Constituent Relationship Management

Salesforce.org Launches Higher Ed Data Architecture

• By Leila Meyer
• 03/07/16

Salesforce.org, the philanthropic arm of Salesforce, has introduced its Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA), an open-source data architecture designed to help higher education institutions rapidly deploy Salesforce's constituent relationship management (CRM) platform.

Salesforce.org developed HEDA to help higher education institutions better manage all stages of the student lifecycle from prospect through to alumnus, and to meet students' expectations for "seamless, connected experiences whether they are on- or off-campus," according to a news release from Salesforce.

Students today expect highly personalized services, according to Salesforce. "HEDA enables institutions to execute their student experience strategies more rapidly by leveraging a best practice data model developed by institutions and delivered out-of-the-box by Salesforce," said Nicole Engelbert, director of research and analysis for Ovum, in a prepared statement.

Key features of Salesforce.org's HEDA include:

• Ability to quickly configure Salesforce to manage students throughout the student lifecycle;
• Objects and functionality created specifically for higher education to accelerate deployment of Salesforce;
• 360-degree views of each student; and
• Management of address, phone and email communication preferences.

ACF Solutions, Bluewolf, Sierra-Cedar and other system integrators in the Salesforce ecosystem will use the data architecture develop solutions for the higher ed industry using HEDA's standardized data model.

Salesforce.org's HEDA is available now and can be downloaded as a managed package from the Salesforce AppExchange. The open source code for HEDA is available on GitHub. HEDA is available at no additional cost to subscribers of Salesforce Enterprise Edition or higher.