International College Robert Gordon University (ICRGU) is a college based in the northeast of Scotland. Their admissions team were maintaining high service levels, but behind the scenes team members were drowning in emails and struggling to coordinate processes across multiple internal systems. With no centralised system, the team relied on a combination of emails and shared drives to manage their admissions and agent partners.
"If a priority agent had an enquiry, we were manually going through every application, searching through an inbox and pulling up hundreds of other emails related to that agency," said Nioshka Madre Deus, Admissions Manager at ICRGU.
Each day they would work through their inbox in chronological order – meaning important emails from students and agents were often buried, time-sensitive tasks were easily missed and important communications were hard to locate. They needed a way to work more efficiently, prioritise applications and manage their workflows. And they found it with StudyLink.
Solution
In February 2022, the college went live with Flywire’s StudyLink platform as part of a wider Navitas rollout. The platform provided the admissions team a single portal with a holistic view of all application activity and status and access to all communication in one secure place. With the ability to upload important information and documents against each application, the team no longer had to context switch and search in email inboxes and shared drives to find what they were looking for.
Results
2.5x more applications processed
The ability to prioritise and assess applications faster has been a game-changer for the ICRGU admissions team. They’ve been able to improve their processes beyond recognition, helping the team balance their workload and ensuring tasks are shared evenly to prevent staff burnout.
60% less time spent on email
From spending less time searching for information to removing the endless email back and forth, the team can work faster and more efficiently than ever before.
Streamlined integration with other university systems
Integrations between StudyLink and other systems has also made a big difference to the ICRGU team. StudyLink’s Education Provider APIs allow data to be shared with other systems such as their existing student management system.
Faster priority assessment
With the ability to automatically analyse and score each application against ICRGU’s assessment requirements, it’s easier for the team to screen out students who may not be the right fit – saving time for everyone, including agents, students and the ICRGU admissions team.
Benefits
Reduced time spent per application from around 12 minutes to 2-3 minutes
No more time wasted responding to agent enquiries, as automated status updates provide transparency to agents
Improved responsiveness and communication to agents, improving partner relationships
The ability to prioritise high-quality and low-risk applications so the team can focus on converting those applications first
Proactively manage issues via an application pipeline dashboard with a snapshot of all application activity and status
Receive high quality and structured data via a customised application form, allowing admissions to move quickly to assess the application and reduce time wasted on incomplete and non-genuine applications