Educational institutions worldwide are undergoing fundamental shifts in how they operate and interact with their “customers”: students, alumni, donors, faculty members, and staff members. Kotler and Fox (1995) state that “the best organization in the world will be ineffective if the focus on ‘customers’ is lost. First and foremost is the treatment of individual students, alumni, parents, friends, and each other (internal customers). Every contact counts!”
The concept of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an exciting one, especially as the education market becomes more competitive. Deregulation and a blurring of the boundaries, coupled with increased competition on the international front are forcing institutes to reconsider the mechanisms they use to attract and retain suitably qualified prospective students and forge relationships with corporate clients. Similar to ERP, CRM solutions focus on automating and improving processes, although the focus is on front office areas, such as recruiting, marketing, customer service, and support. In this paper, we present CRM as internal business processes—in areas such as finance, grants management, student information, enrollment, inventory management, and human resources—and freed them from some of the minutia found in day to day operations.
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