A smarter, more dynamic portal: How Northumbria University is using Microsoft Dynamics 365 to transform the student experience

Introduction

Northumbria University services over 38,000 students across its campuses, with the main campus in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England. Like many institutions of higher learning across the globe, Northumbria faces increased pressure to accept more students in its classes, provide more services to its students inside and outside the classroom, and be accountable to these students with faster, more efficient modes of engagement and an overall better student experience.

Today, students expect something beyond 9 to 5 staff hours for student support. When students search for answers, they don’t do so on a timetable. When they expect to find information, those expectations don’t follow some standardized clock. These students grew up with computers in their pockets and touch screens at their fingertips, and they’re used to looking for and finding information whenever they need or want it. For example, when a student experiences a mental health crisis in the middle of the night, they don’t want to wait for counselors to call back during regular business hours. 

In 2015, Northumbria responded to these pressures with a university-wide strategy that aimed to transform the student experience and bring about real change in the way in which the university delivered support services. It understood that the modern student enters the university as a digital native, at a time when university departments and the various services it provides often fail to interact with each other. As a result, students could visit any office on campus or department website, receive conflicting information, or simply get lost in the bureaucracy. According to Andrew Munro, Software Development Manager at Northumbria, “We realized that there were a lot of processes and applications that were very slow, very cumbersome, and didn’t aid the student journey through the university at all.”

A dynamic solution for legacy systems

Rather than consider this problem solely as an IT issue, Northumbria approached the student experience more holistically. The legacy systems required clicking through an often-outdated tree of links. The university reimagined the student journey through a modern portal, where students could find information through a dynamic query system. After reviewing the available products and services, Northumbria decided that the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365, Office 365, and Microsoft Teams was exactly what they needed to overhaul the student experience. 

According to Camilla Gregory, Senior Business Analyst at Northumbria, the university wanted a solution that could facilitate a shift from requiring that students navigate various university offices and services on their own, to an approach where all departments and services work together through a single platform―or portal―to surface information based on what students need to find. Students shouldn’t have to understand where to go, they just need to know that they’ve asked the question, and behind the scenes Dynamics 365 helps to route them to the right place. Gregory sees this as the primary benefit. “Now the staff can see each other’s queries and how they interact with each other to share information instead of students doing processes in a silo and then having to pick bits up and go to another team to pick up the rest,” she explains.

Beyond eliminating silos, Dynamics 365 has helped eliminate overhead and headaches. According to Andrew, “There have been many advantages for us being based on the cloud,” says Munro, “including that we are not having to manage it as much as we would having had an infrastructure.” According to Dan Stephenson, Senior CRM Developer at Northumbria, the university upgrades twice yearly to make sure it has all the latest fixes and enhancements to the system—a schedule Munro describes as “a massive advantage” in time savings. 

Stephenson also notes there used to be many Microsoft Access databases that were difficult to maintain and update. The move to Dynamics 365 “took a lot of that pain away. The leap was transformative, and we are now reaping the benefits of what has been implemented.” 

The time savings are not limited to IT. Support staff has experienced significant time savings as well. One financial aid officer has been able to reduce lead time responding to and processing student requests from 12 weeks down to 6 weeks. According to Gregory, the financial aid officer “is able to issue financial advice and support much faster, report on the different types of support students are requiring, and Dynamics 365 is able to provide staff with detailed reports in an up-to-date manner. This is a big turnaround from the initial reaction, when some stakeholders thought they’d prefer paper or spreadsheets to learning a new system, an objection that changed quickly when they realized how much time could be saved.”

Even better, students can now see their financial aid requests at every stage of the process, including when they need to upload more documents. This all takes place through the Student Portal rather than the old system, notes Gregory, which “used to be a black hole where they might not hear back for weeks on end.” 

Revolutionizing the total student experience

Although it’s a dramatic change for students to find out about financial aid decisions faster and with greater transparency, the real advantage of the solution is access to immediate resources. Although university counselors often work traditional hours Monday through Friday, students experience mental health crises at all hours, including weekends. In the old system, the students would fill out a paper form and send it to a mailbox that would be evaluated during regular business hours. 

Now, the students can read articles about available support and complete the registration form on the Student Portal. This information is then routed into Dynamics 365, where the data is scanned for keywords, which sets in motion a series of immediate communications. 

If the student uses certain words in the form that indicate a serious crisis, then Dynamics 365 instantaneously sends a message on how to access immediate support through the Student Portal. Additionally, the Student Portal will produce a pop up on the student’s screen about how to access an emergency support system. The Student Portal enables the students to express a need and to receive critical information no matter the time or place that they find themselves in crisis.

These changes are tangible, measurable, and essential. According to Gregory, “Security and support teams that are available 24/7 have seen an increase in student contact because these students are directed to correct service immediately. It has really benefitted the students.” Even if an issue does not rise to the level of immediate need, when the Student Portal receives an urgent message, staff members receive the support request in their queue automatically, categorized for quicker action.

Beyond counseling support, use of Dynamics 365 via the Student Portal can determine if a student has asked about disability services and immediately direct them on how to access disability support on campus. The Student Portal can help identify potential classes, programming, university events, and much more. The power of the Student Portal has truly revolutionized the student journey. 

Dynamic solutions produce dynamic results for years to come

The beauty of Northumbria’s investment in meeting students where they really live is that, as a result of the engagement, the system gets smarter over time, thanks to built-in AI services integrated with Dynamics 365. The more the students use the Student Portal, and the more the staff uses Dynamics 365, the more powerful the solution becomes at directing them to the correct resources. The more familiar the students become with how to find things on their own, the less likely staff gets bogged down in dealing with student inquiries that are easily answered. 

The result is that the students are happier with the speed of the response, and they are much more likely to seek knowledge on their own rather than asking someone for help first. The staff members are happier because they are freed up to focus on the complex issues that attracted them to working in higher education in the first place. “We have seen a huge impact for staff and students,” concludes Gregory. “The Student Portal usage stats are huge, and the students are going to the self-service options first, which is exactly what we want them to do.” 

In the end, Northumbria took advantage of the pressures that many modern universities are experiencing to revolutionize the student experience.  It has placed the student experience at the heart of the university, with an emphasis on service excellence using enabling systems, technology, and ways of working that will continue to chart new paths for future generations of students.