Alumni Data Management Made Simple Using RPA

The Process

Alumni Onboarding: When an academic batch graduates, the staff shares the list of the graduating students with the administration team. The admin team then logs into the CRM and adds the contact details for each name to the alumni association group and sends an onboarding email to the respective alumni.

Birthday Wishes: Every morning, an admin member accesses the alumni association group in the CRM, filters individuals who celebrate their birthday on that day, and sends out a birthday email to each of them. For birthdays on weekends or public holidays, emails are scheduled in advance.

Contact Update: Once every month, the admin team sends emails to the association members, requesting them to update their contact details (in case of any change). The emails have the URL to a Google Form for updating the details. Based on the response of the recipient, the team updates the CRM data. For members who do not respond, reminder emails are sent regularly.

Alumni Meet Invitation: For inviting members to the quarterly alumni events, the admin team sends out invitation emails. To that end, the responsible employee logs into the CRM, extracts alumni email ids, and sends the invitation.

The Solution

The staff members at the university wanted a turnaround of the process, which led them to leverage Nalashaa’s expertise. After a thorough investigation of the processes to identify the bottlenecks and the areas of improvement, the team suggested RPA as the solution. The bots addressed each problem case as listed below:

Alumni Onboarding

• Bots monitor emails received by the admin team and identify alumni-related emails from the mail subject.
• On identifying such an email, bots access it, read the names and registration number of the graduating students, and use the same to extract their details from the CRM. The extracted data is then added to the Alumni Student Association group.
• Bots then send an onboarding email to the administrative team and the staff.

Birthday Emails

• Every morning, bots access the alumni group in the CRM and filter member data by their birthdays (can even be done on a weekly or monthly basis).
• Bots then use the pre-built birthday template, update it with the individual’s information, and send it to the recipient.
• Delivery emails are sent to the admin team.

Alumni Contact Update

• Bots access the admin’s Outlook, use the pre-built request template, attach the Google Form for contact updates, and send it to the intended recipient.
• RPA monitors the inbox for responses from the recipients. On receiving one, it accesses the Google Form and identifies the alumni by their name and registration number.
• The information in the form is validated against the information in the CRM; for any change in data, the same is updated in the CRM. A success email is sent to the admin team and the concerned alumnus/alumnae.

Alumni Meet Invitation

• Bots access the CRM to filter alumni names by their year of graduating.
• Bots then copy the email message, mark all intended recipients, and send the mails.
• Successful delivery mails are sent to the admin team.

At every stage, bots check for validations and in the case of exceptions, notifications and relevant screenshots are sent to the IT team for easy problem diagnosis.

Benefits

• Efficiency: Bots now manage the entire alumni database without human assistance. Data entries and updates are executed in seconds or minutes while maintaining high accuracy.
• Easy reporting: At the end of the day, bots send a report to the team regarding the relevant requests received and actions taken.
• Better focus on core areas: The management could relieve the staff of the repetitive, monotonous tasks and help them focus on academics and other important areas.
• Reduced costs: The deployed bots execute the tasks efficiently, effectively, and quickly, managing the work of 2-3 workers, eliminating substantial operating costs.