100% lead to contact and ~25% effort reduction: how strategic consulting transformed student enrolment journey

Overview

A leading California health sciences university was losing prospective students due to a siloed technology ecosystem and inefficient admissions processes. With a disconnected Salesforce instance, standalone-tools, and manual workflows, the institution struggled to compete keep pace with the expectations of today's higher education market.

The university partnered with Firstsource to optimize its enrolment operations through strategic consulting, student journey design and technology implementation, transforming how they attract, engage, and enrol students

The Challenge

The university’s enrolment challenges stemmed from multiple inefficiencies across people,
process, and technology. The critical pain points were:

• Disconnected Systems: Multiple applications operating independently prevented a complete view of the student journey, creating information gaps, confusing workflows and missed opportunities.
• Manual Lead Management: Without structured processes for capturing, prioritizing, and following up with leads, the university experienced significant lead loss and inconsistent outreach.
• Underused CRM Platform: The Salesforce implementation had room for optimization, with low adoption and gaps in workflows resulting in incomplete data and lost engagement opportunities.
• Limited Early-stage Data Visibility: Limited and manual reporting capabilities left leadership unable to understand enrolment performance or make informed strategic decisions.
• Team Frustration: Admissions and counselling staff worked across multiple tools and confusing processes, leading to low morale, reduced productivity, and sub-par candidate experiences.

How We Made It Happen

The engagement commenced with a comprehensive advisory phase, during which Firstsource performed an in-depth assessment of the current state to uncover improvement opportunities. Based on the recommendations, the client extended the partnership to include implementation. Key activities undertaken included:

• Student Journey Mapping: Analysed the complete prospective student experience across all programs, identifying pain points and opportunities.
• Process Blueprinting: Mapped the processes from Admissions to Advancement across dimensions such as data, systems, applications, team, metrics, etc. to create clear and actionable process improvements.
• Salesforce & Website Transformation: Redesigned and implemented the lead management workflows on Salesforce for the various lead sources and programs. Redesigned the website to improve lead conversion and user experience.
• System Integration: Connected Salesforce with Workday, Calendly, Zoom and the website to build one seamless ecosystem
• Unified Reporting: Created reports and dashboards for lead conversion, ROI analysis and data-driven decision making.

Conclusion

The partnership resulted in a transformation of the admissions process. By addressing key pain points such as inefficient processes, lead leakage and fragmented systems, Firstsource redesigned end-to-end student journeys and optimized Salesforce workflows. With seamless integration across Workday, Calendly, application platforms, and zoom, the university now benefits from improved lead management, greater process visibility, and a unified technology ecosystem.