Contact management software package

Tender description

The First Choice Programme is a major initiative by the University initiative to improve the effectiveness of its student recruitment and admissions functions and improve the service offered to prospective students. There is a particular emphasis on offer conversion to encourage students to make us their first choice. The Centre for Student Life will create an inclusive and integrated model that enables seamless service collaboration and referral, drawing on a rich student enquiry evidence base to deliver targeted, personalised and proactive services within a culture of intelligence-led continuous improvement. The First Choice Programme is a major initiative by the University initiative to improve the effectiveness of its student recruitment and admissions functions and improve the service offered to prospective students. There is a particular emphasis on offer conversion to encourage students to make us their first choice. The recruitment climate has never been more competitive for Higher Education sector. A demographic decline in the number of 18 year olds, increased competition, the ramifications of Brexit and further restrictions on student visas for international students present Higher Education Institutions with dynamic challenges. Whilst Cardiff has done well despite the challenges and increasing competition, there is recognition that more is required if we are to continue to attract and convert the highest quality students. The First Choice programme is a cross institutional programme of change to ensure Cardiff University is able to deliver an excellent applicant experience that engages, motivates and inspires high quality applicants to make Cardiff University their First Choice institution. The programme will deliver improvements and efficiencies in the Admissions offer making process and establish an agreed recruitment and conversion framework of activities to deliver a personalised applicant experience and improved support to parents and advisers. We want students to feel engaged and welcomed from their very first contact with the University. The First Choice programme is a complex, University-wide programme of business transformation encompassing 21 work packages delivered through two interlinked core projects for each of student recruitment and conversion and admissions functions, supported by four cross-cutting enabling work streams that will focus on IT procurement and implementation; HR and Business Change; Data and Management Information; and University-wide stakeholder engagement. In order to support this University-wide business transformation programme, the University is to partner with a technology service provider/ system integrator with experience in the higher education market to help us develop, implement and support the required CRM system. The Centre for Student Life makes a major contribution to our sector leading student experience. It is accessible, inclusive, approachable and convenient. Students can access our services equally in Welsh or English. The services we offer help ensure all our students are supported and enabled to succeed throughout their student journey, from applicant interest to proud Cardiff University alumni. The objective of this procurement is to contract one or more experienced Service Provider/ System Integrator in the Higher Education market to develop, implement and support a fit-for-purpose solution that will meet the University's goals and objectives. The delivery of the First Choice and Centre for Student Life Service Redesign programmes will use a shared application platform in order to maximise the visibility of the individual's engagement with the University, to ease hand-off between stages in the student journey and to ensure that the process innovation is seamlessly available to all that could benefit from it. Additionally, the shared platform will enable the University to support efficient workflows and provide expert IT support and deliver functionality enhancements that deliver consistent high quality experience. The platform will provide basic services such as case management, policy and process workflow management, campaign management, document management, authentication, role based security and account provisioning, business intelligence and configurable and granular reporting, content management and integration with incoming contact channels and existing productivity tools such as Outlook. This platform will be supported by existing technology capabilities and cross-functional teams so that it is integrated with the existing corporate systems, data sources and communication channels in such a way that the collection of these business, human and technology capabilities forms a new foundational architecture for managing the student experience from awareness to alumnus. The University has decided that the solutions should be deployed on a Microsoft Dynamics 365 cloud hosted platform alongside its existing Office 365 tenancy.