A Comprehensive Guide to Admissions Management Software
The admission management Software faced its share of disruption when the pandemic struck in March 2020. Like all other parts of higher education, it experienced a dip with prospective students could no more complete their usual campus visits, and stereotyped testing became the option for students applying at several institutions. With the COVID-19 restrictions being slowly lifted up now, higher education institutions are working towards shaping the admissions process back to normal. But managing the scenario with a “here and now” solution won’t work.
Institutions should have clear-cut enrolment strategies to handle the post-pandemic now chaos. The manual way of managing things had students purchasing or printing out the application forms, mailing their filled-in forms to the institution, followed by the admission committee sifting and categorizing the application forms to shortlist the good ones, and finally sending a post to the selected ones with the news. This conventional process can fail terribly when it comes to dealing with a huge number of admission requests and queries. Thus, in today’s digitized world, automation can resolve most of these admission-related bottlenecks.
The admissions management system can strengthen and boost the overall process of getting students on board. It helps the admission committee better channel their tasks, and achieve enrolment targets in less time, and in a more organized way. Besides this, the admission platform also helps institutions stay relevant in the current highly tech-oriented world.
This comprehensive guide talks in detail about the Admissions Management System so that to higher education institutional heads you get better clarity on how to autopilot your admissions easily.
What is admission management software?
An admission management software is a digitized alternative for conducting every step of the admissions cycle in a higher education institution making the process more efficient. Right from facilitating enrollment inquiries, to assigning priorities based on ranking eligibility, collecting and sorting documents, and completing onboarding formalities, the software takes care of it all.
The admission management software module has greater flexibility so it fits into any institution’s requirement and allows institutions to categorize and systemize different aspects of their enrollment process. Besides that, it allows the creation of several accounts for different users in the admission committee, faculty, Deans, HoDs, student advisors, the financial department, counselors, data managers, and other stakeholders.
Challenges that higher institutions face during the admission process
The higher education admission process is constantly, but gradually evolving. Here are some common admission-related challenges.
1. Mundane way of collecting documents
The manual way of conducting admissions can not only be time-taking but also stressful and error-prone. With such an application process, a large number of students will miss the deadlines for college applications.
2. Hectic query resolution
Query resolution during admissions can become hectic. The unending phone calls and the countless emails from the applicants seeking clarifications about the admission process can become challenging for the admission committee to deal with. On top of it, the applicants these days look for a faster turnaround of details and when institutions take delay, it becomes a huge challenge.
3. Personalizing and speeding up the communication
We are right now in an age when everything is becoming fast-paced. Prospects need instant catch-up of things about certain courses, their eligibility, and expect to be answered in real-time. Institutions that still follow the telephonic way of communicating or emailing are sure to face the biggest admission challenge.
4. Organizing leads
Colleges may have websites and they may even have inquiry forms or registration forms to capture leads. But what most institutions lack is properly organizing those leads and concentrating on the next-to-next process of lead assignment and following up. Even after showing interest in your college, more than half of the students won’t join. Why? This happens because they don’t get on-time information or they find a seemingly better option. Manual processes such as sending emails, scheduling interviews & asking for documents may take all your time.
5. Assigning leads to team
Collecting hundreds and thousands of documents, passing them to the right departments, and tracking the process using spreadsheets or outdated legacy filing systems can simply complicate the whole admission process.
6. Following up with leads
It is true that the admission team’s inconsistent follow-up on leads frustrates and disturbs marketing and enrolment efforts. While it is more of a chore instead of a routine process, institutions should work on streamlining this for admissions to happen without any bottlenecks.
7. Lack of student engagement
From the time an applicant submits the registration form, they demand proper guidance. They look for multiple ways to be engaged right from the moment they make an initial inquiry.
Even if institutions plan well and religiously follow up on their leads, if applicants are not given a feel of being taken care of, or if they do not receive enough insights about their application process, about upcoming orientation, hostels, and scheduling, or if they are not able to take a peek into their application statuses, then it adds to the biggest hurdle of missing those prospective applicants. With students having able to check their application in real-time, they could save multiple calls to the admission office inquiring about their next moves.
8. Incurs huge costs to the institution
Another biggest challenge higher education institutions face is that they incur huge costs when it comes to handling a big bunch of academic records, tracking bills, and financial information. It is true that the digital way of records management can reduce unnecessary costs by 40% and bring down the recruitment costs and help effectively optimize resources.
9. Invoice generation
Your institution’s dedicated team of admissions may do excellent work, but if the invoice processing isn’t working properly, then they can’t thrive for long. Invoicing is the foundation of any institution. The process requires timeliness and greater accuracy. If institutions get it wrong, it impacts their ROI. Some of the common invoice-related problems colleges face are missing and confusing invoices, missing data, recurring invoices, invoices that miss student installment details, split invoices, refunds, etc.
10. Data analytics
In order to make better decisions, institutions need centralized, easily accessible data that can be pulled from a single location by the admission committee. When institutions lack detailed reports about the applicant pool, student intake, diversity metrics, the admission trend they can make better strategic decisions.
How AI and cloud-based admission software can improve the admission process in Higher education institutes
AI and cloud-based admission software can simplify the admission process in Higher education institutes and improve the overall performance.
1. Attract more prospective students
An admission CRM can help target prospective students through digital platforms. A report confirms that American students spend around 6.31 hours on the internet daily.
An admission software with a built-in CRM feature engages with students, facilitates two-way communication which conveys an urgency that institutions really care for their students' future. With options to conduct email campaigns, prospective students land right on the institution’s website to initiate admissions.
2. Maximize enrollment rates with complete automation
By end-to-end automation, the college admissions process will naturally become faster. Most of the challenging administrative activities during the admissions processes like handling countless applications for documentation, course self-registration, interviews, invoices, paying fees can get done in no time with no manual errors.
