Customer

Fast and accurate: online applications at ACU

Australian Catholic University (ACU National) began using StudyLink Connect in January 2008 to handle their online international student applications. It has made such a difference to their workload in this short time that they have now made it mandatory for all agents to use.

“The time was right to add an online application facility to our site,” says Elissa Newell, Online Marketing Manager at ACU National’s International Office. “We’d carried out extensive development on our website, and this gave people the opportunity to complete the entire process online. Essentially, it’s a checkout button.”

Customised and scalable

StudyLink’s fully developed Connect solution suited this smaller institution. “The others seem too big and expensive, and intensive to implement. We needed a program that would fit in with the way we do things. Connect was scalable, and could be customised for us,” says Elissa.

From couriers to click and send

Since April 2009, ACU has made it mandatory for agents to use Connect for applications, with very few exceptions.

“It’s been a big procedure shift for them, from a paper-based system that relied on international couriers to an internet-based paperless system. But it’s so much better now. We can track applications from beginning to end, things don’t go missing, and it’s faster to send information between our six campuses.”

Admissions Officer Kate Reilly-Casali from ACU National’s International Office agrees. “It’s making our lives easier. Before, our workday was eaten up by phone calls and emails from agents and students. Now they can check how their application is going online. Snail mail used to cost us several days on either end. Now we’ve reduced our response time from around two weeks to just a few days in some cases.”

ACU have found that they have saved time, and improved their offer letter turnaround, because:

·      Student information is more accurate, with one single form with inbuilt rules for the applicant to follow – as opposed to a range of printed forms for different programs in the past, which sometimes caused confusion. And because it’s already typed, it’s easier to read

·      Certified copies and documents no longer go missing in transit or are sent to the wrong campus, previously causing delays in matching supporting documents to applications. Now documents are scanned to a single PDF file with all information needed

·      ACU can update course information as it changes – such as full intakes, additional courses and packaged or combined courses

·      Applications can be assessed on screen when turnaround time is tight, and a response letter generated automatically

·      Agents and students can access online status updates regarding their application, providing them with a transparent and convenient experience.

Because it’s also now easier for students to apply directly to the university, ACU National is getting more value from the investment in its new website and online marketing campaigns.

Results

Within 18 months of implementation, ACU had received thousand applications from international students and agents.

“It has been a change for some of our processes, but a good change,” says Kate, ‘It’s making our lives easier.”

“I would definitely recommend it,” agrees Elissa. “Connect in itself is a good product that offers something we really need. But even more importantly, StudyLink is just wonderful to work with. It is the type of company that will make sure the product works for you, the way you need it to.”

The next step? 

Elissa is working towards full data integration, as they move towards a paperless office system and the resulting benefits for their staff, student applicants and the environment.

Professional and simple: online applications at SIEC

SIEC help Indian students to achieve global success, through education and career counselling at their 22 offices in India, as well as offices in Australia and Singapore.

Every year, they lodge over 2,000 student applications for around 100 universities and colleges in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Singapore and Ireland.

“We immediately saw that we could save time in getting a letter of offer with StudyLink’s online application system,” says Kanika Bhugra, Relationship Manager for SIEC. “Being able to log onto Connect was an attractive feature – it would save time in processing and save confusion.”

And it has definitely worked for them. SIEC now use Connect for many of their Australian providers, including ACU, Ballarat, Navitas Group and Griffith University.

A professional approach

“It is easy now,” says Kanika. “We have a single log in for all universities, then we can access specific applications for each one.”

“What I really like is that we get the acknowledgement. It used to take weeks just to find out that the university did receive the paperwork, and then we’d have to resend it.”

SIEC counsellors complete the application online in front of the prospective student. They asses the supporting documents, scan them and attach them as a PDF. “It looks professional, and they get an immediate response with the acknowledgement.”

“In the past, emailing the applications often didn’t work because the attachments would be blocked. Now we know it’s all been uploaded, we get a receipt, and we don’t have to chase the university to check if everything was received,” says Kanika.

A smooth transition

StudyLink co-ordinated the training of SIEC staff in Melbourne and India. A member of the StudyLink Delhi office visited the local SIEC office and provided training on the application and log in system.

SIEC initially established a central application team, who handle all applications from branch offices. But they are now shifting the process back to branches so the student can see the application as it is being completed.

“Entering the data has not really added to our workload,” says Kanika. “We were already helping them with their applications anyway. It only takes around seven to ten minutes to complete, and it is saving further delays.”

Results

For Kanika, the main benefit has been for their students. The decision to apply for overseas study is not taken lightly, and the process sometimes seems daunting.

“They are relaxed and happy when they see the application is in process, they love the instant receipt,” she says. “I’d definitely recommend this system to other agents. For sure!”

