Market
Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) opened its doors in 1963 and is now Ohio’s oldest and largest public community college. It serves more than 55,000 credit and non-credit students each year across a variety of programs.
Tri-C’s array of continuing education and workforce development offerings showcase how community colleges can serve large audiences with high-quality non-credit programing. These programs are offered across numerous divisions of the college.
Founded in 2003, the Corporate College is Tri-C’s largest non-credit hub. It serves individual learners and corporate partners with its professional training and development courses, certificates and programs in Northeast Ohio.
Challenge
Disjointed Student Data
Managing student registrations and records across multiple divisions and campuses can be demanding—especially when program administration is decentralized and there are separate systems in use. At Tri-C, all degree programs are managed through their main-campus ERP system, Ellucian Banner, but each division was using their own systems and processes to manage non-credit programs and learners.
Each system operated autonomously and didn’t connect to one another in a reliable manner. This caused challenges for staff, learners and prospects:
- Without one system of record, staff struggled to find accurate or complete learner information and wasted time searching through multiple systems.
- It disrupted the brand experience for learners who found themselves having to visit multiple places for customer service requests.
- The inconsistent online presence and checkout process posed roadblocks for prospects considering registering.
“One of the important specs that we had in the RFP we issued was the ability for the new system to communicate with our Banner ERP system,” said Tri-C Corporate College President and CEO Bob Peterson. “Because we rely upon Banner so heavily to operate and manage our college, that was a very, very important issue for us.”
Non-credit enrollments jumped 16% to over 35,000 registrations.
Solution
Non-credit and main campus integration
Tri-C implemented the Destiny One Customer Lifecycle Management software platform to manage all of its non-credit programs and learners consistently. Destiny One has modernized the registration experience and brought it in line with modern eCommerce standards. It has also given staff a big boost in productivity by automating processes and by making data accessible and functional. However, it is Destiny One’s integration with Tri-C’s main campus Banner ERP system that maximizes the impact of these changes.
Destiny One’s pre-built integration templates handle the business logic and object mappings between the source and destination systems. In practice, here’s how this integration is benefitting Tri-C stakeholders:
1. Makes It Easy to Manage Information and Improves Student Experience
It’s common for learners to enroll in multiple offerings at the same time, regardless of whether they are credit-bearing or non-credit. But they get bogged down if their college asks them to repeatedly provide the same information at the time of registering for every course.
Destiny One’s integration with Banner ERP lets Tri-C learners centrally register for courses offered across different divisions and campuses. They can even manage interactions with any Tri-C unit, order transcripts, and access historical information or other e-commerce services across the Tri-C ecosystem. Learner information flows seamlessly and is available at each and every touchpoint. This has simplified and improved the experience of engaging with Tri-C, giving learners what they have to come to expect from any modern-day service provider.
Ultimately, by making it easier to find and register for offerings, Tri-C has minimized roadblocks to enrollment and allowed their customers to own and drive their engagement forward with the college.
2. Cuts Human Effort to Increase Staff Efficiency
Disjointed systems are a drain on staff productivity and efficiency. When systems don’t talk to one another, college staff have to allocate a large number of manual hours just to clean and match data, and then manually plug it in across all systems to ensure consistency.
This was happening at Tri-C prior to Destiny One. Destiny One’s integration with Tri-C’s Banner ERP means staff no longer have to create and update learner records manually in either (or both) of the systems. Staff are now able to focus their time and energy on high-value student engagements, improving the customer experience and creating an environment students are excited to return to over the course of their career.
3. Ensures a Single Version of Truth
Colleges with separate student information and financial management systems run the risk of dealing with inaccurate data. Despite staff putting in extra hours just to clean and match data, the system is still prone to human errors.
Destiny One’s Ellucian Banner Connector facilitates the exchange of student data as well as all financial information. Credit and non-credit course updates, student profiles, payment schedules, fees, forms of payment—all this information and much more is collected by Destiny One and uploaded directly and correctly into Tri-C’s Banner ERP. Integration has minimized the possibility of errors or data breaches, and Tri-C administrators now have a single version of the truth. Equipped with accurate and consistent data, they are able to make the right decisions.
According to Bob Peterson, “If Destiny One didn’t integrate with Banner, it would have created a two-step process where student registration and financial information would not automatically migrate into Banner. It would have to be downloaded and then uploaded. This is an inefficient process with the constant possibility of errors.”
From an institutional perspective, this focus on IT alignment ensures data integrity and operational visibility. For students, it allows them to maintain a single student record and account regardless of whether they’re enrolling in a credit-bearing or non-credit offering, further simplifying their customer experience.
The percentage of students registering online grew 52% within the first six months of using Ddestiny One.
Result
Immediate Enrollment Growth
By standardizing non-credit management and integrating student, course and financial information with the main system of record, Tri-C has created a better, faster, and much more modern experience for staff and students alike.
This has translated into some quick wins for Tri-C. Right off the bat, non-credit enrollments jumped 16% to over 35,000 registrations, and the percentage of students registering online grew 52%.
“In less than six months, we’ve seen an increase in the number of students that are registering online using Destiny,” said Peterson. “That’s an early positive indicator.”
The switch to Destiny One has brought early success and has also set it up for sustained growth in the years to come.
In less than six months, we’ve seen an increase in the number of students that are registering online using Destiny,” said Peterson.
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