3. Simplifies admission process by organizing, distributing, following up leads
A student CRM will also help organize leads right from the moment they pop in. A centralized system for lead capturing, Admissions CRM interacts with your website, email, ads, or even calls and records it. It keeps track of all activities of prospective students, right from the prospect's age, course preferences, activities on your website. The best part is, the entire admission process is simplified by easily distributing inquiries and strategizing ways to follow up and engage the students.
4. Boost engagement with AI chatbots
The AI-based software with the Chabot feature will hook students to your institution by providing personalized and frequent text messaging. It not only engages and nurtures prospects but also helps institutions trigger branded communication for better engagement, which today’s pros[ective students prefer the most.
5. Saves time and cost
Online admission software with Artificial Intelligence tools can make the toughest admission process into a smooth ride by taking care of all the administrative tasks. This automation helps save a lot of expenses by saving the manual work. It also reduces the logistics involved during the process Aside from this, a lot of logistics that are involved in the traditional process are ruled out. The logistical expenses like distribution, entrance exam, result declaration are saved, leaving a large amount of expenditure saving.
6. Provides deeper data insights
The AI-based admission software helps institutions with deeper statistics related to the process for faster decision-making. The software rapidly generates and analyzes data from various applications as per the institutional requirement All this in just at the click of a few buttons.
Advantages of Online Admission Management Software
The usage of admission management software in colleges and institutions helps improve several aspects of the admission process. Some of them are explained below:
No missing documents:
A digital admission software, the admission management system is designed to be tougher to miss any application or documents during registration. Since most of them are on the cloud, they prove to be safe and reliable too.
Anytime anywhere access:
With separate logins, the admissions software system is accessible by all stakeholders, all times with its mobile-friendliness. It only needs to be integrated with the institution’s website for easy access.
Ease of use:
They are designed to bring simplicity to the whole time-taking admission process. The system doesn’t need an IT professional’s help or doesn’t take any upfront costs. For more admission-related advantages, read our blog here.
Top 10 advantages of online admission system in higher education
Features of Admission Management Software
Admission is never a single-person job. It pools in a huge admission team comprising of student counselors, finance personnel, marketers, management, finance, IT, and more. Each department works in its way and admission management software should offer tools and techniques that each of them deserves. Let’s look at some of the functional features to look from admission management software.
1. Lead capture tools
Higher education institutions' main aim is to attract leads. But not all student inquiries that go into your admission pool are relevant. When there is a huge inflow of leads, definitely any legacy system will drop, leading to missed follow-ups and opportunities.
But with admission software’s robust lead capture tools, ensure to capture of prospective leads from social media channels, inbound calls, publisher panels, landing pages, online/offline ads, and more. An efficient lead capture tool is a drawing card when it comes to enhancing your enrollment process.
2. Lead segmentation
It’s impossible to expect a 100% lead conversation rate from the lead pool. You would often get junk inquiries and junk leads that have turned cold already. Is there a better way to know your target applicant, understand his/her intent, gather real-time interaction through website behavior, time spent on the content, and define tempting touchpoints with them?
This is a ball game.
Translation every inquiry into a qualified lead needs a lot of care. But this is something that most institutions lack most of the time. An admission CRM with lead segmentation tools can help you overcome this major roadblock of identifying the leads that are ready for conversions.
With such a feature, the admission team can assign scores based on engagement, so it gets easy to locate a student with a higher scorecard, which is your target.
3. Distribution of leads
The distribution of leads can be tricky. If you chose to follow up the leads that jump the queue, then you may miss the leads that you show higher chances of conversion. Similarly, when being assigned to a counselor if the lead is unavailable on a certain day, obviously the responses to inquiries will get delayed.
A college admission management software can help locate and hierarchize conversion-ready leads. When you can distribute the leads based on the intent, then your job is half done. Likewise, if you have separate counselors for distinct courses, mapping the course inquiries based on the counselor’s competence will make more substance.
4. Define multiple touchpoints
The next feature to look for from admission management software is defining multiple touchpoints.
When prospects visit your website, you can trigger emails explaining what they wanted, instead of just calling them. An Admission CRM should have the feature of defining multiple touchpoints to interest a prospect with what he wants.
5. Workflows for student engagement
The admission process is different for different institutions. No two follow the same process. Therefore admission management system with a reconfigurability feature should be a grab-on!
With such a feature, you can easily create workflows to engage students like initiating events, campus tours, advising sessions, or more.
6. Mobile-friendliness
Website or Portal As mentioned earlier, today’s Gen Z and millennials spend most of their time on their mobile gadgets. Therefore it is crucial institutions should have a mobile-responsive website and an admission portal for students. This feature should have an easy go-to option to look at all admissions-related information about their application status, interview schedules, etc
In many situations, students even drop off after completing their application for various reasons. A CRM software can nudge students to finish their application by sending automatic notification triggers.
7. Student portals
Student portal drives multifold benefits like allowing students to apply online, update profiles, upload documents, and track the status of their application. Besides, it also allows the admission committee to track the applications in the admission funnel. Their dashboards give important information about the whole prospect.
8. Chatbot integration
Admission software with chatbot integration can yield more enrollments. It helps deal with prospects on time and serve better.
Scale high with Creatix’s Admission Management System
To conclude India is the third-largest in the higher education sector globally and graduates around 36.6 million students every year. This proves how voluminous the student inquiry inflow could be! The countless applications will certainly cause tremendous pressure on the side of admission teams.
A student admission system will help automate end-to-end admission operations, providing transparency to the students and the stakeholders involved.
If your next plan is to boost your inquiry ratio to the admission ratio, then check out the Creatrix Campus admission management system. We would be glad to run you through a live demo.
