Old Dominion University (ODU), located in the city of Norfolk in the metropolitan Hampton Roads region of coastal Virginia, is a dynamic public R1 research institution that serves its students and enriches the Commonwealth, the nation and the world through rigorous academic programs, strategic partnerships and active civic engagement. ODU was founded in 1930 and now serves over 23,000 students and offers over 120 degrees.
ODU has partnered with Cloud for Good on several projects, including a transition from a TargetX platform to Salesforce’s Education Cloud to expand access and increase enrollment for the ODUGlobal online degree program, implementing Experience Cloud and Marketing Cloud to improve recruitment and admissions and support ODUGlobal students with proactive and personalized communications, and leveraging Managed Services to provide continued support for the technology.
The Challenge and Opportunity
With the pending implementation of Education Cloud, ODU still had to maintain its existing Salesforce platform and had a growing backlog. “There was this backlog bill—literally and figuratively—of more that we wanted to do and develop,” reflected Mike Dal Santo, Director of CRM and Integrated Systems at ODU. “We felt we were just trying to tread water, and sometimes it was easier to maintain what we had.”
Internal staff changes further strained the school’s existing in-house Salesforce talent. As a result, ODU sought to add an additional, Norfolk-based resource with the Salesforce experience and training they required who could support the Enrollment Management team’s Salesforce org.
However, ODU initially encountered difficulty finding the right candidate with their own hiring and talent acquisition processes—with marketing the position being one of their challenges. “I thought that just getting the word out about the position and creating an awareness of “Hey, we have an opportunity” was enough,” said Dal Santo, “But it was unclear how well we were marketing this position to candidates. We tried really hard to get the word out about these opportunities ourselves, but that’s not our expertise, and we have our own responsibilities to do, too.” In addition, one of the biggest obstacles the ODU Enrollment Management team faced with its hiring efforts was working with small application pools of candidates who did not have the Salesforce talent or qualifications the Enrollment Management team required. Once they finished the first round of interviews, they would repeat the process again with other applicant pools only to have the same results. “The process really does fall on the hiring manager and then perhaps an interview committee depending on the type of position,” explained Dal Santo, “But it was just so labor-intensive and hard to find qualified candidates.”
Around that same time, a Talent for Good resource began supporting the ODUGlobal online team with their implementation of Education Cloud, and the Enrollment Management team realized that they could also take advantage of this program. “We knew how hard it was to recruit. The University said it had no concerns with us getting some more help for our search, so Talent for Good was something that we were very open to trying,” explained Dal Santo.
The Enrollment Management team at ODU consequently participated in the Talent for Good program to find, hire, and train an individual who could work as a full-time extension of their team and provide their much-needed support on Salesforce.
The Solution and Results
Cloud for Good’s Talent Acquisition and Talent for Good teams were able to source, hire, and train a candidate in the Norfolk area for ODU’s Talent for Good Analyst position.
During her Talent for Good contract term, the Analyst provided the ODU Enrollment Management team with the following crucial support:
Marketing Cloud: Marketing Cloud was where ODU had the greatest bottleneck and backlog, but ODU’s original plan was to have the Talent for Good Analyst do more work with their Salesforce + TargetX org. However, the team pivoted the Analyst to support and own Marketing Cloud work. The Analyst was able to upskill successfully to handle this work and would eventually serve as the ODU Enrollment Management team’s primary point person for sending Marketing Cloud ad hoc email communications, pulling Marketing Cloud reports, cleaning Marketing Cloud data, creating templates and communication Journeys, and routing the approval processes for disseminating communications messaging.
CRM and Data Management: The Talent for Good Analyst provided needed support for the Enrollment Management team’s CRM team and managed their Clearinghouse data imports into Salesforce. She was also pivotal in data syncing work, helped clear out the team’s backlog of files, and documented and refined their data import process.
Troubleshooting: The knowledge the Talent for Good Analyst gained of ODU’s Salesforce org and her experience and understanding of how everything in Salesforce connects has allowed her to provide valuable troubleshooting and quality control support for ODU. She has helped catch and identify discrepancies or errors in the platform, explained them to her team, and has identified future-proof solutions and fixes.
Project Resourcing: The Analyst took on projects and tasks throughout her Talent for Good engagement, which consequently freed up time for the Enrollment Management team members to focus on other priorities.
“[Our Talent for Good Analyst] has been such a good addition to our team and has a great sense of how everything in Salesforce connects,” said Dal Santo. “Building and maintaining our Salesforce org has been a pretty big project at ODU in regards to using it for recruiting new freshmen … but she has just taken a lot of pressure off our team, our backlog of communications, improved our content, and the way we send out our communications. We would assign her tasks and you know it would get done—and it would get done well.”
The success of the Talent for Good engagement between Cloud for Good and ODU led to the Enrollment Management team to make their Talent for Good Analyst an offer to work full-time with them. “[She] was getting good feedback,” explained Dal Santo, “She was ready to grow. That’s when, for us, we knew, “Oh, yeah, this is definitely somebody who we need to keep around.” The Talent for Good Analyst has since accepted ODU’s offer to work with them full-time and her position is receiving funding from a grant from ODU’s Research Foundation.
Having seen the value and benefits of Talent for Good firsthand, it’s a program that Dal Santo would recommend to others. “If you don’t have the bandwidth or the confidence to go out, search, and find someone with the right Salesforce talent, it’s almost a no-brainer to have some support from a program like Talent for Good. It’s something that I’d definitely recommend if you have had any issues finding Salesforce talent or you don’t know where to look or where to start, and it’s something that can provide a lot of value and give you very high odds for success.”
If you or someone you know is facing hiring challenges in the Salesforce space, contact Cloud for Good today to learn more about Talent for Good.
To learn more about Old Dominion University, visit www.odu.edu.
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