St. Francis Xavier U Tackles Recruitment with CRM

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/15/08

Nova Scotia's St. Francis Xavier University is acquiring the Azorus CRM suite after working with the company's Digital Recruit system for the last year. With Digital Recruit, students at recruiting events fill out a special form with a digital pen that captures the information being written. Recruiters then upload the data stored on the pen to the CRM system, which initiates a communication plan for the student, including an automatic welcome e-mail message.

The university said in a statement that competition for students is fierce in the province, which has 10 other universities and a declining prospective student population. "Being able to maintain the percentage of Nova Scotia students is vital to our institutional philosophy," said Robb Parker, director of admissions and recruitment. "In order to do that, we believe that Azorus will offer us a competitive advantage in terms of speed and personalization, which combined, will put us as a first choice for students in the region."

The school is also seeking students from other parts of the country and the world. "The allure of the Azorus platform is the ability to build not only better relationships, but more of them," Parker said. "Being able to deliver equally high levels of service to students in other countries, two provinces away, or down the street will ultimately help us demonstrate what students should expect once they get here."

The Azorus CRM suite of applications has been designed specifically for higher education environments. Customers include Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Everett Community College in Washington state, and Toronto's Ryerson University.