Clients - La Salle University
La Salle University and SunGard Higher Education Services Develop Prospective Student Portal In Luminis to Build Loyalty and Provide Prospects With a Satisfying User Experience
Many institutions recognize the importance of building relationships and capturing information on prospective students long before they apply at an institution. However, La Salle University is actively working to collect information on prospects and in turn provide them with a personalized and satisfying experience with the Pennsylvania university long before they set foot in its halls. La Salle is building this loyalty in large part via its prospective student portal, called My La Salle.
"From the time prospects first show an interest in La Salle via our prospect portal, they become a known entity to us. We can begin a relationship with them that will continue throughout their lives," said Ed Nickerson, director of information technology at La Salle. "Other institutions begin this relationship in the admissions stage. But we can capture information about prospects from the time they enter our Web site. We can capture their interests, their e-mail addresses, where they go to high school, and begin creating an application on them and sending them personalized information that is relevant to them as individuals."
The functionality is the result of a collaboration between La Salle and SunGard Higher Education. SunGard Higher Education provided professional services to the University to develop a modification for the prospective student portal (PSP) to have the functionality accessible via the Luminis portal and to have the data automatically update in Banner Student.
La Salle considered various prospective student portal solutions already on the market before contracting with SunGard Higher Education Services to build the solution. "There are companies that offer standalone prospect solutions, but they are not integrated to the administrative system," explained Nickerson. "With these solutions, you collect all the data on a prospect, but it resides only in that solution. It goes nowhere."
In contrast, the information gathered within the La Salle PSP is entered automatically into Banner. The integration to Banner also enables the system to automatically check to see if the prospect already has a record with La Salle, to verify information that is already in the system, and to reduce redundancy. This is necessary because a current student might mistakenly enter his or her information in the prospective student portal.
Enabling this functionality required the development of a new role within Banner, said Nickerson. "With baseline Banner, a person needs to be a recognized Banner user in order to access the functionality of the solution. But a prospective student is an unknown to an institution's administrative database. Working with SunGard Higher Education Services, we developed an intelligent solution that provides an 'in-between' role."
Today, when a prospective student registers through the portal, the system automatically creates a prospect record on that student. "Now that student has a role and a record with the institution and with Banner. And he or she can become a member of our community," emphasized Nickerson.
Building upon the capabilities within Luminis solution, the University can send prospects personalized information, content, and services based on the interests and information they entered into their records. The Luminis platform provides a robust set of standards-based tools, infrastructure, and applications for system administration, communication, portals, data, and user management. It gives La Salle and other institutions the ability to give constituents centralized and customized Web access to campus information, services, and communities. The University plans to be live with Luminis portal functionality for all its constituents in late August 2003.
The portal features within the Luminis platform are essential to the University's goal of creating an online environment for prospects and others that can be personalized to their needs and interests. "The ability of Luminis to create and send channelized content is essential to creating personalized communications for our prospects," said Nickerson.
Also, when students decide to apply to La Salle, all the information that they have already entered is automatically transferred to an online admissions form, saving the prospect and staff the task of reentering all the data.
"The integration to Banner that is enabled by Luminis is huge, not just for this portal, but for all our applications throughout the University," said Nickerson. "It would be a tremendous effort for our IT staff to keep all our databases in synch. Luminis does it for us."
Working with SunGard Higher Education's expert Services team, institutions can accomplish a wide range of customized projects that expand the functionality of their SunGard Higher Education solutions. In La Salle's case, an SunGard Higher Education consultant worked on site for two weeks to build the prospective student portal.
"First, we established the standards and also talked about how we currently maintain Banner. Then we moved on from there," recalled Nickerson. "The consultant was very knowledgeable and spent a lot of time really getting to know our unique requirements. We are extremely happy with the end product."
La Salle staff also contributed considerable time and expertise to the project. The portal went live May 15 as scheduled. Within two months, and without any marketing, 115 prospective students created accounts.
"The Web has become the tool of choice for prospective students wanting preliminary information about an institution," said Bob McBride, assistant vice president for enrollment services and a member of the University's portal action team. "So it's important to meet their Web-savvy expectations and provide the tools and services that help them make critical education decisions. Before we simply had a static Web page. Now a prospective student can create an account with La Salle, and immediately begin building a personal relationship with our institution."
"Partnering with SunGard Higher Education has been a very good decision for us," added Nickerson. "With them, we've built a prospective student portal that will help us reach our enrollment goals."