Addresses from Australia. Phone numbers from France. Emails from Egypt! Wherever your customer is, however you communicate with them – the goal is a solid “golden contact record”. That was the goal and challenge for Arden University.
Arden is a modern UK university with a mission to make higher education more accessible. Originally founded in 1990 as an online learning partner for traditional universities, it became an independent university in 2015 and now delivers its own degrees to students worldwide.
In just 7 years, Arden University has enjoyed extraordinary growth – from 5,000 students in 2018 to over 27,000 today, and turnover rising from £16M to £189M. System changes were required to support this growth and Stephen Wallace, Head of Student Information Systems, has led the implementation of a new student information system that will help manage the student journey from application to graduation and beyond.
A key requirement for the new system would be accurate student contact data. Analysis of data sent to AFD by partner universities that rely on our solutions, revealed that 17% of address records were incorrect, while 5.3% of phone numbers and 4.3% of email addresses were invalid.
In discussing the importance of accurate contact data for Arden University, Stephen explains: “Poor contact data undermines our operations, hampers student success, and impedes our growth and revenue development. It is also a barrier to our ability to understand our student ‘customer’ data and our ability to prepare statutory reports. We need high-quality address, email, and phone data.”
Arden University operates in a competitive international environment. “If a student applies and doesn’t hear back, they study elsewhere. When students are investing up to £50,000 in their university education , these losses quickly add up for a university. It’s essential we collect accurate contact data as part of our student acquisition processes.”
Stephen continues: “Once the student is here, we take our responsibility seriously to offer a level of support that leads to their success. If a student misses a class unexpectedly, we want to reach out quickly. Maybe they need learning support, pastoral care, or even some counselling. It’s about being able to contact them through all available channels. We know support affects student retention, the final exam result, their future, and our reputation – so poor contact data can lead to serious failures.”
Arden has implemented AFD’s solutions to validate address, email, and phone data, ensuring accuracy at the point of entry by students or staff.
Each year, every university must submit detailed data returns to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) who mandate strict reporting criteria. This includes contact data accuracy and layout. Stephen explains the onerous task: “Currently, it takes a team of 6 people, 6-9 months a year, to manually extract and manipulate student data for HESA reporting. With AFD ensuring address, email, and phone data is accurate and formatted correctly, we can dramatically reduce this gigantic job, and our staff can do better things with the time saved.”
“Any single one of the issues I’ve outlined is important, but together they are critical to our operation, student success, and Arden’s success. To solve all of them we partnered with AFD. Nick is our key contact there, and he has been fantastic from initially scoping our requirements, through to implementation and ongoing growth. He checks in regularly, spots usage trends before they become problems, and suggests solutions that make sense for us. That kind of personal touch really matters.”
AFD’s unparalleled customer service leads to similar stories of cost savings, efficiency, retention, and excellence across multiple sectors including retail, not-for profit, and logistics.
How could AFD Software help you cut costs, boost revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and get better analysis – through better contact data?
Contact The Postcode People today to discuss your specific requirements with The Postcode People on 0333 433 0711 or email postcode@afd.co.uk.
We serve thousands of organisations and a network of hundreds of partners across multiple industry sectors, enabling them to have full confidence in their contact data.