CATLab Blog Committed to Excellence Behind the Scenes
Garrett Buchanan and Narindra Rafidimalala explain the different projects that the Business Analyst CATLab team undertook during 2024 to improve Westmont's underlying processes and data.
Our journey this summer has been a testament to the power of collaboration, continuous improvement, and the drive for excellence. Read on to find out more about each of our projects!
Ensuring a Smooth Transition for Incoming Students
This past summer, we as part of the CATLab Business Analyst team sent all enrolled students an email with instructions on how to activate their Westmont email account. However, getting them to open the email was a challenge. A couple weeks after the email was sent, over 150 students still hadn't activated their accounts, which were essential for receiving important information about housing, registration, orientation, and more.
To address this, we took proactive steps to remind students to activate their accounts and provided support for any questions. This involved identifying which students needed to be contacted using a Salesforce report and then individually contacting each student using RingCentral, which is a software that allowed us to log calls and texts in Salesforce. Our initial contact list consisted of over 150 students but after a few weeks of dedicated reachout in the face of voicemail after voicemail, we were able to successfully get in contact with all but six of those students. We are thrilled that we were able to play a part in equipping these students for their arrival to Westmont!
Leveraging Salesforce for Enhanced Data Management at Westmont CATLab
This summer, we’ve also been hard at work leveraging Salesforce to revolutionize our data management system. Our focus has been on integrating various Salesforce-related projects, utilizing key tools such as FormAssembly, Microsoft Excel, and Dataloader.
FormAssembly: A Key Tool for Data Collection
FormAssembly is our primary tool for gathering data across campus, supporting 45 departments with 450 active forms for purposes such as campus visits, tuition payments, study abroad programs, donations, and merchandise. Managing this extensive data efficiently is crucial. This summer, we tackled two major projects involving FormAssembly and Salesforce:
1. Metadata Curation: We organized metadata from FormAssembly into an online form library within Salesforce, creating a more streamlined and accessible system.
2. Brand Compliance: We updated all forms to ensure they comply with our institutional branding, maintaining a consistent and professional appearance across all platforms.
Building an Organized Form Library
For a Salesforce administrator, having a comprehensive record of all forms is essential to track information such as form URLs, types (events, applications, revenue, scholarships, donations), departments, primary contacts, auto-responses, themes, internal notifications, and designations if payments are involved. Starting from scratch, we meticulously organized over 450 forms into a cohesive Salesforce library, enabling detailed analytical reporting. Five key departments—Admissions, Student Records, Athletics, Student Life, and Alumni & Parent Relations—are the primary users. With one-third of these forms involving payments, ensuring a positive customer experience is paramount.
Ensuring Brand Consistency
Our next project focused on aligning all forms with our institutional branding. Typically, our forms feature either an ocean on the left, a mountain in the middle, a museum on the right, and another Westmont base. However, not all forms initially followed these themes. For example, our main donation form had non-compliant fonts and disorganized fields. We’ve since updated it to match Westmont’s branding, significantly enhancing our Salesforce form library.
We look forward to sharing more updates and insights as we continue to innovate and improve our systems at Westmont CATLab.