Provision of a CRM Solution for Recruitment, Marketing and Admissions

Tender description

The University of Southampton is undertaking a major transformation programme centred on Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The focus is on delivering an end-to-end CRM solution covering Undergraduate (UG), Postgraduate Taught (PGT) and Postgraduate Research (PGR) Recruitment, Marketing and Admissions. This procurement seeks a modern, scalable CRM platform that supports the University’s strategic aims for organisational excellence, student number growth and enhanced digital capability. <br />Student recruitment is a core driver of university sustainability, providing a significant proportion of institutional funding. The University must grow UG, PGT and PGR enrolments across multiple geographies in an increasingly competitive and volatile market. Recruitment and conversion journeys are complex, long, multi-stage and personalised, involving prospective students and key influencers such as parents, teachers and agents. A robust CRM is required to manage this complexity and optimise conversion. <br />The current CRM and admissions landscape is fragmented across multiple systems (e.g., UCAS, Banner ARC, Web-for-Admissions, Dynamics, Reach, Gecko, WPM, Business World, Room Service, IDM, PowerBI, QlikView). These systems lack integration, create inconsistent user experiences, limit personalisation, hinder reporting, and rely heavily on manual workarounds. Several systems are unstable, end-of-life or unable to evolve to meet future needs. For example, the PGT Admissions solution is not scalable, PGR admissions is at end-of-life, Reach presents a continuity risk, and there is no CRM capability supporting PGR recruitment. <br />The University therefore requires a CRM solution that provides an end-to-end view of the student journey, supports seamless data flows, enables personalisation at scale, incorporates international compliance processes (CAS, Visa), improves operational efficiency, and delivers advanced reporting and analytics. The system must support process redesign, business change, integration with core platforms, and future scalability across the CRM programme. This procurement will deliver the technical platform and supporting implementation services required to realise these aims.<br />