Success Story: Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Graduate School – Custom Solution for Applicants

Salesforce solution enhances student application experience and improves data reporting.

Based in Minnesota, Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is a world-renowned provider of addiction and mental health treatment services. The foundation offers prevention and recovery solutions across the entire continuum of care for youth and adults including a fully accredited Graduate School of Addiction Studies.

CHALLENGE

Client’s Graduate School of Addiction Studies (an HLC and NASAC accredited institution of higher education) seeks candidates looking to prepare themselves for a career as a counselor in the addiction and mental health fields.

Client’s existing process for nurturing, activating, and enrolling prospective students was complex and highly manual. As a result, both applicants and administrators lacked visibility into where applicants were in the process. Challenges included:

Application process complexity led to prospect confusion, requiring significant interaction from client to help them navigate the process to completion
Lack of visibility to required application elements resulted in a high rate of incomplete applications
Longer than desired window from application initiation to completion

Client was looking to leverage their existing Salesforce platform to improve/streamline their process and increase transparency (360-degree view) while engaging with candidates throughout the application process.

SOLUTION

Demand Chain worked with client to deliver a solution that included:

Process mapping/optimization – Demand Chain worked with client to define and configure each stage of the student application process. They helped client understand the flow and outcomes of each process stage to increase the number of “completed” student applications submitted to the Graduate School.
Applicant Portal – Demand Chain utilized a Salesforce Community portal and created a “straight path” for the applicant to walk through and help them understand the documentation and information they needed to submit while also helping to reduce “fall out” of candidates getting lost in the process.
Reference submission/tracking – application process requires candidates to reach out for references. Demand Chain created a custom tool that provided applicants and staff transparency to references that are submitted – reducing time to application completion
Reporting/dashboards – helped client easily see summary level metrics of applicant pipeline.

RESULTS

The Graduate School is able to automate communication with applicants and has better transparency into their actions. Potential grad students can apply and receive confirmation and updates regarding their submission. This clear, streamlined process combined with the Applicant Portal delivered gains in efficiency and visibility.

This solution was a valuable step in enhancing the workflow for the larger Salesforce integration with the entire Foundation, as solutions needed by other departments within the organization can be modeled after the process and system of development and review established with the Graduate School.

CLIENT SATISFACTION

Client rated Demand Chain a 5.0/5 on the post-project survey issued by Salesforce.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

“Our continued partnership with Demand Chain has been incredibly valuable. Working with the team at Demand Chain has been engaging, informative, and fun. We know we can trust Demand Chain to keep us informed with appropriate communication throughout each stage of the process, and partner with us every step of the way!”

Vanessa Carlson, Information Technology Program Manager – Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation