Salesforce.org Announces Major Education Cloud Updates, Invests $1.75 Million in College-Ready Nonprofit Organizations

Salesforce.org, which empowers nonprofits and educational institutions through technology, grants, and volunteering programs, today announced a new data architecture to support lifelong learning, new capabilities for its Education Cloud, and investments in nonprofit organizations committed to college and career success for students from all backgrounds. The announcements were made at Salesforce.org’s seventh annual Higher Ed Summit.

The Changing Landscape of Education

Higher education is facing new challenges as expectations from prospective and current students, alumni and donors are changing. In today’s connected world, they expect seamless and personalized experiences.

Salesforce.org provides innovative tools that enable institutions to deliver tailored student journeys and achieve greater student success—from recruiting and admissions all the way through career readiness.

“Innovative technology is critical to provide the personalized, relevant and adaptive experiences to drive student success across their entire journey,” said Rob Acker, CEO, Salesforce.org. “With these announcements, we’re closer to achieving our vision to create a platform to support lifelong learning from K-20 and beyond.”

"Moving to cloud-based platforms is increasingly appealing to institutions and staff, who are striving to create the connected, personalized experiences that are vital to student success," said Joyce Kim, PhD and Higher Education Technology Analyst at Ovum. "Salesforce.org's Education Cloud platform truly delivers the capabilities and innovation to help institutions on this journey.”

Lifelong Learning: Announcing Education Data Architecture, Now for K-20

Today, Salesforce.org is announcing Education Data Architecture (EDA), the expansion of Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA). HEDA, the foundation of Education Cloud, is leveraged by more than 1,000 higher education institutions including Harvard, UVA and UMASS Lowell. Now, the data architecture will support the needs of both K-12 and higher education organizations.

Developed in alignment with the Ed-Fi Alliance’s industry-leading data standard for K-12, EDA will empower K-12 institutions to streamline operations across Admissions & Enrollment, Family & Community Engagement, and Fundraising & Grants Management—with 360-degree student views at the center to help ensure their success.

Salesforce.org customers can easily get started with EDA through K-12 Kit, Salesforce.org’s first out-of-the-box custom offering for K-12 schools. The kit includes custom fields and configurable dashboards unique to the needs of K-12 schools and systems.

New Education Cloud Features for Higher Education Focuses on Student Success

Salesforce.org Education Cloud for Higher Education enables institutions to intelligently drive student success across the student life cycle from prospect to alum. New solution sets for Recruiting & Admissions, Student Experience, Advancement, and purpose-built products like Salesforce Advisor Link make it easy for higher ed institutions to create personalized, empowering, relevant experiences for students at scale across their education journey. These solutions include:

• Einstein Analytics Strategic Services for Recruiting & Admissions provide a guided introduction to Einstein Analytics, helping institutions determine how AI can be used across the recruiting and admissions funnel to surface relevant insights.
• Einstein Next Best Action surfaces intelligent, contextual recommendations on the best course of action for an educator to take with each student.
• Mobile Publisher makes it fast and easy for educational institutions to turn websites and portals into beautiful mobile apps that deliver a consistent digital experience for students, educators and more. Each app is downloadable directly from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
• MyTrailhead for Higher Ed enables institutions to combine the power of Trailhead with their own content, brand and voice to create personalized and inspiring learning journeys. Now, institutions can empower every employee with custom content designed to improve the student experience across the entire lifecycle.
• Gift Entry Manager (GEM) delivers pledge and gift management that provides flexible workflows to enter single or batch gifts. This open-source app enables institutions to make their gifts operations more flexible, efficient and insightful to improve donor intelligence, engagement and cultivation.
• Salesforce Advisor Link is now available in EMEA and will include new features to enhance the student and advisor experience including Degree Plan View allowing students to easily see requirements for their degree, Success Plan Templates that make it even easier to provide students with the structure for graduation plans, and a Student Launchpad to empower every student with the information they need to stay on track to graduate on time.

“Before, departments across our campus were siloed and student data had to be continuously re-collected, which made for inefficient processes and a disconnected experience for students,” said Steffanie Hoie, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, University of San Diego. “With Salesforce.org Education Cloud, we’ve been able to unify our data and break down silos between departments. Getting everyone on one system has given us a leg up in serving our students, and we now have consistency across campus.”

