Support for CRM by Acorel ensures continuity
For Maastricht University (UM), CRM is incredibly important. In 2006, UM implemented SAP CRM. Since then, Acorel's consultants have been involved in various projects and optimizations in that area. Acorel's Managed Services department ensures that the system remains up-to-date. With regular updates and direct support for issues, Acorel ensures that this indispensable solution continues to meet the university's needs.
Maastricht University (UM), founded in 1976, is the youngest, southernmost, and most international university in the Netherlands. Currently, UM has around 17,000 students and over 4,000 employees. Nearly 45% of the students and more than 30% of the academic staff at UM come from abroad. The majority of the business processes within the university's faculties and support services are handled in SAP.
Farewell to Excel
For Maastricht University (UM), the CRM solution is absolutely essential for storing data about students. And these are not just all (potential) students, but also about 50,000 alumni. In total, the CRM solution contains approximately 300,000 relationships. "We are actually constantly optimizing the system," says Marcel Sodermans, a consultant at the UM's ICT Service Centre. "There are more and more processes where we are moving away from manually maintained Excel files. Instead, we incorporate them into our CRM solution. In addition, there are regular requests from Marketing and Communication. For example, we provide support for open days or other events. We develop mobile apps with Acorel to quickly capture data of students - or potential students." Sodermans and his colleagues make small adjustments within the CRM solution (or 'in SAP CRM') themselves. For more significant changes, they engage Acorel.
"For Maastricht University, we are actually a kind of flexible shell. The contact with Acorel is very pleasant and informal."
Marcel Sodermans, Consultant at the ICT Service Centre, Maastricht University
Acorel's Managed Services
Acorel provides customers with support for the management and maintenance of the CRM solution. "For Maastricht University, we are actually a kind of flexible shell," says Emiel Truijen, Manager Managed Services at Acorel. "Whether it's ad-hoc problems that need to be solved immediately, or requests for new features and changes, we are ready to work on them."
To implement changes efficiently in a controlled manner, UM opted for a release-based way of working. Apart from urgent tasks, UM gathers all change requests that Acorel then implements in one go with an update. Truijen: "This way, we keep an overview and can test the changes all at once. This saves UM a lot of time. Because we have regular contact with the university, we can make a good estimate of the upcoming workload."
"There is always someone available to help us, very reassuring to be able to rely on that."
Marcel Sodermans, Consultant at the ICT Service Centre, Maastricht University
The relationship with Acorel is excellent
Within UM, Sodermans gathers all RFCs (Request for Change) for the Marketing & Communication domain. He aligns these change requests with Acorel every two months. "Within the university, we are used to working quite procedurally. It can sometimes be a challenge to get approval from all stakeholders in time to implement certain changes. Fortunately, Acorel is very flexible in this regard. Even if there is little time to realize our requests, they manage to do it," Sodermans explains enthusiastically.
"The contact is very pleasant, informal. And if there is something that really requires an immediate solution, we just give them a call. There is always someone available to help us. It is very reassuring to be able to rely on that."
New developments
Looking to the future, Sodermans expects that UM will eventually follow the development of SAP. "A university is a complex organization. It is not always possible for us to keep up with the very latest technologies. But we will certainly follow the direction SAP is taking with cloud solutions and SAP HANA."