10 New Year resolutions for 2010

A new year, a new decade and a fresh start. Whether you keep them or not, making New Year’s resolutions is an opportunity to review and set a course for the year ahead. So what direction will your business take in 2010?

1. Be personal about communication and cut out lazy mass-marketing. Have a real one-on-one dialogue with clients and prospective students, and start building lifelong relationships. With direct marketing techniques and social technologies like email, chat, Facebook, blogs – it’s all easier to manage in 2010.

2. Keep on top of new opportunities and threats. Put some time aside each month to scan the macro and micro factors affecting your business. Use models like PESTLE, Porter’s Five Forces and SWOT Analysis to do this and back up each item with evidence.

3. Get involved in the conversation. Set up social media listening posts – keep an eye on blogs, tweets and updates that mention your business and competitors. Don’t be shy about resolving negative concerns, or making the most of positive feedback. It’s free market research on an ongoing basis and it’s easier than you might think!

4. Challenge old-Gen ways of working. It’s time to get productive with Gen-Y workforce habits. What repetitive or mundane tasks can be automated? Use Gen-X skills to scenario plan to reduce risk.

5. Find a way to balance your triple bottom line. Set targets for economic, social and environmental results. Profit, People and the Planet – it all adds up to a sustainable business with a long-term future.

The future of student marketing

On the eve of a new decade, we’ve gazed into our crystal ball to predict the major changes, challenges and opportunities ahead for those of us marketing to international students.

Here are five essential marketing trends to understand in 2010.

Using technology for good (not evil!)

Unless you were hiding under a rock for most of the past decade, you will have seen a huge shift in the way products and services are marketed – all thanks to rapid developments in technology.

Technology has given us new channels to reach and build relationships with customers, and new tools to measure the results. We’ve seen this growth in social technology help drive a change to a more sophisticated and informed customer. From Twitter instant news to Facebook fan pages and Google Analytics… where would we be today without online communication and collaboration tools?

But in this race to embrace digital marketing, we need to remember to put the student (or ‘customer’) and their needs and personal data protection at the heart of the organisation. Who is the technology serving? Is it creating real value-driven relationships? Are we protecting their data and explaining our terms of service clearly?

In 2010, we’ll find new ways to automate the most mundane or repetitive marketing tasks – like data entry and analysis – and free up more time for customer service. Instead of mass marketing, such as broadcast communications and de-humanised decisions, we can use technology to develop one-on-one personalised relationships through better data segmentation and market research.

Ethical marketing

Marketers have a critical role in developing sustainable business strategies, because we are closest to the student market. We understand them, and how they feel about privacy, sustainability and how their personal data is used.

Are you ready for change?

The ESOS review of Australia’s international education sector is now underway, and should be completed in early 2010. By bringing this review forward, the Australian government is showing its commitment to the well-being of international students and the quality of their education, as well as making moves to protect the industry.

The review is looking at four key areas:

·      Supporting the interests of students

·      Delivering quality education

·      Effective regulation

·      Sustainability of the sector

What will this mean for the industry? Supporting the interests of students begins with agents and counselling. And effective regulation indicates that audits and greater enforcement will take place. At present, compliance requirements include proving a documented process for marketing and admissions, and showing evidence, such as letters of offer, as required.

So it’s worth thinking now about the systems you have in place and how easy it will be to support this. Can you access the required records easily and supply electronic copies for audit?

You can bank on online service

Imagine a world without online banking. It wasn’t that long ago that we had to go to a branch to fill in a home loan or credit card application, mail cheques to pay for our bills, or pay someone back in cash rather than a one-click bank transfer.

Today, online banking is the second most popular online activity for Australians (the first is checking email). In the UK, Marketing Week ran a banking consumer survey in July and found that the most important criteria for a financial provider is easy and convenient online banking.

Now, let’s stop a moment. This is in an industry where security and identity is everything. Yet the banking industry is able to conduct billions of transactions online, set up new customers, and allow us easy and transparent access to our financial information.

It’s faster, more convenient – and it has also allowed banks to grow their revenues and reduce their costs. But more on that later.

If we can apply online for a bank loan, surely students can apply online for a university course? Perhaps there are a few things the education sector can learn from the banking experience.

Customers want 24/7 access and real-time updates. Today, we expect to be able to bank online whenever it suits us. With online applications, even if your international students are on the other side of the world, they can get an immediate receipt. Even if it’s 3am in the admissions office. And they can check how their application is tracking, while you are sleeping.

Smart forms save time. Online forms can be pre-populated with existing data, or the answers to previous fields. This saves the applicant time. It also means the form is correct – they have to answer all the relevant questions to proceed. And it’s legible, which saves processing time for application approval.

