Pop the Champagne – A Look Back at Salesforce’s Award-Winning Year

By: Laura Campbell, Executive Committee member of the Salesforce.org Higher Education Advisory Council

January is a great time to look forward. But before you get too caught up in making New Year’s resolutions that you may or may not keep and trying to forget all the food you ate over the holidays, let’s take a minute to look back at 2015. Salesforce’s higher ed customers are leveraging the power of the platform in new and innovative ways to support student success and industry leaders are really taking notice. Every customer certainly has his or her own highlights from 2015, but as a community we should all celebrate the close of an award-winning year for Salesforce.org and our peers.

University Business Reader’s Choice Awards

Salesforce was a shining star – three times over – in the University Business Top Products Reader’s Choice list. Salesforce.org was recognized as a leading CRM solution for higher education and praised for all the features that we as customers love, including real-time analytics, team collaboration, mobile access, and configuration over coding.

Enrollment RX was also included in the list. Built on the Salesforce.com platform, the Full Lifecycle CRM solution was commended for empowering institutions big and small to benefit from its robust and scalable functionality.

TargetX, another campus CRM built of the Salesforce platform, rounded out the list. This mobile-first solution supports effective communications, support, and alumni engagement.

Campus Technology Reader’s Choice Awards

In the Constituent Relationship Management category, Salesforce was awarded the Gold medal. Second only to another enterprise CRM (I demand a recount!), Salesforce was recognized for providing customized higher ed applications and supporting a single, unified view of a constituent across their entire educational journey.

Eduventures 2015 Innovation Awards

The final award, and the one which is nearest and dearest to my heart, is the honorable mention given to Cornell University by Eduventures for Creative Use of Technology. This award was given to Cornell and the entire team behind Unity – an out-of-box customization of Salesforce Communities specifically for higher education. This solution is available free on the GitHub and as a managed package on the App Exchange. It’s a fantastic product for colleges and universities that want to build a front end engagement community for students and alumni.

I was extremely proud to be part of the team that won the Force for Change grant to develop this solution, in collaboration with Motivis Learning, the Higher Education Advisory Council, and Salesforce.org.

Will 2016 be another award-winning year? With all of the amazing work being done by Salesforce.org and its customers, I have no doubt. So keep a bottle of champagne ready for this time next year and get to work on this year’s innovations! Cheers!

Laura Campbell leads the CRM initiative at Algonquin College and is a founding member and an Executive Committee member of the Salesforce.org Higher Education Advisory Council. With a background in Marketing and Recruitment, she is passionate about automation, communication, and the student experience. Follow Laura on Twitter at @LAC_me.