As the summer comes to a close, we are celebrating the successful completion of phase 1 of the CRM Advise roll out. As mentioned in the Spring newsletter, phase 1 of the project was focused on replacing the long-standing Orientation Database tool, used by advising staff across the institution during the onboarding period. The project involved several custom integration processes with Slate and Banner, with the ultimate goal of providing advising staff with a single data source to replace the myriad of tools formerly required to onboard a student for their first semester at Pace. Pictured to the side of this article is one of several dashboards that we were able to deliver to facilitate the onboarding process and give advisors a high-level view of the incoming class.
Looking ahead, we are now turning our attention toward phase 2 of the CRM Advise rollout. This phase will focus on continuing students and developing ways to better support them throughout their career at Pace. The goal is to maximize student engagement, readily identify students in need of support, minimize the number of tools involved in the advising process, and ultimately, improve student success. Once again, the Honors department will be the first group to begin using the system in this phase. The initial challenge in phase 2 was to replace their Honors Database tool, a Microsoft Access database that had been managed within the department for years prior, with similar functionality in CRM Advise. Meeting this challenge required several weeks of collaboration with the department, as well as significant user testing and system customization, and eventually resulted in a system that was received with enthusiasm from the Honors advisors. They began training their staff on the system at the end of August and plan to use CRM Advise as their primary advising tool this Fall.
The next challenge of phase 2 will be delivering equally useful functionality for the Central Advising staff in their work with continuing students. We are currently in weekly meetings with various stakeholders within Central Advisement to understand advisor needs, as well as the various tools they currently use on a regular basis to facilitate the advising process. We are making progress every week toward delivering a system that will not only replace existing tools but will improve and streamline the advising process end-to-end. We look forward to updating you more as this phase of the project develops.