Page 22 – Attain Partners

Enriching the Road from Education to Employment

May 2, 2022/in Higher Education, Salesforce, Thought Leadership/by Jesse Dean

Education Summit Highlight: New Education Cloud Features

Salesforce Education Summit provides Salesforce customers and partners a unique opportunity to learn about the many innovative projects taking place in the Salesforce education ecosystem and this year definitely did not disappoint! One of the highlights was a sneak peek into the many great features coming in Education Cloud and a brand-new theme for Salesforce–it’s all about Education to Employment.

The objective of Education to Employment is to accelerate the pathway for learners from student to gainful employment. To accomplish this, Salesforce has created a holistic view of the student as a Universal Learner and has extended the existing Education Data Architecture (EDA) to include learner experiences and achievements. These new Salesforce objects will allow institutions to work with learners to track accomplishments that happen inside and outside of a traditional classroom. New objects include Credentials and Academic Certifications. Credentials cover Badges, Certificates and Licenses while Academic Certifications cover more traditional Certificates, Degrees, and Diplomas. In addition to adding value for Career Services, tracking Certifications and Licenses can be beneficial for Admissions and Executive Education. The Credential object can help your institution track credentials that may be needed before your applicants can begin their programs. Admissions can now use Academic Certifications for transfer students rather than relying on a single Education History object to track both internal programs and transcripts.

With the dynamic composition of college students and learners, these are welcome changes! Having Universal Learner data on one platform allows career services to help students reflect on their interests, skills and values and explore career options that best align with these—planning out a meaningful professional journey. Further, the new data model will allow institutions to assist learners explore career opportunities during college, become the best possible marketable job candidates and eventual job placement.

Education to Employment is a great addition to the already feature-rich Education Cloud and continues to put the student at the center of the story.

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, we are here to help you achieve your goals. To learn more, check out our Salesforce innovation services and read case studies about our work. Contact Attain Partners today to learn how we can help you achieve your goals by harnessing the power of Salesforce. Explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce team.

About the Author

Virginia Berkenkotter is a Certified Salesforce Administrator and Project Manager at Attain Partners. She brings to her role experience in pre-sales, business analysis, re-engineering and project management. Virginia is able to quickly understand customer pain points and design solutions to meet specific client requirements leveraging her expertise from 20+ years Higher Education background with technology specialization including 6+ years Salesforce solution expertise, and 18+ years of full life cycle development, business analysis, process design, project management, and pre-sales, with 13+ years Enterprise ERP (Oracle, PeopleSoft).

Attain Partners’ Salesforce Practice Rapidly Expanding

April 29, 2022/in About Attain Partners, Higher Education, Nonprofit, Salesforce, Thought Leadership Alanna Steffens/by Olivia Pycha

Salesforce Innovation at Attain Partners Experiences 75% Growth

Attain Partners’ Salesforce Innovation practice has no shortage of momentum as we continue to grow and expand. In 2021, we experienced 75% growth, added 16 new clients to our roster, and welcomed 20 new employees!

With a laser focus on the education and nonprofit communities, our teams are well positioned to continue driving innovation and success for our clients. Whether it be fundraising, mission management, or outcomes measurement in our nonprofit work, or recruiting and admissions, student success, and advancement for our education portfolio, our group of ‘techno-functional’ experts continues to expand.

Our digital engagement team grew by 66% and serves our entire portfolio of clients with marketing strategies and solutions to further drive ROI. Leveraging strategic partnerships with various product companies, our experts walk with you to guide your journey and move your organization’s goals forward.

In 2021 and into this year, we have focused on enablement of strategic product partnerships, including Vera Solutions on AmpImpact, UCI on Ascend, as well as Blackthorn Events, Formstack, and FormAssembly, just to name a few. This allows our team to bring the right tools to the table to best serve our clients and solve their business problems.

