All answers are from Jessie Minton, UO CIO unless otherwise indicated.
- Jessie started the meeting with a brief background on what a CRM is, what it is capable of, and why it will be ultimately useful to campus as an enterprise asset
- Jessie highlighted importance of having a data governance model, which is much needed for our campus
- Jessie spoke about how we have a decentralized software model now, and how we have multiple CRMs on campus right now (about 17) and spend about $400k a year on them
- Jessie described the different meetings she’s had up to this point. She’s met with the ITSC, the Dean’s Council, the Senior Leadership Team twice, etc. They are all supportive of the CRM RFP process
- Jessie described how the current state is not just an IT problem, but we also have a data governance problem on campus and the CRM will force us to start having much need conversations about data governance
- In order to have a successful CRM for campus we need to have data made available to those that both need to use it and have the rights to access different parts of the overall enterprise data set
- Another component of a successful CRM will be having the right IT staffing in place, both in number and in skill levels
- Jessie stated we are issuing the RFP to see what the costs are, rather than to choose one in the very near future because the prices are all over the map – as seen with our peer institutions. Our intent is to still have a CRM for campus, but the first step is to discover the costs
- “We don’t want to do a lot of things poorly, we want to do fewer things very well.”
- The RFP is written very broadly to cover all the needs we’ve heard during the Needs Assessment phase and the Requirements Gathering phases.
- How much staff does OSU have to cover their CRM?
- Staffing is believed to be 5-6 FTE on the tech side, but OSU has 17 instances of Salesforce, rather than many CRMs like we do.
- I heard you say we currently spend $400k/year for CRMs?
- This figure does not cover staffing, just software licensing costs. We do not have very many FTE on campus currently dedicated to CRM
- Grad Web is an interesting example of one CRM on campus now. It does a lot of things for the Grad School. We need to take a deeper look at the functionality it offers. Maybe in the end we would want graduate and undergraduate data inside the same CRM (for financial reasons), but we don’t know yet. We need to hear from the vendors first.
- There are many special needs software titles on campus right now. HR has MyTracks, HR, Undergraduate Studies has SSC, and there are others. We need to capture FTE time spent on campus with all these tools. Also is the intent to replace these titles?
- I believe what we need is to integrate these titles rather than replace the titles. Minimally they need to integrate with the enterprise CRM.
- Have you received Foundation input?
- We have reached out to Carl Otto, Paul Weinhold, Jennifer Spry, and Mark Bolme. I’m not sure how it will all play out with the Foundation but they are at the table. They are on board.
- Have you done a Need Analysis?
- Yes we have. Garron visited with about 23 groups. (Needs Assessment 2/17 – 5/17; Requirements Gathering 5/17 – 8/17)
- How will cost be distributed to units if we can’t afford to contribute to a CRM.
- If we roll out a CRM it will be like Banner, which is available because it is considered to be an institutional costs. The CRM will be very similar, it will be an institutional cost. We have a gap funding issue we will address in the near future. Units will be expected to contribute what they are now paying for their existing CRM. We will redeploy the funds now being spent.
- You said it might be a two year out for roll out? How do we continue for the next two years?
- The Business School is great example, they have Salesforce now. Units can move to their choice of CRM now, but they must commit to two things: Migrate to the enterprise CRM when the time comes. 2. Put the funds spent on the unit CRM into the enterprise CRM pot when time comes. We want to say “ ‘Yes’ if you can live with these exceptions, not ‘No’ because we have a rule.”
- We have a large RFP. Can we go through a contract buyout period like we did with CTX and the copiers? Buy out the CRM contracts on campus?
- This practice would be very unusual in software space, it likely will not happen.
- Greg Shabram, Dir of PCS: The money we will save will be from economy of scale, and getting on one license, rather than having many contracts as we do now. Most current contracts can be terminated now. If a unit needs to use two systems while they migrate to the enterprise CRM (running them in parallel) that is a good thing, while one contract is being sunset.
- We have very specialized software that does unique things for our unit. Custom modules would be very much desired.
