Many thanks to our customers for participating at our Meet-Up #MiraER2015. The theme was “Unlocking The Value Of Your External Relations”. We talked about trends, held brainstorming sessions – and discussed challenges within Higher Education. And most importantly; our customers held sessions about their work and got the chance to network with new and familiar faces. For those of you who were not able to participate, here is our summary.
A selection from day 1
Magnus, Founder and CEO at Mira Network, started day 1 by greeting everyone welcome, and talked about the event’s theme “Unlocking The Value Of Your External Relations”. Magnus also gave insights to what we see as best practice to succeed with integrated CRM for Higher Education, focusing on values and profits.
Linnéa Lindgren, Alumni Relations Manager at KTH, held a sessions about KTH Opportunities Fund and Alumni Giving. Linnéa insights to KTH’s campaign, the challenges and how they implement the campaign in practice. Linnéa also talked about why this type of work is important: renew contact with alumni, market the universities activities, recruiting volunteers, donations to the university. At the end of the session we watched this video of Harsha and Xiang. Two of the international students who have received scholarships from KTH Opportunities Fund to finance parts of the tuition fee for master studies at KTH.
Thereafter we moved on to a workshop about “How do we create and measure Alumni Engagement. Why – and how – do we visualize the benefits for the rest of the University?”. Working with measurable parameters is something that we are constantly pushing for, and this session gave solid advice on how to measure and report your progress – and the value of benchmarking against other institutions. We gave insight to Alumni Engagement Levels and talked about the fact that although several universities have been working with Alumni Relations for many years there is still much to improve regarding strategic thinking and objectives. It is still common that the level of the measurement points at the number of alumni in the system. This is important and relevant information, but if it is not put in a larger context (eg how many alumni in the system are contactable, how many alumni in the system are interested, how many alumni in the system shows engagement), it does not say as much.
A selection form day 2
Day 2 consisted of one workshop “challenges with – and how to start – unlocking the value of External Relations across the departments”, and three parallel educational sessions: Data Quality, Integration with LinkedIn and Fundraising for External Relations. During the workshop we got creative. Some of the challenges that we talked about was:
- Hard to motivate. It is difficult to provide a consolidated picture of the external relations and what activities that are done. Hard to set up goals and follow up. Therefore it is hard to demonstrate the value of the work that is done
- Everyone do not see the value with working integrated and sharing information across the departements
- Sensitive information
- Business processes are as important as accessing information
- Organizational challenges can be just as big as IT challenges
We brainstormed and discussed more challenges, and came up with good solutions. We will send a summary of the challenges and solutions to everyone who participated.
Now we want to become even better at helping our customers and other universities in the Nordic Region with all the challenges. Once again, thanks to everyone who came. For giving us new insights, energy, inspiration and new ideas.
And do not forget! Research shows that the universities who are best equipped to market changes and new trends are those who share information about their relations across the departments. There are lots of good reasons why universities should share information. See you soon again! #MiraER2015.