With 160+ Salesforce certifications, our credentialed individuals grew by 25%. Attain Partners holds navigator status in both Nonprofit and Education cloud, having already achieved the Expert designation in Education cloud. To achieve this prestigious designation, Attain Partners had to have at least five Certified Education Cloud experts and execute on more than 10 projects with a customer satisfaction submitted score of 4.4 or higher. Additionally, this is across all four current education cloud specializations of Advancement, Engagement, Recruiting, and Student Success. We are incredibly proud of our team for earning this prestigious designation.

And, we’ve recently kicked off the Attain Partners Academy where we’re doubling down on growing our team and supporting their learning and development through focused credential activities.

We’re harnessing the energy that comes with spring. The season’s blossoming resonates with the growth that we’re seeing in our practice. Let us know how we can better serve you as we continue to advance our expertise and create innovative solutions. Send us a question here and one of our experts will respond directly.

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, we are here to help you achieve your goals. To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services and read case studies about our work. Contact Attain Partners today to learn how we can help you achieve your goals by harnessing the power of Salesforce. Explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce team.

About the Author

Alanna Steffens is a Senior Principal with Attain Partners. She serves as Practice Lead for Salesforce Innovations, providing customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to Higher Education and Nonprofit clients. With over 15 years of Information Technology experience ranging from software engineering to enterprise CRM deployments, Alanna’s ability to bridge technical solutions with key business functions has contributed to hundreds of successful client engagements.

HuSSH Your Critics with Salesforce’s Student Success Hub

April 25, 2022/in Digital Transformation, Higher Education, Salesforce, Student Experience Maury Davis/by Olivia Pycha

Transform your institution’s student experience by streamlining their engagement process

Education’s toughest critics

Let’s face it, students can sometimes be harsh critics when it comes to the technology in their academic environment. You may have heard some of the following complaints around your campus:

Why doesn’t this work?
Can’t you put everything in one place?
Why is it so hard to find what I need?
This is lame! The 90’s called and want their system back!
Why can’t I just book an appointment from my phone with my advisor?

Keeping technology updated is a problem that many schools have yet to address. And even those who have done it well face challenges to meet the growing demands of their students who are used to the modern, mobile technologies available to them.

Providing student support after matriculation

Until recently, getting students in-the-door has been the priority with post-matriculation support and retention taking a back seat. But how do you ensure student success in a variety of measures? What keeps them on track for graduation with the degree of their choice?

Administrators are looking for answers to these questions, but many have come up empty… until now. Salesforce has provided no-code, cloud-based constituent engagement solutions across multiple industries for over 20 years. Recently, it has tackled the educational space with vigor offering solutions like the Education Data Architecture and Admissions Connect. These are certainly exciting developments in the Salesforce ecosystem, but the solution that primarily addresses the “after matriculation” question for students is the Student Success Hub (SSH).

Salesforce’s Student Success Hub enables student-centric functionality for:

Students to locate their Success Team members (a group of advisors assigned to them)
Students to schedule an appointment with an Advisor or other Success Team member
Advisors receive alerts of issues or potential problems facing students (early warning)
Providing students with a clear set of actions or tasks to maintain academic success through Success Plans
A pathway tool that allows students to design a plan for their academic program (i.e., degree planning)
A mobile responsive ‘community’ that allows the student to find answers quickly (knowledge articles), make appointments with an advisor, chat with an agent or ‘bot,’ and submit a case or ticket for an issue that needs more attention

Attain Partners can help you hit the ground running with our Advising Essentials Package for SSH

To solve this problem in K-12 and Higher Ed, Attain Partners has developed an Advising Essentials package for Student Success Hub with pre-configured templates, recommended plug-ins, and prescriptive options. This package, when implemented, will move your school into the future of a connected campus. Using Salesforce as the backbone of the technology stack, your teams can move quickly toward solving students’ problems and addressing their needs quickly, allowing your staff to work more effectively and efficiently. Salesforce’s data model can provide your school with a 360-degree view of the student – in other words, all interactions with a student are captured so that advisors and staff know the student’s story and don’t have to start from scratch with every interaction.

When you combine SSH with additional functionality that can be delivered on the same platform from Recruiting and Admissions to One Stop to Communications, you have a more consistent experience for students and more data for improved services and targeted communications.

