LSU Shreveport: From Homegrown Systems to All-In-One Enrollment + Engagement Platform

Most Loved:

Marketing automation
Application management
Hyper-personalized communication tools
No code or technical expertise needed to operate

Integrations:

In-house system

While what he had built worked for us at the time, we realized we needed to unify our processes to be able to better serve our students efficiently and effectively.

Easy maintenance and forward-thinking technology modernized LSUS Shreveport’s admissions processes.

For more than 50 years, Louisiana State University in Shreveport (LSUS) has strived to educate a diverse population of undergraduate and graduate students through creative learning techniques and innovative instruction.
But creativity and innovation aren’t simply bound to the classroom walls at LSUS. In the admissions office, staff like Shelby Keith, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and CIO, has worked diligently over the last 33 years to create many of the systems the school used for managing its admissions and enrollment processes.

Together with key people in the admissions department, like Matthew Culpepper, Associate Director of Admissions, Keith recognized that to modernize the school’s admissions process and better engage with students the school would need to adopt new technology.

Although impressive and unique, homegrown systems are difficult to maintain and burden forward-thinking IT teams. They often don’t keep pace with industry best practices and require a tremendous amount of insider knowledge that’s difficult to pass on especially when university departments continue to get smaller and tasks get larger.

LSUS partnered with Element451 to implement our student engagement CRM as its new all-in-one platform for:

Marketing
Recruiting
Admissions
Retention

We knew it would be an undertaking to transition our historical data to a whole new CRM platform, but it really wasn't as painful as we imagined. We were able to transition relatively quickly and without needing additional staff support on our end.

Stepping into the future of higher education—with ease.

Because LSUS had been using Keith’s homegrown systems for more than 30 years, it was necessary that the new technology be easy to learn and even easier to use.

With a small admissions team and limited bandwidth, LSUS had no time or extra energy to spare while also trying to reach their recruitment goals. Thanks to the quick Element451 implementation process, LSUS staff were able to seamlessly integrate and get up and running with ease.

The school is now ahead of the transformation to digital enrollment and engagement that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated.

LSUS can also be prepared for staff changes by having tools that are well documented and supported by a dedicated success team at Element451.

Ensuring a smooth transition every step of the way.

As with any successful project, having the right resources is crucial to success. Making sure the Element451 platform could properly integrate with LSUS’s student information system (SIS) was critical to Keith and his team.

Throughout the implementation process, the team at LSUS was able to coordinate internal IT resources with Element451’s team in a convenient and collaborative way, ensuring there were no roadblocks to getting important historic data into the new system.