A New Higher Education Data Architecture for Europe – HEDA

In March, we launched Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA) in the United States. Today, we’re delighted to announce the availability of HEDA across Europe. Built in collaboration with our partners and customers in Higher Education. HEDA is a community-driven data architecture and set of best practices designed to configure Salesforce out of the box for Higher Education. Focused on core and common relationship data across the student lifecycle, HEDA allows you to take Salesforce and super charge it to meet the unique needs of your institution, helping you connect with prospects, students, alumni, faculty and staff through social, mobile and cloud technologies.

As student expectations continue to grow and funding across the Higher Education sector continues to decline, it is becoming increasingly important to leverage technology to maximise resources and capacity in order to stay competitive.  Having a long term technology view not only gives your institution the infrastructure it needs to satisfy today’s students long into the future, but it will also enable you to scale your programs and activities as your institution grows.

HEDA offers Higher Education institutions a solid foundation for designing this infrastructure on Salesforce. Developed in collaboration with our Higher Education customers and industry leaders, HEDA sets you up to build a truly connected experience across the student lifecycle.

HEDA: The Foundation for the Connected Campus

• Student Life-cycle Management: Quickly and easily configure Salesforce to manage students throughout their university journey; from prospect to student and then alumni.

• Salesforce Quick-start: Accelerate your Salesforce deployment by using HEDA objects and functionality created specifically for Higher Education.

• Improve the Student Experience: Create a 360-degree view of every student across your University and develop the foundation for personalised 1-1 communications across the student’s academic journey and beyond.

• Join a Community of Innovators: Leverage the open-source, community-driven data architecture to collaborate on some of the Higher Education industry’s greatest technology challenges on the Salesforce.org Power of Us Hub.

As we move towards a more connected world, the ways in which Higher Education institutions interact with their prospects, students and alumni is also changing. Students no longer engage in traditional methods, and are not tied to one device. 360 degree views and cross-platform engagement are key requirements for the Higher Education sector.

HEDA enables you to do this, at pace and at scale. Salesforce.org’s goal is to put innovation in the hands of Higher Education institutions so they can focus their time on achieving their mission. Working alongside the Higher Education community, we continue to work to improve the state of technology in the sector, and help make social, mobile and cloud technologies accessible and flexible enough to meet the needs of any College, University or Business School.

Salesforce.org’s HEDA is generally available now and can be downloaded as a managed package from the Salesforce AppExchange. The open-source code for HEDA is also available on GitHub: Salesforce.org on GitHub. There is no additional cost to use HEDA beyond pricing for underlying Salesforce subscription. HEDA requires subscriptions to Enterprise Edition or higher.

Interested in learning more about HEDA? Watch our webinar recording introducing HEDA!