Rethinking Student Information Systems: The Salesforce Advantage

Why Higher Education Needs a New Approach to Student Information

Educational institutions face increasing pressure to demonstrate transparency, agility, and accountability across every facet of their operations– from student outcomes and faculty development to international collaboration and employer engagement. Traditional student information systems (SIS) often fall short in supporting these growing demands.

Salesforce Education Cloud is rapidly gaining traction among universities and business schools as a modern alternative. Not only does it provide a flexible CRM foundation, but it also meets the sophisticated accreditation, data management, and stakeholder engagement requirements of today’s academic landscape.

Supporting Accreditation Through Data

Accrediting bodies such as AACSB, AMBA, and EQUIS demand robust evidence of program quality, internationalisation, and impact. With Salesforce as an SIS, institutions can consolidate and visualise this data across departments and functions.

By tracking interactions with students, faculty, alumni, and employers, Education Cloud helps institutions generate real-time dashboards aligned to accreditation metrics. As Alan Hughes, Education Lead UK & Ireland at Fluido, explains, “With Salesforce, you can generate customizable dashboards for each of the three accreditation bodies and have that information on hand, day in, day out.”

Rather than scrambling for reports during audit periods, business schools can embed these metrics into day-to-day management and decision-making.

One Platform for a Multistakeholder Ecosystem

Education Cloud serves as a central nervous system for institutions that engage diverse stakeholder groups—students, alumni, faculty, employers, and research partners.

For students, Salesforce enables personalised communications, systematic tracking of learning outcomes, and seamless integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS). For alumni, it supports long-term relationship building and career progression tracking. Employers benefit from structured engagement around placements, internships, and recruiting partnerships.

This CRM-driven approach ensures that all stakeholder touchpoints, from a prospective applicant to a tenured professor, are unified in one system.

Enhancing Internationalisation and Diversity

Global accreditation frameworks increasingly require institutions to prove their international reach in areas such as student recruitment, faculty diversity, research collaboration, and market representation.

Salesforce can track and analyse international partnerships, student exchange programs, and recruitment campaigns. Institutions can also monitor geographic balance and identify gaps in outreach efforts.

“EQUIS doesn’t just want a large international student population,” says Hughes. “They want to see balanced representation from across the globe. With Salesforce, schools can monitor their market strategy and improve where needed.”

Insights That Power Continuous Improvement

Education Cloud delivers actionable analytics, enabling schools to continuously measure outcomes against strategic goals. Whether it’s stakeholder satisfaction, academic performance, or graduate employability, institutions can access real-time insights without needing external data pulls or manual survey cycles.

Automated tracking surfaces trends, uncovers bottlenecks, and identifies areas for investment or change, fostering a culture of ongoing improvement across all functions.

Career Services That Connect the Dots

Career outcomes are a critical benchmark of program value. With Salesforce, career services teams can track student engagement, monitor alumni trajectories, and proactively build employer relationships.

This holistic view empowers career teams to deliver more targeted support and leverage alumni networks for graduate opportunities. It also equips schools with credible, data-backed stories to share with accreditation bodies and prospective students alike.

Where to Start? Begin With Reporting

Institutions often ask where to begin. The answer: start with your reporting needs. What data are you required to provide to stakeholders, internally and externally? What KPIs matter to your leadership team, to funders, or international partners?

Once these requirements are precise, Salesforce can be configured to deliver dashboards, workflows, and insights that align with your strategic vision. Hughes summarises: “Before you get to that point, look at what’s asked of you. What are funding bodies, research bodies, and student groups looking to get from you? These are all things that can be answered with an SIS built in Salesforce.”

From Legacy Systems to a Single Source of Truth

Legacy SIS and alumni systems often operate in silos, with scattered, duplicated, or incomplete data. Education Cloud changes this. By unifying recruitment, teaching, engagement, and advancement into a single source of truth, Salesforce enables more coherent, data-driven decision-making.

It also opens the door to long-term cost savings, as schools realise they no longer need to maintain or license multiple disconnected platforms.

To dive deeper, listen to the full Fluido Moments episode on Salesforce Education Cloud and learn more about Fluido’s work in the Higher Education sector.