are excited to be providing a scalable, extensible, and enterprise-grade industry cloud that will evolve as our customers do. “The way to build scale is to build a heroic system. That system involves the right people at the right place at the right time, unified through a common 360-degree view of the student experience, and bound by automation that allows you to have things that can be programmed and happen behind the scenes,” said David Burge, VP of Enrollment Management at George Mason University.
All this innovation will be delivered within our core platform, without the need to install or upgrade managed packages. Upgrade cycles will happen with the rest of our core platform.