EMAS Pro Case Study:
Depaul University, Chicago, IL

Shared by: Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management

Life Before EMAS Pro

"Recruitment at DePaul University is a complex challenge. Enrollment Management (EM) is in charge of all undergraduate recruitment and admissions processes. EM works with graduate programs in seven of the eight colleges enrolling graduate and professional students, to varying degrees.

It was pretty clear that we needed a solution that we could both centralize and distribute; one that was both powerful and easy to use; and one that tracked lots of data and transactions while remaining nimble.

How We Made Our Decision

We established a partnership with Information Services (IS) at DePaul to evaluate a handful of systems. While EM focused mostly on user perspectives, our IS staff concentrated on technical and architecture issues: Would it work with our Data Warehouse and our PeopleSoft ERP? Is security as bulletproof as it can be? Does the architecture provide integrated strategic support for student loyalty, financial aid, and retention? After an extensive evaluation process -- in which we graded over 80 objective criteria and then weighted them in order of importance -- we chose EMAS Recruitment Pro as our solution. In the end, both IT and EM came to the same conclusion about the best solution.

Why We're Sure We Made the Right Decision

EMAS Recruitment Pro has modules for both graduate and undergraduate recruitment, and separate databases for the two. This gives us tremendous ability to configure each independently, in light of substantially different recruitment challenges. But there are dozens of reasons that EMAS rose to the top of our evaluations. Among them:

• It allows for easy market segmentation by any variable or combination of variables we track (full time vs. part time; local markets vs. distant ones; segmented academic interests; ethnicity; honors eligible vs. more moderate ability; full pay vs. needy, etc.).
• We can easily create customized recruitment and communication plans by segment.
• All communications are automatically tracked; this is true whether you send 100 admissions letters in batch, or a single spontaneous email.
• Built in reporting is quite powerful, and custom reporting is delivered via Crystal Reports.
• The interface is a recognizable and intuitive Windows-type format.
• We can connect it to external databases to add information and power to the process.
• It gives us a powerful web inquiry form, that will allow us to bypass the complicated PeopleSoft interface and associated file loads.
• It will allow us to import large, purchased lists of student names into the database, regardless of format. Common imports (GRE searches, for instance) are handled via pre-formatted routines provided.
• It provides a high level of student self-control of contact information and communications preferences.
• It has powerful security settings that allow us to distribute or centralize tasks and access as appropriate.
• And perhaps most important, we liked and appreciated the total vision of the EMAS solution, including the powerful student portal feature, the modular expandability, and the driving vision behind future development. It was the most complete vision of all those we examined. It helped that we could only find clients who had great things to say about the product and the company.

In short, it works the way we work, or perhaps more appropriately, the way we would like to work.

We are looking forward to a long and beneficial relationship with EMAS and Education Systems."

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