Using Service-Based CRM and SalesForce Automation to Increase Productivity of Recruiting Efforts

In 2003 the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas consolidated and greatly expanded its efforts to recruit students.Previously recruitment and retention were pursued independently by each of the seven departments in the College.One of the key elements of a successful recruiting plan is the management of information.The College decided to implement a Customer (potential student) Relations Management system that could be used simultaneously by every member of the recruitment team.The well known PC based systems, ACT! and Gold are not designed to handle many users working on various parts of the system simultaneously.Nor are they able to handle the number of students that are being tracked by the College.Instead of creating an in-house CRM program or investing in a vender based multi-user program (Siebel), the College decided to contract for web based CRM services from a new company called SalesForce.com.SalesForce.com currently has 15,500 customers (companies) and 267,999 subscribers (licensed users) and has recently signed-on Merrill Lynch as a new customer with 5000 users.This product, along with another web services product called FormRouter.com, has been totally integrated into the recruitment efforts in the College of Engineering with great success.The efficiency and effectiveness of the recruiting efforts have been greatly increased.This paper describes these products and their integration into the College of Engineering's recruiting efforts.Online demonstrations will be included in the presentation of the paper to help everyone see the detailed use of these products.