Investments to Make College and Career Success a Reality for Under-Served Students

Salesforce.org is committed to investing in future-ready leaders. Today, the company is announcing a $1.75 million in grants to four nonprofit organizations that are committed to making college a reality and ensuring career success for first-generation or low-income students. Salesforce.org is investing in the following organizations focused on preparing youth for the opportunities of today and tomorrow:

• Beyond 12 works with institutions across the country (K-12 schools, college access organizations, colleges and universities) offering them a longitudinal student tracking platform and a personalized, virtual student coaching service that provides students with the academic, social, and emotional support they need to earn college degrees.
• Bottom Line recruits rising high school seniors applying to college and soon-to-be high school graduates who are on a four-year degree track and provides structured, high-touch 1:1 college coaching for everything from college applications through to college graduation.
• OneGoal is a coalition of teachers, students, school leaders and education advocates working to close the degree divide and ensure all young people have an equitable opportunity to achieve their greatest postsecondary aspirations.
• Braven empowers promising, underrepresented young adults—first-generation college students, students from low-income backgrounds, and students of color—with the skills, confidence, experiences and networks necessary to transition from college to strong first jobs, which lead to meaningful careers and lives of impact.

“At Salesforce.org, we’re committed to preparing youth for the opportunities of today and tomorrow,” said Ebony Frelix Beckwith, Chief Philanthropy Officer, Salesforce.org. “Access to opportunities shouldn’t be a barrier, and these investments will support first-generation students and students from under-served communities in realizing their college dreams, and helping them persist through graduation and transition into strong first jobs.”  

The Salesforce.org Education Community Gathers for Higher Ed Summit

At the seventh annual Higher Ed Summit taking place April 16-17 and co-hosted by Salesforce.org and the University of San Diego, Salesforce.org customers, partners, employees and evangelists will come together to learn, innovate and connect on the biggest trends facing the higher education industry. Keynote speakers include Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Tara Westover, author of Educated: A Memoir and Admiral William H. McRaven.

The Three Keys To Creating Amazing Real-Time Experiences

1. Agile is a must

Salesforce's 2016 “State of Marketing” report found that high performing marketing organizations are 9.5X more likely to be using agile methods. 

Real-time experiences are not built; rather, they are programmed — meaning a marketer sets up a series of programs which only execute given specific parameters. For example, an email is only sent if a customer has not revisited the website in five days, or specific content is shown on the website only if the customer has shown intent for that product line. As marketers' roles and tasks now look more like those of engineers, we must look at what is best-in-class at building and managing programs. The answer is agile. 

The ability to create experiences instantly, test them instantly, and receive feedback instantly should change the way marketers build marketing programs. We should spend less time planning and more time testing. This is the basic idea of agile. 

Brands must move away from the idea that “real-time” means the production of an experience in real time. To see the true power of “real-time” is the ability to test our ideas in real time, optimizing future outcomes in the process. Amazing real-time experiences just don’t happen: they are tested, reviewed, and optimized. Agile is the process to do that. 

2. Bots, bots, and more bots

Bots are one of the most powerful real-time experiences a brand can create, and all consumers want them. Just take a look at the potential use cases both Baby Boomers and Millennials see for chatbots.

Bots are not just a consumer side application. They are needed for B2B brands, too. For example, lead generation bots have become a popular source of leads for Segment.io, an enterprise software vendor. In the same vein, Lego created a chatbot, Ralph, and deployed it via Facebook to a targeted audience. Ralph was responsible for generating 25% of their entire holiday sales in 2017. 

This is the heart of what consumers want, and what they mean by “real-time.” 

3. Interviews and reviews

Have you ever picked up the phone to call a lead, customer, or advocate to ask them what they thought of your experience? I’ve asked this question around the world and only once found a marketer who said they have ever done so – once. Very few have ever made this a standard part of improvement. This is easily the number one way to get better at real-time. Simply ask. 

This is a radically new idea for most marketers, and the key to getting it right is really simple. It is not a long interrogation, rather a quick and straightforward conversation. 

Consumers demand real-time experiences. Only those brands that can see a new method of creating those experiences, use new tools like chatbots to converse with your audience in real time, and recognize the need for constant reviewing and iteration will be able to deliver.