BITS Design School’s student-centric pre-admissions process helps them exceed admissions target by 17%

The pre-admissions process at BITS Design School has now been automated with the implementation of Salesforce Education Cloud. All student leads are captured in one place and nurtured through to enrollment.

Students access an application portal to fill in and submit their application and documents. They can also track their progress here and refer to relevant guidelines. This access to a single portal for their whole journey has greatly simplified the application experience.

For BITSDES, the entire application management processes, ranging from application reviews to shortlists for interviews are managed on one platform. This allows the team to process applications faster. The resultant efficiency has helped manage and enroll more students.

Both the BITSDES team and the applicants now have a single view of documentation, important dates and ongoing interactions. This ensures complete transparency for all stakeholders. Also, the student 360 view that is continually enriched through student interactions helps the BITSDES team respond in a highly personalised manner. This leads to smoother, faster and more fruitful interactions along the application lifecycle.

In the very first run for the latest academic year, this end-to-end automation helped the design school exceed the targeted applications by 70% and class enrolment by 17%.

This was one of the key factors that led to a significant 53% saving in marketing expenditure, that would otherwise have been spent in attracting students for further application rounds.

“Automated processes on Education Cloud help our admissions team function more efficiently and the real-time student 360 enables them to respond faster, in a more personalised manner,” says Nandita Abraham, Dean, BITS Design School. “The platform also makes the application process friendlier and easier for students, helping us create a strong impression from the start.”

BITSDES constantly communicates with the student community throughout the year. Student outreach spans promotional campaigns for prospective students, communication with existing students about new courses, and alumni about events and executive education.

With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, BITSDES can use the student data and insights from earlier campaigns to design more impactful communication, and target and deliver them effectively. The marketing team can also measure the effectiveness of campaigns in realtime and optimise them immediately.