Institutions in education are asked to recruit more students, retain more of them, and do it with flat or falling budgets. The information that would make that possible usually exists — scattered across a student information system, a recruitment spreadsheet, an advising tool and a fundraising database that speaks to none of them. We connect it.
Recruiting a student is expensive; losing one after a semester wastes that investment entirely and, more importantly, fails the student. The institutions that improve retention are not the ones with the best dashboards — they are the ones where a signal reaches a human being early enough to matter. The sub-sectors below each have their own version of this.
Family communication, enrolment and transfers, student support and intervention tracking, and the state reporting that funding depends on.
Enrolment funnel management, developmental and workforce pathways, employer partnerships, and completion metrics under intense public scrutiny.
Recruitment and yield, student success and advising, advancement and alumni engagement, and reporting to boards and accreditors.
Admissions and enrolment management, family relationships across siblings and years, tuition and financial aid, and development.
Cohort management, employer contracts, completion and placement tracking, and the outcome reporting that funders require.
Grant and award administration, research compliance, industry partnership management, and the reporting obligations attached to sponsored work.
The arithmetic in education is unusually direct. Retaining one additional percentage point of an enrolled cohort is worth a calculable amount of tuition and state funding, and it costs a fraction of what recruiting the equivalent number of new students costs. Add a yield improvement in the enrolment funnel, staff hours recovered from manual reporting, and advancement giving that improves when the relationship record is complete, and the business case is usually built from four numbers your institutional research office already produces.
The student information system holds the record. Almost everything that determines whether a student stays happens outside it.
Banner, Colleague, PowerSchool, Workday Student or an equivalent, plus the LMS. These hold registration, grades and academic record. They stay, and we integrate with them.
Enquiry capture, application progression, communication journeys, yield management and the funnel reporting that tells an enrolment director what is actually happening this cycle.
Early alert signals, advising notes, intervention tracking and referral to support services — the layer where retention is actually won or lost, and the one most often held together by spreadsheets.
Giving history, engagement, event attendance, volunteer activity and the household and employer relationships that major-gift work depends on.
Four recurring problems, with the outcome the cabinet or the board is actually asking for.
Enquiries, applications and deposits sit in different systems with different definitions. By the time the picture is clear, the cycle is over and the intake number is whatever it is.
The outcome leaders ask forReal-time funnel visibility with conversion at every stage, so an enrolment director can intervene during the cycle rather than explain afterwards.Attendance, engagement, financial holds and academic performance live in separate systems. The pattern is visible in hindsight but nobody saw it in time to reach the student.
The outcome leaders ask forEarly signals surfaced to a named advisor with enough lead time to act, and intervention outcomes tracked so the institution learns what actually works.Board reports, accreditation evidence, state submissions and funder reporting are assembled manually each cycle from extracts that need reconciling first.
The outcome leaders ask forReporting generated from a governed layer, freeing skilled staff for work that requires judgement rather than copying.The development office cannot see that a prospective major donor's child is currently enrolled, or that they attended three events last year, because those facts live in systems it cannot reach.
The outcome leaders ask forOne complete constituent record spanning student, alumni, family and employer relationships — with FERPA-appropriate access controls throughout.None of these require replacing the student information system. They require a layer around it, which is a fraction of the cost and considerably less institutionally traumatic. None of these require replacing the student information system
We baseline from your institutional research data, so the targets are argued in numbers your cabinet already trusts.
Improvement where early signals reach an advisor in time to act
More enquiries converted through managed communication journeys
Staff time recovered from manual report assembly
Time to produce a governed report pack from live data
Student, alumni, family and donor relationships in one view
More qualified prospect activity from a complete record
How to read these: How to read these: the figures above are typical ranges we plan and measure against, not guarantees. In your first engagement we agree the baseline, the target and the measurement method in writing, then report against them.
Most institutions start with enrolment or retention, because both have a number the board is already watching.
The funnel, instrumented: enquiry through application, deposit and registration, with conversion visible at every stage during the cycle.
Signals joined and surfaced early, with intervention tracked so the institution learns which support actually changes outcomes.
