University of Waikato Signs Three Year Contract for Tribal Student Marketing & Recruitment Solution

Hamilton, New Zealand – 20 January 2022 - Tribal Group, a leading provider of education technology SaaS solutions globally, has been awarded a three year contract with University of Waikato to deploy the Tribal Student Marketing & Recruitment solution to streamline the university’s marketing activities and bring transparency to its communication, marketing and enquiry functions.

The University of Waikato delivers a world-class education and research portfolio. With around 13,000 students and 1,500 staff, the university offers a distinctive and rewarding university experience, while pursuing strong international links to advance knowledge. The institution has campuses based in Hamilton and Tauranga and has a joint institute with Zhejiang University City College in Hangzhou, China.

The university has traditionally managed several disparate systems for outreach, marketing enquiries and event management. This has increasingly resulted in an opaque view of an individual’s student journey interaction as well as slow and manual processes for university administrators. The organisation increasingly required a solution to ensure that students receive accurate information at just the right points in their application and enrolment journey.

Following a market review, the university selected the Tribal Student Marketing & Recruitment CRM solution based on several key factors including its ability for rapid deployment, strong customer references, a large installed user base and ease of integration into the university’s Student Management System, SITS:Vision. The university was also impressed with Tribal Group’s deep understanding and engagement with Microsoft Education, ensuring the organisation’s ability to maximise the benefit of MS Dynamics in a tertiary setting.

The Tribal CRM solution will provide one source of information to support staff while delivering workflow and automation ensuring the feedback and support that its students and applicants receive is timely, relevant and carefully tailored to their circumstances.

Tribal’s solutions are based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform and create an enterprise CRM for education, with a suite of tools specifically tailored to the education sector’s needs. The Student Marketing & Recruitment solution is designed to integrate seamlessly with student management systems to provide institutions with a full 360-degree view of the student. It creates exceptional experiences to nurture demand, personalise interactions, and build future student relationships by providing university staff with the tools to meet recruitment targets in a competitive landscape, whilst building a holistic view of prospective students, capturing data from initial enquiry through to admission. The solution delivers recruitment marketing campaigns and event management across email, text, social media and web channels.

In addition, the reporting available in the Student Marketing & Recruitment solution will deliver insights that will allow the university to continually improve its processes and the services it provides to students. Indeed, reporting will allow the organisation to develop and monitor key performance indicators and drive efficiency and effectiveness in its recruitment and support functions. Another benefit will result from a greater range of staff across the university able to support student enquiries as these will be carefully tracked and distributed to those staff best placed to address them. The Tribal system will allow the university to develop service standards that will help ensure that it delivers a high-quality service that creates a positive experience for enquirers, applicants and students.

Mike Calvert, Director of Student Services, said, “We required a solution that could be deployed rapidly while maximising the opportunity to improve our recruitment activities. The Tribal Student Marketing & Recruitment solution meets that need and provides a solid foundation to evolve and tailor our CRM processes over time. Our process of continuous improvement will be informed by the insights that Tribal’s powerful reporting tools will provide, and we’ll be able to leverage Tribal's considerable experience working with universities around the world while moving quickly to fast-track our CRM deployment. There is also plenty of opportunity to tailor our solution over time as our understanding and experience grows.”

This latest contract win for Tribal Group will mark the third customer to implement Tribal Student Marketing & Recruitment solution in the APAC region, which also includes Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in Whakatane, New Zealand and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. It adds to the organisation’s increasing number of Student Management Solution customers in the tertiary education sector in New Zealand.

Steve Exley, General Manager, New Zealand, Tribal Group, said, “We are excited to continue to support the University of Waikato and to introduce our Tribal Dynamics platform into the suite of Tribal products that the university uses. We are all focused on the initial implementation phase and delivering a quality outcome for the university.”

Implementation began in November 2021 with go-live for event management set for March 2022 and Student Marketing & Recruitment in May 2022.

About Tribal Group

Tribal Group plc is a pioneering world-leader of education software and services. It's portfolio includes Student Information Systems; a broad range of education services covering quality assurance, peer review, benchmarking and improvement; and student surveys. Working with Higher Education, Further and Tertiary Education, schools, Government and State bodies, training providers and employers, in over 55 countries; Tribal Group’s mission is to empower the world of education with products and services that underpin student success. Visit https://www.tribalgroup.com for more information.

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