A Medical University Reinvents Its Alumni Management Efforts
AdventHealth University had 25 years of alumni records and no real way to use them. Contact details, giving history, and continuing education activity were spread across systems that could store information but couldn’t help anyone act on it. AHU came to us wanting a system of impact rather than a system of record. We delivered a Salesforce implementation for higher education built around alumni relationships, covering the full org setup, an ETL data migration, opportunity and activity tracking, Outlook integration, and hands-on user training. The result: AHU can now craft a full 360 view of each alumnus after graduation, and staff satisfaction improved because the system is genuinely easy to use.
A Medical University With 25 Years of Alumni to Reconnect
AdventHealth University trains nurses, physician assistants, imaging professionals, and other healthcare practitioners, and its graduates go on to work across the AdventHealth network and well beyond it. Those alumni matter to the university in more ways than most people outside higher education realize. They’re donors, they’re continuing education students, they’re referral sources for new applicants, and their outcomes feed directly into accreditation reporting.
An alumni network that spans 25 years represents thousands of relationships, each with its own history. AHU’s Alumni Relations team knew the value was there. What they needed was a Salesforce alumni management system that could turn a quarter century of records into relationships the team could actively manage.
The Challenge: A System of Record That Couldn’t Drive Action
AHU framed the problem clearly when the project started. Three requirements shaped everything we built:
• Create a new system of impact rather than simply a system of record, so the platform would prompt action instead of just storing data
• Visualize existing alumni data so the team could make informed decisions based on what was already there
• Enable more accurate record keeping to improve communication, fundraising, continuing education, and accreditation across an alumni network spanning 25 years
That third point carried the most weight. Four different university functions depended on the same alumni records, and when those records were incomplete or scattered, every one of those functions suffered. A fundraising appeal went to an outdated address. A continuing education offer missed the alumni most likely to enroll. Accreditation reporting took longer than it should have.
Our Approach: A Salesforce Implementation Built Around the Alumni Relationship
We started with the foundation. Our team set up the Salesforce Organization along with Accounts, Contacts, Roles, Profiles, and a set of standard Reports and Dashboards, structured specifically around how AHU thinks about alumni rather than a generic CRM template. Getting Roles and Profiles right early mattered here, because Alumni Relations, fundraising, and continuing education staff all needed access to the same records with different permissions and different views.
Next came the data. We handled the data configuration and migration through a full ETL process, bringing 25 years of alumni records into Salesforce in a clean, structured, usable form. Migration is where most higher education CRM projects either succeed or quietly fail, because a platform loaded with duplicate, incomplete, or badly mapped records will never earn the trust of the people using it. We treated the migration as a data quality exercise, not just a transfer.
With the foundation and data in place, we built out the working layer of the system. Opportunity Management gave AHU a way to identify and track fundraising and engagement opportunities across the alumni base, applying the same discipline to a giving conversation that a sales team applies to a deal. Activity and relationship tracking captured every touchpoint, so anyone opening an alumnus record could see the full history of interactions rather than guessing at it.
We then completed the Outlook integration so staff could work from the inbox they already lived in, with email activity flowing back into Salesforce automatically and projections available alongside it. This is the part of any Salesforce implementation services engagement that quietly determines adoption. If logging an interaction takes an extra five steps, it won’t happen.
Finally, we ran platform testing and user training before handover. As a Salesforce consulting and implementation partner, we treat training as part of the build rather than an afterthought, because a system nobody understands is a system nobody uses.
Tools and Products Used
This Salesforce alumni management build stayed on the core platform, with integration and migration work around it:
• Salesforce: the CRM platform at the center of the solution, configured around alumni relationships rather than a standard sales pipeline
• Accounts, Contacts, Roles, and Profiles: the core org structure, set up so multiple university teams could work from shared records with the right permissions
• Standard Reports and Dashboards: built to give the Alumni Relations team visibility into engagement, giving, and continuing education activity
• ETL data migration: used to configure and move 25 years of alumni records into Salesforce as clean, structured data
• Opportunity Management: applied to identify and track fundraising and engagement opportunities across the alumni base
• Activity and relationship tracking: captured every alumni touchpoint so staff could see the complete interaction history on any record
• Outlook integration: connected staff email to Salesforce, with projections available alongside day to day correspondence
Platform testing and user training rounded out the engagement, so AHU’s team could operate the system confidently from day one.
The Results: A Full 360 View and a Team That Actually Likes the System
The headline outcome is visibility. AHU is now able to craft a full 360 view of each alumnus after graduation, pulling contact details, giving history, continuing education activity, and every logged interaction into a single record. The system of impact AHU asked for at the start is what they got, because a complete view is what makes the next action obvious.
The second outcome is adoption. Staff satisfaction improved based on how easy the system is to use, which for an internal platform is the metric that predicts everything else. A CRM only becomes a system of impact when the people responsible for those relationships choose to work inside it.
| Area | Outcome |
| Alumni visibility | Full 360 view of each alumnus after graduation |
| Staff experience | Improved staff satisfaction based on ease of use of the system |
| Data foundation | 25 years of alumni records migrated into Salesforce through a full ETL process |
| Daily workflow | Outlook integration, activity tracking, and opportunity management in one platform |
In the Client’s Words
“Exceptional team, project was completed in record time and it meets all of our needs. I am always confident that the team will solve any issue that arises.”
Dawn Creft, Director of Alumni Relations, AdventHealth University
If your institution is sitting on years of alumni data that nobody can act on, our Salesforce implementation services team can help you turn it into relationships your staff can actually manage. Get in touch to talk through what a Salesforce implementation for higher education would look like at your university.
