Cornerstone University - Case Study

“There’s a pretty significant time savings each week. Overall, I’d say we were probably at about five hours per week based on the automation work that Connex and team has done”

James had the opportunity to serve within Cornerstone University’s adult learner division.

He have been in the higher education space now for about 12 years and five years within this role.

What specific problem were you looking to solve, that led you to discover Connex Digital? We have a daily digest or what we call our enrollment projection report and it’s a dashboard that all 42 individuals within our division rely on daily basis.

What we were finding is a lot of manual importing and exporting from our database, so copying and pasting on a daily basis and it was creating a lot of additional work.

The Connex team was hired to look at a solution to this problem for us and one of the things that they did for us was automating our enrollment projection report using our database and making a connection through a service called Zapier in writing automation scripts.

That has been very effective in helping us on a daily basis.

What were the pain points of not having a solution to this problem? We were finding on average about 30 minutes per day was spent exporting information from our database called Radius and our staff member copying and pasting and then importing into our Google Sheets document.

Did you try any other options? We’ve known Connex for about five years and we’ve worked with them on various IT related projects, as well as some digital marketing.

But really looking at other options out there, there were large scale systems or databases that could provide this type of dashboard information and this automation. But when we looked at the price tag, it was significant and we operate on a smaller budget.

What were your big wins achieved by working with Connex Digital? We’re saving about 30 minutes per day, two and a half hours per week on the enrollment counselor scorecards.

One of our enrollment managers was also spending roughly 45 minutes per day updating that information. He was having to pull the various widgets from our database, called Radius, and copying and pasting into that sheet.

Again, we were fraught with errors and it wasn’t always the most accurate or reliable and we also weren’t able to simplify it.

Through consulting with Connex and the team, we were able to come up with a solution that was very simplified, really just based on the metrics and in a true dashboard format.

Based on the time savings for our enrollment manager at the time, and our admissions and data coordinator, that was a pretty significant time saving each week. Combined overall I’d say we were probably at about five hours per week based on the automation work that Connex and team has done.

When did you realize working with Connex Digital was producing results? We realized it was worth the investment when we didn’t have to look at it every day and actually pull information from our database and then question whether or not there were errors within that dashboard.

How did you find the support side of Connex Digital? Great communication back and forth, not only good email communication but we’re also meeting weekly to touch base on the project to see where we’re at and to get updates and Connex and team is always on point and delivers excellent customer service.

My recommendation would be to try them out, give them a shot, talk to them about the solutions that you’re looking for and the problems that you’re trying to solve and I’m positive Connex and team can help find a way to provide the information that you’re looking for.