Online applications equal self-service. In the banking world, customers can sort out their own credit card increases, loan approvals and card activations. That leaves call centres free to deal with more complicated enquiries.

It’s just so much faster. It used to take 14 to 22 days for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to approve a home loan top-up. Now that they use online forms, it can take just 15 minutes.

Online applications decrease costs. CBA have found they now have a much lower cost per transaction. Plus, they have higher rates of accuracy and greater staff satisfaction, because they are avoiding routine transactions (like agents and students calling about their application progress).

They also increase revenues. The rate of investment in CBA’s Term Deposits, one of the first products online, has doubled. In the US, one of the top five banks has decided to go completely paperless. By reducing their courier bags by 75%, and increasing online cross-selling and branch productivity, they have already saved over $13.5 million per year and increased new sales by up to 5%.

Paperless transactions can be good marketing opportunity. In the UK, First Direct (part of the HSBC group) conducts 86% of all transactions online. A few years ago it began a program called the Virtual Forest, where a real tree was planted every time twenty customers switched from paper statements to online.

If you’d like some more information on how AppManager can fit into your admissions system and give your website online application functionality, please contact us.

Professional and simple: Why agents are going online

AppManager is now being used by over 250 major agents around the world. In the past they helped students fill in forms by hand, couriered or faxed them to universities or colleges on the other side of the world, and then waited anxiously (sometimes for weeks) for a response. Only to find out it had never been received, could not be read, had gone to the wrong campus, or had the wrong information.

Whilst many agents are now switching to scanning and emailing paper applications, for a growing number of universities they can do it all in the click of a mouse.

“We immediately saw that we could save time in getting a letter of offer with StudyLink’s online application system,” says Kanika Bhugra, Relationship Manager for SIEC. “It would save time in processing and save confusion.”

SIEC now use AppManager for many of their Australian providers, including ACU, Ballarat, Navitas Group and Griffith University.

“I really like that we get the acknowledgement. It used to take days just to find out that the university had received the paperwork, but now it’s instant,” says Kanika.

SIEC counsellors complete the application online in front of the prospective student. They assess the supporting documents, scan them and attach them as a PDF. “It looks professional, and they get an immediate response with the acknowledgement.”

“In the past, emailing the applications often didn’t work because the attachments would be blocked. Now we know it’s all been uploaded, we get a receipt, and we don’t have to chase the university to check if everything was received,” says Kanika.

StudyLink co-ordinated the training of SIEC staff in Melbourne and India. “Entering the data has not really added to our workload,” she comments. “We were already helping them with their applications anyway. It only takes around seven to ten minutes to complete, and it is saving further delays.”

James Kon is Group Marketing and Recruitment Manager of AusEd-UniEd, with offices across Asia and Australia. He says the fact that some universities waive (or reduce) the application fee if it is lodged online makes a real difference for students.

The agent portal, which allows direct access to application updates, is also a useful feature for agents. “It does do some amazing things. It tells you who’s waiting, who’s been approved,” says James.

He sees that the future of the education sector is online. “Everything is online nowadays. Anyone who wants to be in business today needs to be online. It’s what the market requires.”

For Kanika, the main benefit has certainly been for their students. “They are relaxed and happy when they see the application is in process, they love the instant receipt,” she says. “I’d definitely recommend this system to other agents. For sure!”

Why paper is bad for your bottom line

We all know that paper costs businesses money, as well as trees and energy. But is a paperless office really achievable?

The Paper-Less Alliance believes it probably isn’t realistic for most organisations to be completely paper-free. But a ‘less paper’ office is certainly possible – and quicker to implement than you might think.

Jon Dee founded the Alliance to help companies save money and become more efficient – simply by reducing the amount of paper they use. He was also responsible for Planet Ark’s creation, 19 years ago.

“Paper was invented thousands of years ago. It’s an out-of-date technology for most of today’s business processes,” says Dee, who points out that the average Australian office worker uses approximately 10,000 pages of paper per year.

The cost of paper is much more than just the average cost of a ream of A4. Other primary costs include:

·      Printing

·      Posting

·      Packing

·      Copying

·      Storing

·      Recycling or disposal

Secondary costs include:

·      Delays due to missing paperwork

·      Security and audit trails

·      Increased administration and staffing costs

Imagine a life with less paper. Let’s start with storage. One 500GB drive can hold 17million pages, which would otherwise will 2100 filing cabinets. It would be easier to keep all those documents secure too – and to find them quickly when you needed them.

Businesses in every sector – including travel, banking, insurance, government and health – have seen the need to move online and digital.

Synergy Capital Management, an Australian funds administration business, recently changed its new account application process from a 44-page handwritten form to a smart online application form.

