Does your educational organisation choose Excel sheets to conduct the complete admissions process?
Let’s be honest! Excel is an amazing tool, considering its accessibility and lack of cost. But just like any other tool, it too has its shortcomings, which will lead you to compromise on your counsellor’s effectiveness and ultimately on the conversions too.
For some activities, Excel sheets are certainly adequate, but when it comes to customer relationship management, they unquestionably fall short of a specialised Education CRM. Excel sheets cannot deliver the experience that businesses get from an Education CRM.
What is a CRM and how is it Different from a Spreadsheet?
This question has obvious answers that almost every business is aware of. But since many small business owners are still sceptical about making the switch from Excel to CRM, let us try to put an end to this confusion and dilemma for good.
Yes, Excel has several capabilities and it can handle large amounts of data as well. And all of us are well aware of the fact that although it’s a great data management tool, relying on excel sheets is not the answer! As traditional operational approaches like excel or pen-paper management results in stagnant growth of the organisation.
As a result, spreadsheets are not as powerful as CRM software dedicated to managing customer relations. For those who aren’t familiar with CRM, it stands for customer relationship management. The phrase often describes a kind of software which empowers you to grow your business ultimately.
An Education CRM is specifically designed and built for the education industry. It understands the nitty-gritty of the enrolment process and serves as a centralised platform that empowers your teams to grow your enrolments systematically.
Meritto’s (formerly NoPaperForms) Education CRM is a de facto choice for anyone in education looking to scale – be it Higher Education or Online Degree Programmes, Coaching Institutes or EdTech, K-12 or Preschools! This purpose-built CRM for education allows you to centralise leads across sources and allocate them further to different team members, from personalised marketing automation to counsellor/ sales rep productivity mapping, from campaign tracking and optimisation to real-time reporting and analytics, you can do it all through plug-n-play solutions. All your scattered approaches and silos in the admission department are brought together, allowing you to attract, engage, and grow enrolments effectively.
CRM vs Excel: Detailed Comparison
Excel | Education CRM | |
Data Entry | Manual | Can be automated (bulk data import) |
Data Management | With formulas and pivot tables | One Click with easy access to all information |
Storing Attachments | Impossible | Easy with the possibility of linking them to contacts, companies, opportunities… |
Modification History | Limited via Office365 only | Very detailed and accessible on each CRM record/card |
Advanced Reporting | Manual and limited data only | Automatic reporting and analytics features let you generate reports on a run-time basis. |
Collaboration Among Colleagues | Limited via Office365 only | Access to real-time information |
Customisation & Data Security | No Customisation, Unsafe (data often placed locally) | Fully configurable interface & Completely Secure (in the cloud or on dedicated servers) |
Integrations | Doesn’t feature integration with any other business software | Integration with a variety of software including mailing, calendar, contacts, cloud telephony, payment suite |
Automation | Not Applicable | You can get detailed information on your leads on your dashboard, send automated emails, and call when they are interested. |
Communication | Have to upload data to different online tools | Pre-built communication suite |
What do you Need in an Education CRM?
Among all the benefits offered by a good Education CRM, some cannot be compared to Excel as they simply do not exist in Excel. This is why you can find the below-mentioned features useful:
Centralising Your Data
To seize every opportunity, to end the widespread problem of lead leakage and lead duplication, you can now centralise, manage, and distribute all incoming leads obtained from various sources with a CRM. It allows you to improve the quality of leads, verify them, and prioritise engagement as per the lead score of the candidate.
Know more about Lead Centralisation
Ensure 360° Engagement
With an education CRM you have the liberty to create targeted, personalised communication through a variety of channels. Use emails, SMS, WhatsApp, outbound calls, and more to interact with your prospects wherever they are. You can also track everyday progress with real-time analytics and optimise your communications that bolster a candidate’s decision to join your organisation.
Know more about 360-degree communication
Maximise ROI
Run progressive, data-driven campaigns rather than allocating funds based on assumptions. Meritto’ Education CRM allows you to track, measure and optimise the efficiency of all your campaigns in real-time to maximise the ROI from your marketing spends. You can track conversions, be it enquiry to application or course purchases with a configurable and powerful dashboard.
The Strategy that Can Boost Your Admission Marketing ROI!
Ensure Optimum Security for Users
Manage permissions and establish a user’s authorisation to access secure resources. To organise users and teams based on multiple hierarchies or geographical regions and distribute data among team members according to permission, define teams and a hierarchy. Further, with Meritto’ advanced data masking feature, safely store, and securely manage your candidate data.
Know more about User Management
Provides in-depth Reports & Analytics
With insight-driven Dashboards, obtain total 360° visibility. With powerful Reports & Analytics, you can keep track of your team’s performance. Take strategic conversations in real-time while identifying the bottlenecks and top-performing representatives.
Know more about Reports & Analytics
Conclusion: Growing teams Don’t use Spreadsheets
The use of conventional spreadsheets has many drawbacks for managing your admission process. Excel gets increasingly challenging, as your organisation grows.
If you’re finding it difficult to function inside the constraints of spreadsheets, it could be time for a change. A better approach to managing data about your clients, prospects, and finances is provided by true CRM software.
Additionally, it makes it much simpler to communicate data between teams. Your efficiency increases as a result of these advantages, which will ultimately increase your conversion rate.
If you want a scalable, error-free, and hassle-free solution to manage all your customer data, an easy-to-use CRM such as Meritto is a better choice any day. As it saves time, improves focus, boosts productivity, assists in sales strategy, keeps your data secure, and allows for in-depth reporting.
Also Read –
- What is the Difference Between Admission CRM and Traditional ERP?
- Why Do Institutions Need an Education CRM?
- How is B2C CRM Different from B2B CRM?
- What is CRM: CRM Full Form and Benefits
- What is CRM: Top 10 Myths About CRM Systems For Educational Institutions
- Preschool CRM: Supercharge Your Admissions with Preschool CRM