One source of information for students

One integral part of the Student Success Hub is the student portal, where students can access a single place for answers, connections to advisors, and important tasks for completion. A Success Team can be built for each student, where all the support staff associated with the student’s success can be easily found and appointments can be made directly with a team or an individual advisor. Success Plans can also be delivered individually to a student to highlight a task or group of tasks that are important to complete in their academic journey.

In an increasingly digital world, the expectations have been raised for our students that they will have a seamless, consistent, and mobile-friendly experience throughout their education experience. Many schools are behind in meeting these expectations, but are eager to take on this challenge yet don’t know where to start. Another ‘point’ solution to solve for recruiting or admissions or learning management sometimes leads to further frustration for students when those solutions are not connected. A start with Attain Partner’s Advising Essential package built on the Salesforce ‘platform’ is one way to begin this journey to a connected campus.

See SSH in Action

The University of Baltimore (UBalt) enlisted Attain Partners to implement Student Success Hub (formerly Salesforce’s Advisor Link) and reimagine student services for the institution. This digital transformation dramatically increased engagement between UBalt academic advisers and students by 1) facilitating easy communications between students and advisers; and 2) allowing advisers to spend less time on manual processes and more time interacting with students. Read the full case study here.

Before [SSH], tracking communications with advisees was a chore, and notes and activities were buried deep in PeopleSoft. With [SSH], our advisers can easily log emails to a student’s case, and other advisers can access them without clumsy copy/paste and multi-step attachment uploads…Advisers are taking advantage of other efficiencies such as streamlining appointment scheduling, tracking tasks and alerts, and access to real-time reports.

Stacey Marriott

Project Manager, University of Baltimore

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

About the Author

Maury Davis is a Senior Salesforce Specialist at Attain Partners. Maury has worked in higher education and nonprofit organizations for over 15 years, focusing his last 10 years on demonstrating the value of the Salesforce Platform to his employers and clients.

Research Administration’s Antidote to The Great Resignation: Embedded Talent

April 11, 2022/in Best Practices, Embedded Talent, Higher Education, Research, Team for Speed, Thought Leadership/by Olivia Pycha

As a result of the “Great Resignation,” many institutions require support that they are not able to sustain in-house. Good news! With the vast improvements to remote work, embedded talent (also called “interim staffing”) is a viable and efficient option for organizations to receive the expert support they need without the delays of searching, hiring, onboarding, and training the right staff members.

We sat down with Mark Davis, Managing Partner and Practice Lead, to discuss the increased demand for embedded talent and how it can benefit institutions. With nearly 40 years of experience working as a strategic business advisor to approximately 100 major universities, academic medical centers, and research institutes, Mark and his team of all-star industry experts are able to step in to provide immediate support to our clients.

Attain Partners (AP): How does Attain Partners define embedded talent?

Mark Davis (MD): Embedded talent is the ability to bring experienced subject matter experts (SMEs) on a short-term, mid-term, and long-term basis to help you manage your organization. At Attain Partners, we offer these valuable services to our clients, providing embedded talent contracts to higher education institutions and research hospitals to support their research enterprise.

AP: Why do institutions need embedded talent?

MD: A primary reason is the “Great Resignation.” People are leaving their jobs for various reasons, and it has created gaps in operations. Many organizations are seeing this happen so rapidly that they are left asking, “Wow, what do we do now?” They are trying to hire, but recruiting can be difficult and time-consuming, so they need a few people on an interim basis to keep things running smoothly.

AP: What types of team members can Attain Partners provide?

MD: Institutions want to keep things moving, but they want them to continue moving well. You can’t just hire someone from a temp agency and expect them to know the nuanced information that an expert in their field would. That’s where Attain Partners comes in—we have staff members who are functional and technical experts who understand research administration and Federal compliance. We employ team members who are specifically trained to help institutions with technical compliance issues and other mission-critical work.

We see a lot of demand for pre-award administration, working with scientists to develop proposals to submit to the Federal Government. Additionally, post-award administration support is a high priority right now to accurately handle all the accounting once awards are received.