One relationship record spanning giving, engagement, events and family connections, governed appropriately.
Implementation, extension, support and integration — built around the student information system rather than in competition with it.
Environment design, data migration, configuration, testing and go-live for the Dynamics 365 applications your operation actually needs — to a fixed price and a fixed date. Sequenced around your academic calendar, because going live during registration is a decision institutions make exactly once.
Where the standard product stops short, we extend it with model-driven apps, Power Apps, Power Automate flows and custom tables rather than bolting on a separate system. Programs, pathways, terms and intervention protocols differ by institution and change by cycle, so we build them as configuration your staff maintain.
Managed application support after go-live: a named team, an agreed response time, release management for Microsoft's twice-yearly waves, and a backlog we work through with you. Support intensity aligned to your calendar: heavier through admissions cycles and the opening weeks of term, lighter over the summer, priced accordingly.
Connecting Dynamics 365 to the systems you are keeping — with monitored, re-runnable interfaces and a documented contract for every field that moves. Interfaces to Banner, Colleague, PowerSchool, Workday Student and your LMS, with FERPA-appropriate handling of every field that crosses a boundary.
Student data access is designed to FERPA from the first session: role-based access, legitimate educational interest applied through security roles rather than policy documents, and an access log your registrar can actually review.
What each application is genuinely good at in an institutional setting.
The admissions pipeline: enquiries, applications, stages, territories and yield. Counsellor activity and conversion visible by segment, source and program while the cycle is still running.
One front door for student enquiries across financial aid, registrar, IT and student services, with routing, SLAs and a complete history that stops students retelling their situation to each department.
Segmented communication for prospective students, current students, families, alumni and donors — with preferences and consent respected and engagement measured rather than assumed.
Award budgets against actuals, effort and cost allocation, milestone reporting and the funding-source traceability that sponsored work depends on.
Early alert forms, intervention workflows, program applications, and the approval routing for petitions, exceptions and appeals — built inside your tenant with FERPA-conscious access design.
Student data access is designed to FERPA from the first session: role-based access, legitimate educational interest applied through security roles rather than policy documents, and an access log your registrar can actually review.
Education has more stakeholders with a genuine veto than almost any other sector. We find them at the start rather than at go-live.
We work with admissions, advising, registrar, IT and institutional research to map what really happens.
We agree the outcomes and the metric definitions with institutional research, so nobody argues later.
We prototype with advisors and counsellors, and adjust before anything is built.
We build, integrate with the SIS, migrate and train — scheduled around your academic calendar.
We measure against the baseline through a full cycle, because education outcomes are seasonal.
We measure across a full academic cycle before drawing conclusions. Anyone claiming a retention result after one semester is measuring noise, and we would rather tell you that than take the credit.
We work at the pace and governance of an institution rather than fighting it.
Cabinet approval, faculty consultation, shared governance and the academic calendar are planning constraints we build around, not obstacles we complain about.
Student information system replacement is a multi-year institutional decision. We will not let a CRM project become one, and we will say so when the SIS is genuinely the constraint.
Access to student data is designed through security roles and tested before go-live, so legitimate educational interest is enforced by the system rather than asserted in a policy.
Educational licensing is generous and routinely under-used. Establishing what your existing agreement already covers is often the first and most valuable thing we do.
Two illustrative engagements showing the shape of the work.
Attendance, financial holds and early academic performance sat in three systems. Advisors learned a student was struggling when the student stopped attending, which is roughly the last useful moment.
Admissions, the business office and development each held part of the family relationship. Major-gift conversations occasionally happened without knowing a family had two children currently enrolled.
Practical pieces on enrolment, retention and operating with flat budgets.
Why signal quality matters less than routing and ownership, and how to design the intervention loop so it closes.
Read moreWhere most institutions lose applicants between deposit and registration, and the sequence that recovers them.
Read moreA short guide to what your existing agreement likely already covers, and how to check before the next purchase.
Read morePick a program and a cohort. We will build a working demo of that funnel or that early-alert workflow, using your stages, your terminology and your intervention protocols, and walk your enrolment and student success leaders through it together.
Describe the situation in your own words.
