What are the challenges?
Our client had an issue losing track of prospective students that were not completing the online forms, but were leaving them for a later time, then not returning to the form due to forgetfulness or closing out browsers. Dropped contact with prospective students can cause them to look elsewhere, especially if they aren’t reengaged in the enrollment process.
The process for contacting students that had begun the process was non-existent because the people that were expected to do this were incredibly busy helping students in person at the campus. Lanshore offered an RPA solution that was innovative and effective.
How did Lanshore deliver RPA for maintaining contact with enrollees?
Initially, Lanshore ran a test on the process itself of applying to the school. Upon execution, it was discovered that even though the client claimed to have a process, they weren’t following it. Nobody at this point was checking in on online application submissions. Further, there was no communication at all to prospective students about who they could contact or an update on their status.
Our client’s process, when we started, was a downloadable Excel Report that contained a list of students that applied for the college but had not finished the application. Each student had to be validated in the Students Management System. That was where this process became tedious for busy employees on campus.
If the email of the student was registered in the system, the bot we created would continue processing the next student. If the email was not already in the system, the bot would then register the student into the system. At the end of the process, a confirmation email is sent to a list of specified email addresses.
This process would normally take a university employee an hour to complete, more if there was a larger number of students that didn’t complete the application. Lanshore RPA reduced the run time to three minutes.
University possibilities in the future?
While this client only needed this process automated, so it would get done, we were able to sit down with them and show them the various ways RPA can be utilized. Grade systems could be improved upon. Online coursework and classes could be revamped with RPA. Alumni lists and contact information updates could be streamlined with RPA, etc.