This area is specialized and complex, as there is a lot of regulatory compliance associated with this business. You could hire a bookkeeper off the street, but when they arrive, they have to be trained. We bring experienced, trained individuals to help do this work. They are ready to hit the ground running. These are the kind of people we’re hiring for our company, too.

AP: How do clients determine who will work with them?

MD: We’re very transparent when working with an organization. We want to ensure they get the right people to support them, both from a technical and cultural standpoint.

For example, if you need three people, we’ll present three to five individuals who have worked at universities and done the desired type of work before. We provide their bios so you can see that they are experienced, and you can talk to them to get a sense of their expertise and work style. Then you can select which three candidates you’d like to support you.

We won’t send strangers to your door; we let you choose from our team of experts.

AP: Are embedded talent staff team members on-site or remote?

MD: All of our team is remote. This has made a huge difference in terms of recruiting. Clients have access to the best people in the country with remote work. Experts who previously were not able to travel to a client site are now able to virtually come into your organization and do the work they love.

AP: Can you share an example of some of Attain Partners’ embedded talent work?

MD: We’re currently working with a prestigious research hospital. They receive about $250 million from the federal government to do research. Unfortunately, mismanagement and bad morale led to regulatory compliance situations with the government. They needed an immediate remedy, or they would face serious consequences.

To help them course-correct, we first brought in interim leadership to provide much-needed direction. Then we brought in a few interim staff members to fill the gaps in terms of day-to-day operations. We are working with their leading scientists to help them get things under control in their labs,s and the organization is already seeing improvements.

The client recognizes that we’re helping to stabilize the organization, and they are seeing clear returns on their investment. The next steps will be to advise them and help them look at the way they do business and determine how to improve and modernize moving forward. Then, the plan is to help the client transition back to managing the work internally again.

AP: What is the benefit of working with Attain Partners for embedded talent needs?

MD: We are a dynamic consultancy with many areas of deep expertise. My team is currently with this client doing this research compliance work, but once we revolutionize that for them, then we have a whole team of strategists to help transform their institution further should they want to continue to innovate. At some point you have to look at your strategy—where are we going and how do we grow? We have a team that can do that as well as provide change management support as you implement. By working with a trusted partner with a broad range of expertise, we can provide tailored support efficiently and quickly as we already know your organization and how it operates.

AP: What kind of projects do you do for embedded talent?

MD: It truly runs the gamut. We’re currently performing work for a higher education client that has struggled to find talented resources as a result of the pandemic. We have a few people there who work with them as more staff augmentation, and it’s working really well. Recently, they’ve asked for a few additional resources. Another medical institution has worked with us on and off for different embedded talent needs for 15 years. We come in, provide support for a year or so, and then stop until they need us again. But when we resume, we are familiar and able to ramp up extremely quickly.

AP: Why should someone come to Attain Partners for embedded talent support?

MD: We bring the expertise and the best people. At Attain Partners, we bring talented, experienced people with higher education and research experience, who have worked at universities doing exactly this type of work. Our team members know how to help solve the problems you face, and they have the skills to accomplish that work.

About Attain Partners – Embedded Talent

Drawing on our deep and talented pool of subject matter experts, Attain Partners helps place embedded talent into your institution to ensure operations continue to run smoothly and that you receive optimal funding. We can help you fill staffing gaps with functional and technical experts who understand research administration, Federal compliance, and Financial Aid.

Do you have an embedded talent need? Contact us today, and one of our experts will respond to you directly.

Learn about our Embedded Talent services here.

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How Managed Services for CRM (previously AttainPlus) can help you harness the full power of Salesforce

April 4, 2022/in Higher Education, Managed Services, Nonprofit, Salesforce, Salesforce Community, Thought Leadership Damaris Eustice, Susan Tobes/by Olivia Pycha

Benefits of Hiring a Salesforce Managed Services Provider

What are managed services?

In its simplest form, managed services allow you to handle the routine operations of your systems or specialized applications by leveraging a team of industry experts.

What is Managed Services for CRM?

