Solution Set

Capstone Strategy Group (CSG) is positioned to help evaluate your existing infrastructure, determine if there are gaps in supporting your vision and cost effectively bridging those gaps.

Improving the student Experience

For students, the higher education environment has never looked this good. Competition is driving service quality up while distance learning capabilities across institutions has provided added flexibility. But for higher education institutions, under relentless cost pressures, increased competition and reduced state funding, the outlook is less rosy. Succeeding means, institutions must:

Improve their management of the student experience from prospects to Alumni
Strengthen Student Recruiting and Retention
Tailor processes and offerings to changing needs of students
Leverage the latest technology to improve the student experience and manage operations more effectively
Provide a 360 view of the student’s profile and hence provide consistent service throughout the institution and mostly all student facing organizations
Link all systems (student admin, CRM and finance) to improve efficiency
Leverage state-of-the-Art portal technologies for self-service enablement

Our experienced consultants are your partners in evaluating your needs, understanding your requirements, and designing a solution that will enable your organization to improve the student experience.

For more information contact Capstone Strategy Group’s education team.

Marketing and enrollment enablement

With higher education institutions under relentless pressure to reduce costs and grow earnings, executives turn to marketing and enrollment management to address their challenges. However unlocking the full potential of marketing and enrollment management implies addressing the following strategic and operational challenges:

Integration of Enrollment Management and marketing processes and activities to better address prospects’ and students’ needs
Use of integrated technology solutions across the organization to support Marketing, sales and student services
Integration of Marketing and Enrollment Management processes and systems
Streamlining student services, advising and faculty services and linking them to the overall CRM process for an improved student experience and to address the changing needs of the student population
Channel efficiency for institutions using lead vendors and lead aggregators

Our expertise around business process re-engineering and CRM has enabled us to help high education institutions streamline enrollment management and marketing processes while improving their bottom line
For more information contact our education team.

Process and Performance Management

Just a few years ago, competition from new entrants in higher education was limited. Today, the competitive environment has significantly changed:

Growing competition due to the emergence of many “for profit” institutions
Rising costs and shrinking state funding
Changing nature of student mix, their profile and demands
Increased pressure to improve profit margins, improve business processes and accommodate growth.
Sponsor and donors focusing on accountability and performance.

These challenges have forced executives to focus on fundamental strength and bottom-line results and hence proactively manage performance.
Capstone Strategy Group has experience assisting organizations define, design and implement a performance management framework that addresses organizational needs (i.e., balanced scorecard). Capstone Strategy Group’s performance management solutions are geared toward all levels of an organization (from executives to staff) to make sure strategic objectives and the cause effect relationship are clearly reflected in the Metrics and KPIs.

For more information contact Capstone Strategy Group’s education team.

Maximizing IT investments and reducing operational Cost

The phenomenal growth of online education and the potential revenue opportunities have sharpened IT vendors’ appetite to start designing solutions aimed at replacing existing legacy systems and provide efficient solutions for core institutional needs, including: Learning Management, Communication and Collaboration, Contact Management, Student Administration, Accounting and Financial Management, Reporting, Payment Processing. Depending on the organization size and priorities, two adoptions paths have emerged:
Best of Breed approach (where organizations select the best tool to address specific needs within their organization) or Enterprise Resource Planning (where organizations opt for using one specific vendors suite of software components to support all business processes throughout the organization). Regardless of the approach taken, CIO’s are under increasing pressure to address challenges within the IT organization and:

Clearly demonstrate the value of IT investments made and promote accountability
Align business and IT
Address backlog of projects and support requests
Enable/promote cross functional integration of IT assets
Address the shortage of time for strategic thinking and planning
Better manage business expectations
Fix broken processes from application development to IT operations
Facilitate tighter control of IT budgets
Keep IT staff motivated

Capstone Strategy Group’s industry leading BTI methodology and approach has enabled IT organizations to build the Adaptive Enterprise, a key solution to be more service oriented, overcome challenges which exist today, enable a successful alignment between business and IT and hence significantly reduce operational cost.
For more information contact our education team or visit our case studies section.
Having an online presence is a critical component of every school’s service offering. However developing an online presence is more than deploying an infrastructure for collaboration and networking. It requires judicious planning, a good understanding of key processes (i.e., marketing, enrollment management, advising, student services, alumni, faculty management and staff), a clear picture on how different departments should interact and support each other and how to leverage IT as an enabler to reduce cost, improve efficiency, and ultimately the student experience.

Capstone Strategy Group’s professionals have extensive experience helping educational institutions to:

Define an online vision
Define an online strategy that can support their vision
Define an operational strategy that supports the vision
Define metrics and KPIs to make sure strategic goals are tracked and managed throughout the organization
Select, deploy and integrate systems that will ensure the organization’s success and mostly keep IT and business aligned.

For more information contact Capstone Strategy Group’s education team.