DePaul’s new student recruitment software, Slate, launched on August 15, 2016. The comprehensive CRM
brings fundamental changes to DePaul’s recruitment that are necessary to maintain DePaul’s position and prominence and achieve enrollment goals in an increasingly complex and competitive market.
This initial installation of Slate focuses on undergraduate programs. As the process has unfolded, the implementation team separated its efforts between undergraduate and graduate in order to accommodate the complexity of DePaul’s systems and processes. The graduate installation of Slate is expected to go live later this year.
The successful launch was the result of the collaborative efforts of Information Services and several EMM units, including Recruitment and Admission operations, Undergraduate Admission, and Marketing and Web communications. Given the distinctive admissions process in the performing arts, special efforts were required of the School of Music and the Theatre School as well.
Slate provides many advantages over previous systems. It allows DePaul to more strategically segment, sequence and sustain its communications with prospective students; this ability to personalize outreach throughout the recruitment cycle is key to successfully achieving student enrollment goals. Moreover, users can access the cloud-based system from any location at any time. And perhaps most importantly, Slate handles the recruitment and admission work previously performed in four different systems, creating a much more streamlined and efficient workflow.
Prominent product features include:
- An application, which replaces all current applications (the only exception is for freshmen, which is now exclusively the Common Application).
- An event scheduler.
- Inquiry forms with conditional logic.
- An automated email communications tool, Deliver.
- Reporting dashboards (which will be deployed in upcoming months).