Managed Services for CRM (previously AttainPlus) is our branded managed services offering that allows organizations to continually improve their use of Salesforce products, keep data accurate, and develop new business automations and reporting. Managed Services for CRM supports your organization in fully realizing its vision of utilizing the Salesforce platform. A Salesforce implementation is just the beginning, and Managed Services for CRM keeps you growing!

Many organizations spend a lot of resources on implementing and customizing Salesforce but don’t do enough to keep it optimized and upgraded. This creates several challenges, like a growing backlog of requests and projects, performance and compliance issues, trouble transitioning to new technologies, reduced staff satisfaction or adoption, and unrealized ROI.

Managed Services for CRM is a proactive approach to help organizations run and manage their Salesforce products smoothly. Many organizations lack the skill, depth, or resources to regularly review, optimize, and extend their CRM or Marketing Products—Managed Services for CRM addresses this problem.

Managed Services for CRM clients

Client Testimonials: Managed Services for CRM

Attain Partners’ managed services is enabling University of Virginia, Darden School Foundation Executive Education and Lifelong Learning to increase our sales velocity with a unified seller experience, preparing for growth while helping us remain flexible for future change with one, integrated platform.

Allison Forrest

University of Virginia, Darden School Foundation

“In the past year, I have really enjoyed working with Attain Partners’ new Managed Services team. We don’t have an in-house Salesforce Administrator, so it’s comforting to know that when something goes wrong, or there are new updates that might interfere with our environment, I can call my Managed Services team and trust that they are on top of things! They’ve also become very familiar with our Salesforce environment and have made numerous recommendations for improvements, which has made our system more efficient. Plus, they are fun to work with!”

Andrea Sáenz

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

“

How will Managed Services for CRM help your organization?

Managed Services for CRM is an ongoing support and maintenance solution to keep your Salesforce-based system running smoothly and efficiently while also addressing your organization’s evolving needs. It’s like having a cost-effective, dedicated Salesforce and/or Marketing team just a call away, but without the woes of hiring, managing, and retaining them.

What are the key benefits of Managed Services for CRM?

Provides a readily-available Salesforce expert (and team) with complete skillsets at low costs
Optimizes your processes by introducing automation, custom dashboards, real-time reports, and data migration and data cleansing efforts
Deploys Salesforce critical updates and new functionalities to keep your instance up-to-date
Runs security checks to identify vulnerabilities early and prevent system downtime
Addresses the challenges of hiring and retaining tech resources, as it allows you to hire resources per your needs
Keeps your team members focused on their core responsibilities
Helps maintain compliance as per industry standards
Provides scalability and quick responsiveness to sudden changes in the business environment
Drives higher ROI from your Salesforce investments

Why choose Managed Services for CRM to manage your Salesforce instance?

Managed Services for CRM is a flexible, cost-effective, and efficient way to manage your complete Salesforce environment—from CRM to Experience Cloud to Pardot, Marketing Cloud or AppExchange tools. If your organization lacks Salesforce expertise, has challenges managing it, or needs expert assistance in optimizing its use of Salesforce, then Managed Services for CRM is the right solution for you.

Learn more about Managed Services for CRM and meet our team of experts in our on-demand webinar.

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, we are here to help you achieve your goals. Contact Attain Partners today to learn how we can help you achieve your goals by harnessing the power of Salesforce.

To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services, read case studies about our work, and explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce team.

About the Authors

Damaris Eustice is the Director of Managed Services at Attain Partners. She is a motivated, passionate, and metrics-driven leader with a strong history of maximizing team potential through coaching and mission alignment. Damaris brings 10+ years in technology leadership roles to Attain Partners, including six years of support and success management including Salesforce platform expertise with Nonprofit leadership background.

Susan Tobes is the Senior Director of Strategic Growth at Attain Partners and is responsible for supporting the expansion of the firm. Bringing 35+ years of technology experience to this important role, she combines her technology services and sales expertise to deliver impactful and lasting results to our customers. Her steadfast desire for customer success drives everything she does.