Now, account creation is fully automated. Filling in and submitting the form takes just five minutes. Processing and approval is faster, and agent productivity has increased by a whopping 25%.

In 2006, the US Army implemented one of the largest eForm and eSignature systems in the world, with 1.6million users and 2500 forms. The US Army Publication Content Management System has saved the government $28million each year on their evaluation report process, and $10million every year in data entry costs.

Allianz, the leading German insurance company, also now uses eForms to provide instant estimates. Previously, field agents used paper forms to create custom quotes for customers during home or office interviews. Now, they can email an estimate in an easily downloadable PDF file, conveying a far more professional image than the old paper rate sheets. The target ROI was achieved in only three months.

And what about the education sector? AppManager is the eForms solution that has been custom-designed for student applications. It’s already fully-developed and ready to go – which means it’s the most cost-effective solution available. And it will save you even more on the many costs of paper applications in the future.

Fast and accurate: online applications at ACU

Eighteen months ago, Australian Catholic University (ACU National) began using AppManager to handle their online international student applications. It has made such a difference to their workload in this short time that they have now made it mandatory for all agents to use - with very few exceptions.

“So far, we’ve received over 2000 online applications from agents and directly from students,” says Elissa Newell, Online Marketing Manager at ACU National’s International Office. “It’s so much better now. We can track them from beginning to end, things don’t go missing, and it’s faster to send information between our six campuses.”

Admissions Officer Kate Reilly-Casali from ACU National’s International Office agrees. “It’s making our lives easier. Before, our workday was eaten up by phone calls and emails from agents and students. Now they can check how their application is going online. Snail mail used to cost us several days on either end. Now we’ve reduced our response time from around two weeks to just a few days in some cases.”

ACU have found that they have saved time, and improved their offer letter turnaround, because:

• Student information is more accurate, with one single form with inbuilt rules for the applicant to follow – as opposed to a range of printed forms for different programs in the past, which sometimes caused confusion. And because it’s already typed, it’s easier to read
• Certified copies and documents no longer go missing in transit or are sent to the wrong campus, previously causing delays in matching supporting documents to applications. Now documents are scanned to a single PDF file with all information needed
• ACU can update course information as it changes – such as full intakes, additional courses and packaged or combined courses
• Applications can be assessed on screen when turnaround time is tight, and a response letter generated automatically
• Agents and students can access online status updates regarding their application, providing them with a transparent and convenient experience.

Because it’s also now easier for students to apply directly to the university, ACU National is getting more value from the investment in its new website and online marketing campaigns.

“Basically, it gives them [students and agents] the opportunity to complete the entire process online,” says Elissa. “It’s a checkout function.”

Top 5 paperless recruitment myths

A Silicon Valley IT visionary has been quoted as saying that “information will become paperless in the same way that transport became horseless.” Indeed, the paperless office is now looking like a reality; since 2001 the amount of paper used by American office workers has been declining.

So why is education recruitment still largely based on paper forms? Here we look at the top 5 myths surrounding paperless recruitment.

1. Investing in that kind of technology requires a mammoth IT budget and internal support

Not at all. The IT industry has moved towards a fee for service pricing model. That means educators, commercial representatives and recruitment agents can get a flexible system, customised for their needs, but only pay for the applications they receive. StudyLink handles all the IT development and support.

2. I’m too small to need online applications

No organisation is too big or too small to be able to manage student applications more efficiently online. If you have a website, you need to be able to provide your student customers with an online ‘checkout’. It’s a feature expected by more than 75% of prospective students when they visit an educators web site.

3. My administrative team won’t want to change the way they work

You might be surprised to find that you’re actually turning away talented new staff because they don’t want to work with archaic paper-based systems. A new generation of workers are used to using technology to manage everything they do.

Online applications mean data gets entered once. Status updates are triggered automatically meaning no chasing or responding to application status requests. So staff at educators can focus on processing the application while agents can work more closely with the applicant and deliver a better service.

Agents and educators are incorporating AppManager into their processes in different ways and we will profile some examples through this bulletin.

4. Online applications won’t work because we need lots of supporting documents like language test results

These can all be attached to the application in a single pdf file. Which also gives your team a digital record that’s easier to file and manage. It maps to a paper form so if you need a paper copy you can print it out and you won’t know the difference between applications sent online and those sent by fax or post.

5. Paper application forms look more professional

Not to prospective iGeneration students who think a file sits on their laptop or mobile phone. These days, an easy-to-use online tool and an immediate response are the things that make a business look professional. And the online form will look exactly the same as your current form – down to the logo and font. Plus your staff will be able to read it!

For more information on AppManager, please email jason.howard@studylink.com