ISL synchronizes Veracross and HubSpot for school management

Optimizing student application management with HubSpot

Because of its standing, the International School of Lausanne operates manual, personalized application management. The task is time-consuming, and the candidate experience makes up for it. The school therefore calls on the services of Make the Grade to optimize application management by connecting their Veracross tool to HubSpot CRM.

Synchronizing Veracross and HubSpot for a better candidate experience

The ISL: offering a prestigious education

The International School of Lausanne (ISL) is an international school committed to providing an education of excellence for children aged 3 to 18. The school has been present in Lausanne, Switzerland, since 1962. Today, it welcomes no fewer than 1,000 students from over 60 countries. It is an independent school that awards the International Baccalaureate.

The school uses Veracross, a SaaS tool specific to the education sector (Student Information System). It enables the management of school information, including admissions, student enrollment, financial management, parent relations, etc.

In short, Veracross is a school management tool designed for independent schools. However, the software has neither a marketing vocation nor the power of HubSpot, and is not designed to automate the slightest action. This meant that the teams had to work very hard to meet the demanding criteria that go hand in hand with the school's standing. For the ultra-personalized follow-up of applications, ISL teams had to retain and juggle each file. A significant data flow that became impossible to manage without the help of a powerful CRM.

Challenges at the International School of Lausanne

The marketing and admissions director at the International School of Lausanne wanted, from an internal point of view, to have a better vision and understanding of conversion funnels and channels, but also to facilitate the day-to-day work of the teams.

In fine, these objectives are aimed at improving the candidate experience and increasing the number of applications.

Automate time-consuming actions with HubSpot

Teams at the International School of Lausanne were spending a considerable amount of time on certain repetitive manual tasks. What's more, a school of this standing aims to deliver impeccable follow-up and a quality experience as soon as a family is potentially interested. Thus, the time spent on these applications and the flow of these same applications to manage were becoming incompatible.

Here are some examples of the tasks and constraints that ISL's administration was encountering : 

• Veracross has no alert system, which meant that teams had to constantly refresh the software to be informed of status changes (modifications to candidate files, addition of new documents, etc.).
• Relicitations to families were manual. For example, when a parent was slow to make a decision following an accepted application or a submitted offer, ISL teams were obliged to keep the dates in mind in order to follow up with parents. This quickly became complex, with a high risk of error.

HubSpot's internal workflow and notification tools were quickly identified to facilitate work on these aspects, notably by pushing reminders at the right time.

Providing marketing and statistical visibility

Aside from the time-wasting and mental burden aspect, actions were not centralized and the marketing department therefore lacked sufficient visibility to be able to act, provide support and find solutions. This lack of visibility made it impossible to generate dashboards and perform analysis. For example, the marketing director had very few explanatory elements to pass on to his hierarchy about conversion rates or the reasons why discussions were not successful.

To solve these problems, the International School of Lausanne called on the Make the Grade agency and its expertise in synchronizing business tools and creating APIs. Here's the work we carried out to meet our client's challenges.

How to connect Veracross software with HubSpot automation tools?

To automatically feed back information logged in Veracross to use HubSpot's automation tools, it is necessary to create an API.

What is an API? An Application Programming Interface is a set of rules and protocols that enable synchronization between software or computer systems. APIs simplify the incorporation of tools and the connection to a company's databases.

The connection between Veracross and HubSpot presents some challenges, not least due to the Veracross API. It was thanks to the expertise of our teams that this operation was successfully completed.

Drafting the specifications and setting up the CRM and automation

First, an audit phase of existing processes and a discussion of what could be automated were carried out. The school's high-end positioning naturally limited the outgoing messages that could be automated.

Thus, exchanges with the candidates' parents were summarized in major phases:

1. Application started
2. Application Ready
3. In-process
4. Offer sent
5. Accepted offer
6. Enrolled
7. Waitlisted
8. Closed lost

According to the actions of parents (submitting documents, accepting an offer, etc.) or conversely of administrative teams (accepting an application, sending an offer, etc.), transactions automatically move along a funnel that summarizes the major stages of the application process.

The first optimization that was implemented corresponds to alerts. These internal notifications meant that administrative teams didn't have to manually search for changes in Veracross, and were freed from a mental constraint. The administrative team is now notified whenever a discussion with families progresses or is delayed according to defined deadlines. 

The API searches every 24 hours for new information inside Veracross to import it into HubSpot and thus trigger alert workflows. This frequent connection keeps information up to date and triggers actions within an optimal timeframe.

Training ISL teams on HubSpot CRM

Since they had previously only used Veracross, members of the International School of Business administration were new to HubSpot CRM. It was therefore imperative to provide them with tailor-made training to get to grips with the software and become autonomous and efficient in their respective professions.

Team training took place in 2 parts: 

1. Training for the operational administrative team. This team was trained in the use of HubSpot tasks, email tracking but also in the creation of filtered views of the database based on customizable criteria. Employees also learned how to use calendar-related tools, and in particular the ability to offer slots that can be booked directly from an email.
2. Training for the people who will administer HubSpot. This team has been trained in the use of workflows, the administration of user rights and the parameterization and customization of the tool.

Results: win-win benefits

In conclusion, synchronizing Veracross and HubSpot has simplified the work of the International School of Lausanne teams and optimized application management. This is thanks to the automation of alerts and emails to parents based on various criteria. For example, the completion of certain files, the progress of a file internally, or a too-long delay from one stage to another. Indirectly, this time saved has improved the candidate experience and therefore increased the conversion rate.

This work carried out on HubSpot now gives the marketing team a vision of the ROI of its marketing actions and a clear view of its pipeline. It now has dashboards on the structuring of its database, and can carry out strategic and relevant analysis and marketing work.