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Four Things to Consider When Looking into a New Association Management System (AMS)

April 1, 2022/in Associations, Salesforce, Salesforce Community, Thought Leadership Chad Simmons/by [email protected]

Making a change in your Association Management System (AMS) is a big decision that requires a lot of thought and preparation. To ensure success, think through these four key questions before you decide on your next system.

1. Should we make the change?

First, analyze your current systems/processes and decide if moving forward would be beneficial or if your organization would be better off maintaining and improving your current system. Ask yourself:

What risks do you face if you do nothing?
Can you grow and adapt with your current solution?

After evaluating the answers to these questions, you are ready to make an informed decision on the future of your association.

2. How do we handle the staff impact?

This consideration is often overlooked in the decision-making process. Changing systems can have a major impact on staff morale and effectiveness if not handled properly. Getting your team involved throughout the process is key to alleviating concerns and building trust in your decision.

Our clients have found that employing a change management strategy is essential in completing a successful project. Your staff will feel as though their concerns have been addressed. Leading to buy-in and excitement for the new solution.

3. Is our current way the only way?

As you move closer to a new solution, you’ll want to take a look at your current processes and see where things can be improved. Maybe it’s a reduction in steps or an automation of a manual process. These changes may seem small but can pay big dividends in the long term. You can increase productivity by allowing staff to focus on key tasks such as member engagement.

You started exploring new systems for a reason and these reasons should be brought to your implementation partner for open discussion and understanding. You can then move into having a partner that understands your business problems and can provide tailored solutions. Having a partner that understands your goals and your members is fundamental to completing a business process review. Sharing best practices and using knowledge from our vast experience has been pivotal in our clients’ success.

4. Platform or point solution?

Now that you have gone through and answered the above questions, you are ready to tackle the next important decision: platform or point? First to define those:

Point solution is defined as a tool or software that addresses a single use case or challenge.
Platform solution is defined as a comprehensive software solution that provides a foundation that can address a number of use cases across multiple departments within an organization.

Both solutions offer pros and cons based on the specific use case of your association. A point solution can offer a quicker implementation timeline, one system to manage, and functionality that is specific to a defined channel. A platform solution offers an integrated solution throughout the organization, no data silos with its ability to combine all data into a single point of truth, and better ability for adapting to a changing environment and scale as you grow. Having a trusted implementation partner will help you navigate this complex decision.

Learn More

As you can see, making a change in your AMS requires a lot of thought and work to make it a success for your association, your members, and your staff.

At Attain Partners, we acknowledge the importance of choosing the right implementation partner when embarking on this adventure. We have the knowledge, experience, and technical expertise to provide you with advice and guide you throughout the process. We have helped hundreds of nonprofit organizations successfully implement solutions tailored to their unique needs since our inception.

Learn more about our services here.

About the author:

Chad Simmons is an Associate Business Development Director at Attain Partners. Since 2013, Chad has helped hundreds of organizations implement innovative technology solutions designed to meet their complex needs. Chad’s focus is demonstrating the value of the Salesforce Platform and Attain Partners’ services to higher education and healthcare clients.

Three essential reasons to work with a Salesforce Implementation Partner

February 28, 2022/in Higher Education, Nonprofit, Salesforce, Salesforce Community, Thought Leadership Susan Tobes/by Olivia Pycha

There’s big news in the Salesforce ecosystem!

You may have noticed a flurry of technology acquisitions to kick off 2022 and the most recent is big. In case you missed it, here’s a quick summary:

Traction on Demand has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by partner and global leader in CRM, Salesforce. It will become part of Salesforce Professional Services, which along with Salesforce partners, helps customers accelerate their time to value with the Salesforce Customer 360 platform and build their path to long-term success in this all-digital world.

You may be asking, what does this mean for my organization? With decades of experience working as a leader in the Salesforce ecosystem, here’s my perspective on the acquisition of another services firm by Salesforce and what it means for you.

Why is Salesforce acquiring Traction on Demand?

Technology acquisition is a common growth practice that can allow companies to inorganically leverage the innovation and culture of another organization to fill gaps in capacity and open new markets. With the surge of movement in the Salesforce ecosystem, we are seeing the need to build a strong pipeline of talent to deliver solutions to support product growth. This move is a way to solve that problem. Other large vendors like Oracle and Workday, have services organizations too. This is not at all uncommon.

