vtiger

[vogelap]

I am working as Associate Director of Graduate Admissions of the University of Cincinnati College of Business. Part of my job is to focus on recruitment & "courting" of prospective students into our many programs (full-time & part-time Masters of Business Administration (MBA), and full-time & part-time Masters of Science in four areas (Accounting, Marketing, Information Systems, and Quantitative Analysis). At this time, the College does not have a solution for managing customer relations, and I am evaluating vtiger to see if it might be appropriate for our needs given the following set of guidelines. I love the friendly feeling generated by the developers and the community, and we don't have a lot of money, so vtiger's "price" is very attractive, too!

Our prospective students come to us via a variety of routes... from contact cards students fill out in-person, student info we purchase from testing agencies, and through email/postal mail. Generally, we know the student's interest area as well, so we can slot them into various campaigns, though we would like a general (non-specified interest) campaign as well. Each of these campaigns would draw from a set of "standard" pieces (that would be in each campaign) -- information about Cincinnati, the University, and educational outcomes, for example. In addition, each campaign would have highly-targeted information about the specific program in which the student is interested. So, for example, our Full-Time MBA campaign might be 6 pieces, 2 of which are "general" and 4 of which are specific to the full-time MBA.

We envision our CRM solution handling automated (as automated as possible) email/print campaigns (mostly electronic) to prospective students, leading them toward applying for our program, at which time the student is removed from the CRM's campaigns. The email pieces could be anything from plain text, html emails, PDFs, PowerPoint or other attachments, and even podcasts.

My ignorance of CRMs in general leads me to this question... Is vtiger the right/best tool to help us with what we're trying to accomplish (ie: am I barking up the correct tree)? If not, could someone guide me toward an appropriate solution, please?

If I learn that vtiger is the best solution, I will begin earnestly reviewing the documentation, learning the program in order to get it deployed!

I am happy to answer any additional questions that might further illuminate our needs. Thanks for your time!

[scurlaruntings]

Its certainly right for me!

[vogelap]

Our CRM solution would ideally function also as a call-manager. We got lots of telephone calls, both directly to our phones and to voicemail. I'd like our CRM solution to be a place where I can record these calls (noting name, phone number, a place for notes from the student's incoming voicemail message, and a place for notes on our conversation that also records time/datestamp). We would also record our outgoing calls there, too.

[vogelap]

Additionally, our CRM would be able to receive leads from a webform with selection box(es) that enable the student to specify which academic program(s) they're interested in. The leads received from the webform would be (automatically, ideally) imported into vtiger and assigned to campaign(s) based on the indicated interest. All without any (or very minimal -- I want it to be automated) interaction from me. Does vtiger allow this?