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In the classroom, the 90,000 students at Melbourne, Australia-based RMIT University get a world-class education. Outside the classroom, they get top-notch support, too, from the university’s Students Group, which consists of a dozen services to help students be successful in their education.

Among those services is Student Welfare, which assists students in dealing with a variety of issues, such as financial insecurity, domestic violence, or homelessness. To provide support, the advisors relied on spreadsheets and a software program that was limited to checking boxes.  

Consequently, support data was siloed and isolated, and no advisor could see what another advisor in another area of the university had done for a student. It was hard to connect the dots and provide a 360-degree view of the student. This could be frustrating for advisors and students; advisors didn’t know which services a student still needed, where the Student Welfare team needed to improve effectiveness, and where its services should be targeted. Students often had to repeat information when speaking with a different advisor. This made it seem like the advisors didn't know them or their situation. Students had to download, fill out, and email back PDFs to get assistance. 

Dene Cicci, the university's executive director for students, said that they “felt like we were flying blind.” As a result, some students fell through the cracks.  

To overcome these issues, Cicci and his team sought a new approach, which is when they turned to Slalom.

“The Slalom consultants listened, and having a partner who actually listened to what we needed and didn’t lead with what the solution could do made all the difference,” Cicci says. 

Slalom and RMIT switched to a minimal viable product (MVP) approach where they rolled out Salesforce in increments and immediately started getting value from it while releasing and finetuning more features. “We couldn’t let perfection get in the way of delivering something,” Cicci says. 

They split the deployment into two phases:

• The implementation of Salesforce Service Cloud provided a simple, secure way to input and store case management information. It also created a digital system for assistance requests. They leveraged Education Data Architecture to record information about students. 

• The deployment of Marketing Cloud to reach out to at-risk student groups who aren’t seeking help.

“If you’re going to do something like this, the business has to invest in the right people to help the SMEs speak tech, drive the momentum, and challenge the culture to change,” Cicci says. “You need to have an open mind about changing the way you do things. If you don’t adapt or change, it’s not going to work. Being very clear about the value you’re delivering helps drive that change.” 

The joint RMIT and Slalom team established a rapid rapport, focused on improving the situation with at risk students. “The team really worked together to ensure we were consistently delivering the features they needed in the way they needed them without stepping on each others’ toes,” Slalom consultant Anjali Nagaraj says.

In the first term after full Salesforce implementation, the university had an increase of 60% in students seeking financial aid. While some of that was due to the increased cost of living, Cicci also credits the new system and processes that have made it much more accessible to seek that help through the new online system.

The Student Welfare team is using Sales Cloud to track every interaction and provide advisors and executives with real-time reporting and visibility on each student. They can build personalized relationships with students, even when different advisors are involved. 

Outreach to at-risk groups has been automated in Marketing Cloud, freeing up advisors for personal interactions with students.

All of this is having a tangible effect on student retention: “Our data shows students who sought financial aid were more likely to still be studying with us 12 months later, whether or not we actually gave them financial aid. The help-seeking behavior and the needs-based conversation with the advisor is what adds value, not necessarily the distribution of money.” 

For the first time, Cicci can report the amount of financial aid RMIT had delivered to students to the academic board. And it’s a thorough report: He can break that information down in many ways, including money given to different student cohorts, the value of the money given, the number of students who didn’t get approved, what money was approved for, and more.

“The data gives us confidence that our interventions are effective, timely, and having an impact,” Cicci says. “My staff is grateful they don’t have to fill in so many forms or spreadsheets, and students can more easily access the support they need. Now we want to build it out more because we can see the value.” 

That value is changing lives. 

“This is what gives me a buzz working with Dene and his team: We can talk about the detailed work of giving financial aid, but it’s about outcomes and helping students be successful. That’s what really matters,” says Christopher Nugent, Salesforce Higher Education lead with Slalom. 

Cicci agrees: “Working in higher education is all about transforming lives. It’s about setting people up for a bigger future, for following their dreams. That’s pretty cool.”

For RMIT U students, the improved access to welfare services means a greater chance of success in the classroom. And that ultimately means increased likelihood of their professional dreams coming true.