What sets a Salesforce System Implementer apart from Salesforce’s Services?

There are big benefits to partnering with skilled Salesforce System Implementers like Attain Partners and here are a few of the obvious:

Attain Partners is not a publicly traded company and our project pricing reflects that.
With our experience in strategy and technology consulting, we know that while Salesforce is a powerful system of tools, sometimes the best answer may not be a Salesforce product. A trusted implementation partner working independently of Salesforce will have your organization’s best interests in mind regardless of who makes the tool or solution. In fact, sometimes, the solution is a change management, strategic planning, or operational efficiency fix rather than a tool or digital solution you can purchase.
We have spent decades building Functional Expertise related to nonprofit and higher education industry verticals. We specialize in solutions that address the intersection of people, process, and technology, to achieve our clients’ specific and unique goals. We believe there is ample room for independent consulting firms to differentiate by building teams steeped in particular industry verticals, like nonprofit and higher education.

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

Explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce team.

About the Author

Susan Tobes is the Senior Director, Strategic Growth for Attain Partners and is responsible for supporting the expansion of the firm. Bringing more than thirty-five years of technology experience to this important role, she combines her technology services and sales expertise to deliver impactful and lasting results to our customers. Her steadfast desire for customer success drives everything she does.

Updated on March 2, 2022

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Looking for a way to increase your F&A rate? Consider a library cost analysis study!

February 18, 2022/in Best Practices, Higher Education, Library Services, Nonprofit, Research, Strategy Blake Norby/by Olivia Pycha

What is a Library Cost Analysis Study?

Library costs are often overlooked—or not taken full advantage of—due to insufficient data when educational institutions are developing F&A cost proposals for indirect cost recovery. The 2 CFR 200 Uniform Guidance Cost Principles for Institutions of Higher Education allows institutions to allocate library expenses based on usage. A Library Cost Analysis Study can help institutions assign library expenses to a purpose of use so that expenses used for funded research, instruction, patient care, or other institutional uses can be identified and counted to help increase institutions’ indirect cost rate. At Attain Partners, our proven method of study includes assigning cost centers, collecting user data through library user surveys, and compiling cost allocations based on actual use.

Unsure if a Library Cost Study will benefit your university library? We have you covered.

Is a Library Cost Study Right for Your University Library?

Is a Library Cost Study Right for Your University Library?

Attain Partners’ Approach to Library Cost Studies

Attain Partners’ approach is a proven method, delivering consistent results to universities seeking to improve their F&A rates and maintains the higher rates by continuing to perform the studies for subsequent F&A proposals. We have performed these studies over 130 times across more than 40 university libraries as our clients have seen the benefit of using our methodology in each cycle.

Our Library Cost Analysis Study has four major components:

Library User Surveys

Our Library User Surveys are used to measure the purpose and actual use of all library materials, resources, and services. Each survey is designed to fit the population of the university and reflect the resources available at each library. The surveys are distributed over a 12-month period using the random sampling method in which there is a 2-hour survey period each month in each library participating. We also use a web intercept survey to capture library users coming through the website traffic during a 2-hour period each month. The surveys focus on what library resources are used and whether they were used for the purpose of funded research, instruction, patient care, or other sponsored activities. The library user surveys are critical in collecting actual use data to use in our cost analysis study.

Cost Analysis

We then perform a comprehensive cost analysis. This includes collecting salary, facilities, and material expenses. We group the library expenses into direct cost categories such as personnel, books, journals, electronic services, and other expenses. From there, we assign direct cost categories to specific libraries and library cost centers such as reference services, rare books and manuscripts, circulation, electronic services, and other expenses. We compile these indirect library expenses and assign them on the basis of square feet and Modified Total Direct Cost (MTDC) to specific libraries and library cost centers. Finally, we combine the direct and indirect library expenses for each cost center and assign applicable credits.

