Mathieu Montagnon OAKland Group
In an effort to promote transparency, communication and recruitment, alumni offices and associations face a daunting challenge: to know their former graduates, their professions and their sectors in order to help students and potential future candidates to find their path, to be recruited and to be informed efficiently. In short, to ensure a true reflection of the position of each member at any given time.
For these association offices, the issue related to obtaining this “mapping” of former members’ careers is twofold:a lack of reliable data and the growing trend of losing contact with former members. As a result, many alumni offices or associations, such as ESTACA Alumni, are obliged to “hunt” for data, which involves a time-consuming, manual process that is costly both from a human and financial perspective. In addition, the introduction of issues such as the GDPR further complicates the challenge, making it difficult to undertake and direct actions on personal data, which can undermine the results of traditional data collection. For example, the prohibition on collecting data that is not “public” drastically reduces the potential input to alumni databases after collection campaigns.
By using quality, reliable data, schools are able to provide their current and future students with the information and recommendations necessary to meet their educational and career needs.
Various operational tools have been developed to help alumni database managers acquire solutions capable of meeting the specific challenges of their databases. ESTACA Alumni has implemented one of them; Stalks For Alumni, developed by OAKland Group. As an expert in data strategy, data operations and compliance, our solution is positioned to meet these challenges and offer a smart tool to control database quality. In addition, to make each step simple, fast and efficient, we have created partnerships with companies offering alumni relationship management software, such as NetAnswer. This allows us to provide a data enrichment and update tool that is fully compliant.
For alumni offices and associations, such as ESTACA Alumni, data is the key to knowledge and is essential for the proper management of issues related to past, present and future students. Integrating our Stalks solution has given ESTACA a powerful digital solution that enables it to establish a sound, solid and quality basis for its full range of activities involving members.