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Want to begin exploring Salesforce and see how it can best support your constituent engagement? Salesforce Trailblazer Community is an excellent resource to get support, answers, tips and proven ideas from thousands of users already working within the Salesforce Education Cloud. You can select 'Trails' or guided learning paths based on your skill level, role, and product of interest. Below are just a few suggestions to get you started:

Traditionally, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, but in our higher education setting we refer to it as Constituent Relationship Management. At UB, eCRM refers to our unified, enterprise CRM. An eCRM is a type of platform designed to initiate, track and support interactions and communications between an organization and its constituents. eCRM users can see a wide variety of data points, from demographic information to email exchanges to personal preferences - all collected and displayed in a such a way that enable users to leverage that information and have personalized and customized interactions with constituents.

Salesforce is the leading cloud-based CRM software that functions as UB’s enterprise engagement platform. Salesforce is more than just a single CRM tool; it’s a collection of tools and services designed to serve different applications. Salesforce tools and services are called “clouds.” Salesforce Education Cloud is a suite of cloud-based solutions specifically designed to improve relationship management and engagement across the entire student lifecycle from prospect to alumna/e with the goal of improving relationships and providing insights to inform decisions.

Salesforce CRM is the core platform that maintains data including all university contacts, the relationships contacts have with UB, and the interactions between UB and constituents. It also includes components that can track one-on-one interactions, manage event occurrences and participants, along with many other features to facilitate and manage constituent engagements.

Marketing Cloud is the mass digital communications component of the Salesforce CRM platform. It is designed to enable you to connect and engage with your constituents across a variety of channels. It also helps track individual constituents throughout the multiple touchpoints of their journey.

The eCRM does not replace any of our major campus-wide systems, such as the Student Information System (SIS) or Learning Management System (LMS). In order to realize the greatest benefits from our unified approach, standalone CRMs as well as legacy systems, spreadsheets, databases, and other external platforms and subscription services are potential candidates for replacement. eCRMs are rapidly becoming a standard in higher education as a campus-wide complimentary system to student-focused platforms such as SIS and LMS.

If your department is interested in either learning more about eCRM functionality or adopting an Enterprise CRM solution, contact us to get started. For those seeking expanded eCRM functionality, requests will need to be approved and prioritized by the Data Governance Council.

Have a question about the eCRM implementation? Use the form below to get in touch with campus experts or email us at ubcrm@buffalo.edu.