Your enrollment CRM should accelerate growth, not constrain it. If you’re managing workarounds just to launch new programs or adapt mid-cycle, it’s time to rethink your foundation.
The Strategic Choice: Point Solution or Platform?
Every enrollment leader faces the same decision: continue patching together specialized tools, or invest in a platform that grows with your strategy.
Point solutions like Slate and Liaison solved your immediate problems with centralized applications, streamlined workflows, and purpose-built functionality. But they’re hitting the wall as your institutional needs evolve.
Here’s the reality: systems designed for standardization can’t handle rapid change. And in today’s competitive enrollment environment, speed wins.
Why Point Solutions Can’t Scale
Point solutions work until growth demands more than they can deliver.
Limitations Are Built-In:
- Expensive adaptations: New programs require separate instances ($30K+ each), fracturing your data
- Vendor bottlenecks: Three-week delays for basic updates, months for complex changes, outright rejections for requests outside their roadmap
- Limited alternatives: Few certified partners means you’re stuck when implementations fail or support disappoints
- System multiplication: Growth forces you to add separate tools for student success, alumni engagement, career services—multiplying vendor relationships and integration headaches
The “budget-friendly” choice becomes the expensive one. We see institutions spending more on fragmented point solutions over three years than they would have invested in a unified platform from day one.
When your systems start controlling your strategy instead of enabling it, you’ve outgrown your infrastructure.
Salesforce Platform Power: Built for Growth
According to the Connected Education Report, 82% of students need more proactive and personalized support from their institution than they did five years ago.
That kind of agility requires a platform that evolves with changing expectations, not one that locks you into rigid processes.
When your enrollment strategy changes, Salesforce Education Cloud changes with it.
Think of it this way: Slate is like a Palm Pilot—excellent for its specific purpose, but that’s where it stops. Salesforce is like an iPhone—you don’t need to predict every future app because the platform adapts to new requirements.
What This Means in Practice:
Launch programs in days, not months: Duplicate existing workflows, modify application logic, go live—no vendor negotiations, no additional licensing
Complete student view: See inquiry source, application status, financial aid, housing, and engagement history on one screen
Instant trend identification: Spot conversion drops by program or region as they happen, not in next month’s report
Triggered communications: When an applicant hasn’t submitted transcripts 10 days before the deadline, the system sends personalized reminders automatically
The Investment Advantage: Salesforce invests billions annually in platform development across multiple sectors. Education gets HIPAA-compliant security from healthcare, fraud detection from finance, donor management from nonprofits—capabilities no education-only vendor could afford to build.
Plus, hundreds of certified implementation partners mean you’re choosing from proven expertise, not hoping your single vendor relationship works out.
Building the Business Case
Most enrollment leaders recognize the need for change, but struggle to get buy-in or don’t know where to start. That’s why Coastal created True North—a strategic assessment that equips you with a clear, actionable plan to move forward with confidence.
True North Delivers:
- Cost Analysis: Quantify what your current system actually costs in staff time and missed opportunities
- Growth Impact Modeling: Show your CFO what happens when application volume doubles with your current setup
- Strategic Roadmap: Connect your technology decisions to your actual enrollment goals and strategic priorities
- Implementation Timeline: Realistic schedule and resource requirements for your specific situation
- Budget Justification: Executive-ready business case with ROI projections
The result? Executive-ready strategy showing current costs vs. platform benefits—built on your actual operations, not vendor projections.
The Competitive Reality
The enrollment landscape rewards speed. While you wait three weeks for vendor approval, competitors launch new programs and student engagement drops. While you reconcile data across multiple systems, they’re adjusting deposit campaigns based on today’s conversion data.
Test Your Current Position:
- Can your CRM launch a micro-credential program in under two weeks?
- When deposit rates drop unexpectedly, can you identify causes and respond the same day?
- If leadership wants to test a new recruitment strategy mid-cycle, how long until you can execute?
Platform migration requires upfront investment and change management. But the alternative—managing an increasingly complex web of point solutions that slow every strategic decision—costs more and limits competitive response.
The choice is clear: continue multiplying workarounds, or invest in systems that move at the speed of your strategy.
Every month spent managing point solution constraints is competitive ground lost to institutions with platform flexibility.
“After 20 years in the industry, I’ll bet on Salesforce any day of the week against these other systems when it comes to performance and enrollment growth. Just a 1% increase in retention or quality enrollment more than pays for the leap into the future.”
— Jenny Hall, VP of Education, Coastal
Ready to get more from your CRM?
Coastal’s True North assessment will show you what’s possible—and build the roadmap to get there.
