Miami University Selects Oracle CRM On Demand to Overhaul its Admissions System and Facilitate University-Wide Communication

Oracle today announced that Miami University (www.miami.muohio.edu/) , a 16,000 student institution located in Oxford, Ohio that is ranked third in the nation for undergraduate teaching by U.S. News & World Report, has selected Oracle CRM On Demand (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/crmondemand/index.html) to transform its outdated legacy admissions system, improve student recruitment and meet growing communication needs for departments throughout the university.

Miami University’s legacy undergraduate admissions system, Recruitment PLUS, will be discontinued in October 2013. The administration wanted to replace it with a customer relationship management (CRM) system that could enhance the admissions process by effectively tracking prospective students – from recruitment to application to matriculation at the university – while simultaneously expanding to meet other university needs – such as alumni relations and current student, faculty and staff communication.

The institution will begin implementing Oracle CRM On Demand for undergraduate admissions on its Oxford Campus this month. Miami University will then extend the deployment to graduate school and regional campus admissions.

To ensure Miami University incurs no hardware expenses or ongoing costs related to upgrades, installations or other support needs, Oracle will host the institution’s Oracle CRM On Demand environment via the cloud in an Oracle high-security data center.

Oracle CRM On Demand will help Miami University build quality relationships with prospective students, current students, parents, staff, faculty and alumni by tracking all contacts made by stakeholders and using a variety of communication and collaboration tools inside the system.

“Our current CRM environment does not support cross-departmental communication. We use multiple software solutions to track and manage our students throughout their educational careers. After reviewing seven vendor proposals, we selected Oracle CRM On Demand because of its ease of use, ability to meet multiple department needs and ease of implementation. This new solution will provide us with the tools to effectively track and communicate with our students from admissions to graduation, and monitor the effectiveness of our overall communication strategies,” said Jen Herman, Senior Associate Director, Miami University. 

“Communication is the key to effectively recruiting and retaining students, and a centralized CRM system can serve as the foundation to facilitate collaboration. With Oracle CRM On Demand, Miami will have institution-wide visibility and will be able to efficiently monitor prospective and current student progress, as well as support other programs, such as alumni relations and current student, faculty and staff communication. In addition, by hosting the environment via the cloud with Oracle, Miami will be able to reduce its total cost of ownership and have peace of mind that its information is secure and always available,” said Steve Koporec, vice president, applications, Oracle Higher Education.

Oracle CRM On Demand (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/crmondemand/index.html)

Oracle in Higher Education (www.oracle.com/us/industries/education-and-research/index.html)