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"Intelliworks has made our department much more efficient; individual conversion rates have increased. My team feels much more empowered having the tools they need to make decisions about their work." Terry Grant, Director of Enrollment Managment, American Public University System THE CHALLENGE American Public University System (APUS), part of American Public Education, Inc. (NASDAQ: APEI), was in the midst of rapid growth. In the last few years, new stud- ents have increased by over 30%. In addition to its rising application rates, the admissions team handles thousands of contacts each month for its distance learning programs for both military and public sector students at American Military University and American Public University. Since new classes start each month at APUS, applications for admissions come in every day of the year, so each staff member is managing hundreds of students at any given time. As APUS started handling more students, they realized how inefficient and cumbersome their system for communications and outreach had become. "I had no centralized place for all the data I wanted to see because we were using so many applications," said Terry Grant, Director of Enrollment Management at APUS. "The systems we were using made our process clunky, time consuming and increased our likelihood of making errors." . THE SOLUTION "I had been planning to hire more staff to accommodate the workload." RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING CASE STUDY FOR CAREER TRAINING TO CONTACT AN INTELLIWORKS EXPERT CALL 240.238.3210 OR EMAIL [email protected] © 2008 INTELLIWORKS, INC. AMERICAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY Employees were using several different programs to manage their work and often needed to toggle bet- ween six or seven application windows at one time. "I had been planning to hire more staff to accommodate the workload," said Grant. The APUS enrollment department saw the solution in relationship management software using a software-as-a -service (SaaS) platform. By consolidating their tasks into one program hosted on an external server, they hoped to streamline their processes and allow some staff to tele- commute. After evaluating several solutions, APUS chose Intelliworks because of its easy-to-use, Web-based inter- face and its robust mass communications capabilities. The solution was implemented and power users were train- ed within one month. After 90 days, the entire department was up and running. The software allowed the team to work from just one program -- instead of four -- to manage their caseloads. The ability to organize students into targetted groups and to customize data fields were key for the department since they handle so many students with vary- ing class start dates at once. The staff was able to easily isolate a group, break them down into subsets (by start date or military branch, for example) and formulate a robust communications plan around their specific needs. As a distance learning instit- ution, the staff isn't able to meet students face-to-face, so strong electronic marketing plans are crucial. Since many of their students are stationed around the world in the military, and have only intermittent access to email, it was also important that they be able to track the effective- ness of their communication.
