How this University uses Salesforce

This team—who make up the higher education advancement “shop”—are responsible for financial accounting systems, reporting, and related functions at the University. Salesforce is a crucial record system for the institution’s alumni, as well as both existing and prospective donors.

“We use Salesforce as a traditional development shop would,” the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations says. “We have our development officers meet with potential donors or people who have donated to or supported us philanthropically.”

Each development officer carries a portfolio of prospects, around whom all the technology is centered. Officers need to be able to contact their prospects in a timely manner and record details of their interactions, which means they must ensure all information is as up-to-date as possible.

But they have yet to implement Salesforce as its CRM: “We’re not even live yet,” the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations explains. “We’re new to the ecosystem, and we’re excited participants in it. We believe in the product, [and] Own has been a great resource for us in learning how to manage Salesforce.”

Higher education industry challenges

Higher education differs from other sectors in its tendency to move slower than other industries, like tech. This reticence can often amplify and compound issues that development shops elsewhere don’t necessarily face.

Small teams, big systems

“Salesforce is a very large, sophisticated, and complex environment—and teams in higher education tend to be on the smaller side,” the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations says. The team’s current headcount is under 10, which is typical for the industry. Even the largest foundations with over 100 people “will typically have a very small and spartan data group that manages systems and reporting,” he explains. “Putting a large tool like Salesforce in their hands can be overwhelming.”

For development shops large and small, the lines dividing the role of an admin from that of a developer often blur. As the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations explains, “We’re doing all the things because we have to: There's nobody else.”

Salesforce is powerful, but it also comes with potential pitfalls. Since the team is new to the environment—in his words, they’re in a “jack of all trades, master of none” stage—they might experience teething problems or configure inefficiently. And in the typical higher education style, implementation has been slow going—the team is currently three years in.

Switching from Advance, an older CRM, to Salesforce has been easy thanks to who the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations' team has partnered with. “It helps baseline everything and make it familiar,” he says.

Accidental deletions

To Salesforce’s credit, it’s difficult to “bulk delete” within the CRM. But there’s still plenty of room for accidental deletions of records and sandbox refreshes that can set organizations back days or even weeks if it’s not clear who made what changes.

In smaller development shops where everyone does everything, it’s not uncommon for developers to deploy changes to production. This isn’t an ideal system, but sometimes it’s necessary for those that lack the resources and organization of bigger outfits. And while the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations says his team has a comparatively healthy level of change management for its size, its approach isn’t “particularly sophisticated or layered.”

Clash of the working styles

Higher education advancement is unique in that half the operation is sales-focused, while the other half is administrative, with functions like accounting and IT. The Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations splits them into extroverted go-getters trying to light fires and detail-oriented, black-and-white introverts. “It’s always very interesting, meshing those two groups of people together,” he says. 

Salesforce provides a perfect, balancing agility that improves the relationship between the two types. After asking the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations to track hundreds of prospects and manage the cadences via a dashboard, the team got to work and demoed it shortly after. “They were blown away by it,” he says. “And now they’re beaming and telling everybody.”

The downside is that every team wants a similar solution. But between managing expectations and being able to tell people yes more often, the advancement team is happy.

How this University found Own

Higher education systems going through Salesforce implementations and onboarding can learn a lot from this University. The story of Why Salesforce? is also the story of Why Own? because the data organizations put into Salesforce is an investment that needs protecting. 

Own as the top choice

The Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations found Own after discovering that there was no native backup in Salesforce. Because accidental sandbox deletions were a real problem for the team, they needed something. After some research, Own popped up as a highly recommended solution with a great reputation.

While the team did look at several backup and recovery solutions as part of its process, “Own was so obviously the front runner,” he says. Own is designed to back up Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and ServiceNow data with platforms that know specific data locations, contain field maps, and are intuitive to other systems.

From weeks of work to three hours

The Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations' team uses up to 40 variable prototype ID accounts depending on the specific use case and will anonymize as required. Normally, loading up object data requires teams to build data loader scripts and APIs—“essentially do what Own is doing”—and would take a master weeks to write. 

What really sold Own for the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations and his team was that they could start up sandboxes and seeding from scratch and put the data in people’s hands just three or four hours later. “Own has been invaluable to us as we've gone through sandbox refreshes,” he says. “It blows my mind that something like this exists and that it works so well. The product pays for itself many times over, [and] ROI is instant.”

Own as a tool for insight and understanding

Accidental deletions no longer cause problems for the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations and the team. “Using Own to see what’s changed, audit that, and understand what’s going on in an environment is very powerful for us,” he says. Own is a tool that answers pertinent questions about sandbox environments that can be tricky to grasp changes to. 

“We can ‘diff’ the data between this day and a week ago today and see what somebody was up to and what they did,” he adds. The team has also used Own to restore deleted records.

Pick partners carefully

To organizations going through both CRM implementations—like Salesforce onboarding—and looking for a backup, restore, and seeding solution, the Associate Vice Chancellor of Advancement Operations offers this advice: “Choose who you work with wisely.” For this University, he says, “Own has been phenomenal: They took time to walk us through the product and make us comfortable. That’s pretty rare.”

The best partners can back up what they say they can do. They’re reliable enough to set organizations on the road to recovery without too much legwork. 

“Have a backup solution,” he adds. “Don’t go into it thinking you’re not going to have the need for backups, or that you’re just going to be able to keep track of things easily. At least think about how you’re going to adopt a disciplined approach to managing those changes.”

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