Shifting Directions: Conceiving, Implementing, and Navigating the Inherent Complexities of Student Recruitment Customer/Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) Systems within Higher Education
A Constituent (often and typically referenced as Customer) Relationship Management (CRM) system is utilized within organizations whose focus is on customer development and service. A CRM is both an organizational approach involving significant human and system processes, as well as a technological intervention. Typically, CRMs have been implemented within commercial enterprises, specifically those operations with direct contact with customers or consumers, possibly as end–users of products, or even middle–sales operators such as wholesalers and governmental agencies. Over the past number of decades, higher education institutions in Canada have developed strategic and tactical plans to more fully respond to the changing conditions of the prospective student marketplace, both domestically as well as internationally. Student engagement–focused CRM systems are strategic in orientation meant to positively affect student application and subsequent program enrolment. This document describes a change intervention at a large, research–intensive Canadian university and articulates the various factors that would influence the conception, development, communication, and implementation of a coordinated student recruitment CRM platform. Through the lenses of an Adaptive Leadership model and the Path-Goal Leadership Theory and framed by paradigms based on Lewin’s (1951) Stage Theory of Change and systems modelling, this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) will trace my own leadership influence upon this initiative and will seek to move from theory to practice the strategies and tactics required for implementation.
Constituent/Customer Relationship Management, CRM, Higher Education, Student, Engagement, Conversion, Recruitment, Organizational Change, Technology
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