- Cloud software is very powerful, and your ability to change features and what you do or what you want to add as a feature is going to be there. You will be able to turning things on and off within the application. Each vendor will helps us understand how to do so within their systems. We may need to think about our workflow more efficiently in the future, and concentrate on the outcome rather than the step-wise ways we do things now. Maybe we will do our steps in a different order in the future, but the outcome is what we want to focus on.
- Software is moving to the cloud. You can play with toggles but you don’t have the software code. This way of computing is pushing us to rethink how we do things, and that is a good thing.
- Greg Shabram: Core functionality will be one price. Modules will be priced for units to buy, and offer customizations for departments.
- Will we need to adapt our workflow when we get a new CRM?
- Yes.
- Data governance is going to be very important. Our definitions will have to be in common. For example, the definition of “one full-time student” need to be the same across the university.
- We want to have one enterprise CRM rather than having two monolithic CRMs. One main CRM could cover the first 98% of the core functionality, and that would be the enterprise CRM. The last 2% could be modules that cover the specific specialized needs of the unit. In this way, maybe 2 instances is the answer. One might be for enrollment, one for events. One might be for undergrad enrollment, one might be for graduate enrollment. We’ll have to hear what vendors propose and make a decision that is best for the university’s needs.
- I’m happy to see the CRM RFP considers future needs, like texting. The RFP is very comprehensive, thank you.
- We had Garter review the RFP. Gartner is an IT advisory service we subscribe to. We had several feedback sessions with them and in the end they were happy with the RFP.
- Has there been talk about the cost to adequately staff the CRM, and does that cover the data governance staff as well?
- The number of techs we now have taking care of the various CRMs on campus will be adequate for now, and with training we can add to that. Each vendor will inform us of their staffing requirement for success based on what they have seen at other institutions around the country. In the end we will likely need a handful of new FTE. The one-time effort getting the CRM off the ground will likely be contracted to the vendor or a service. We will scale proportionate to our needs.
- I think we’ll need more staff than we think we will need. The UO has seen this before. We evolve, we get more complicated and our needs grow but the staff does not. Anything we can do to help articulate the staffing needs, please let us know. I want to do this as a partner.
- If we do this well, the CRM will be as big and complex as Banner. President Schill heard this from various Senior Leadership Team meetings. He wants to understand what staffing means as far as total costs.
- What do other institutions say about conflicts surrounding data governance, and how to communicate with their customers. Do they struggle on how to dictate the governance model?
- We will cover data governance early. The conversations need to include what is owned and who is the data steward. For example, not everyone will have access to donor amounts, and that has to stay like it is. You have to tackle data governance early and robustly, before rolling out an enterprise CRM. We can’t even afford to create a pilot enterprise CRM before we’ve nailed down data governance.
- What is the timeline for what happens next?
- We want to release the RFP in May. We have an Athletics meeting this week, release the RFP in May, another Senior Leadership Team meeting this fall, implementation in part maybe by winter.
- The CRM roadmap and timeline can be found here
- https://software.uoregon.edu/crm-roadmap/
- Is there a plan or schedule in place for data governance talks?
- We will start working on data governance while the RFP is out to vendors. Some data governance will be determined by the vendor we choose. We will start discussing data governance in advance of a purchase and start building the bones of data governance in advance of a CRM purchase.
- If it’s cost prohibitive, we still want data governance, we need campus awareness, we need to move toward messaging, and data governance.
- Yes, I agree. Communications about who talks to who, who has source data and how we will use it. This is not just a CRM issue. We need to make an institutional decision about the university’s data. Who has the access to the data? We also need to be cognizant of FERPA, HIPPA, etc.
- Are we concerned with GDPR?
- (https://www.eugdpr.org/)
- Yes, we will have to consider the new laws coming out of Europe since we have European students, faculty and researchers. There is a clause about the “Right to be forgotten” but we also have records retention laws in the US. We still need to figure this out. Our advantage is we are smaller than an organization like Amazon or Google. Leo, our new CISO, will help guide us through these laws.