Assign and Determine Library Expenses

By combining the Library User Survey data with the Cost Analysis data, we are able to assign specific library expenses to the appropriate cost centers. This allows us to determine the total library expenses by the purpose of use, a much more detailed and accurate report of the percentage of resources used for funded research than the standard FTE allocation method.

The Impact of a Library Cost Analysis Study

Over the course of conducting these studies for the past 40 years, our methodology has, on average, raised the library’s portion of the F&A rate proposal by 1.2 points. These additional points potentially equal a $1.2 million/year recovery gain on a $100 million base. Through our proven methodology, university libraries gain insights into how their resources, materials, and services are being used, which means we not only help improve F&A proposal rates but also provide clear data that can be used when managing future financial planning. For example, we have found that while interlibrary loan use and online journals are the two most heavily used traditional library services proportionally by sponsored researchers, use varies significantly between different types of libraries and campuses. Providing each university library with specific data of resources used for different purposes can assist our clients’ future financial planning decisions.

Our ability to provide reliable data and feedback to our clients is one of the main reasons many of our clients have returned to us for subsequent studies. We pride ourselves on building relationships with our clients, and by continuing to conduct the Studies with the same clients—some for over two decades—we have maintained their higher rates, consistently earning the university more points for its F&A rate negotiations.

Attain Partners – Library Experts

Attain Partners is the only consulting firm that offers this federally approved methodology for Library Cost Studies, and we look forward to working with you to increase your F&A rate! Contact our team today to find out more about how our consultants will work with your library to conduct a library cost study.

Learn more about our Library Planning and Strategy services here.

About the Author

Ms. Blake Norby is a Senior Library Consultant for the Research Enterprise Services practice of Attain Partners. During her time with Attain Partners, Ms. Norby has been involved in multiple library consulting projects with higher education institutions. She has participated in various stages of Facilities & Administrative Expense (F&A) strategic planning, proposal preparation and submission, and space functional usage studies with a focus on library spaces. Ms. Norby brings over 13 years’ experience working in libraries with extensive knowledge of using patron data to create inclusive, accessible library spaces and programs. She is currently a member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), the American Library Association (ALA) including the Public Library Association, and several additional roundtables and special interest groups.

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Getting Started with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

February 16, 2022/in Best Practices, Digital Engagement, Higher Education, Nonprofit, Salesforce Cecilia Riester/by Olivia Pycha

Follow these steps to begin using Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Have you recently purchased Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) for your marketing needs? Congratulations! You now have a platform that is designed to help you achieve your marketing and advertising goals with a myriad of capabilities. If you’re new to the SFMC world, it can certainly be overwhelming with all the applications and its implementation. While it can be complex, it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Here are some tips and resources as you get started that will ease your transition to SFMC.

Get To Know The Vernacular

If you’re coming to SFMC from a different email marketing program and you’re new to the Salesforce universe, it’s worth getting familiar with Salesforce terminology and phrases. As you become more involved in the platform, you might start to see words or phrases that sound familiar to previous email marketing software, but in the SFMC context, could be something completely different. Salesforce provides a glossary of common words and phrases—this is worth reviewing or perhaps even bookmarking in your web browser for easy reference.

Understand your SFMC Instance

Make sure you’re aware of the SFMC edition you have, as this determines features and channels you have access to and can utilize. SFMC editions available are Basic, Pro, Corporate, and lastly the most robust, Enterprise. Your edition then dictates the tenant type you have: either a top-level Enterprise account (and its associated business units), a single Core account, a top-level Agency account, or a Client account.

Each SFMC account, and any associated child accounts, is assigned a Marketing Cloud Member ID (MID) number: it is an identifying number unique to that entity. So depending on your SFMC edition, tenants can have a single or multiple MIDs. Knowing the MID (and where to find it) is crucial should you need to reference your account for a number of things. Maybe you open a SFMC partner case to investigate a function not working as intended; the SFMC team will need to know your MID to locate your instance to begin their investigation. Or as will be referenced in the next section, maybe you’re on the Status site, attempting to research any potential service impacts or disruptions. Again, you’ll need to know the MID in order to get that information.

How to locate your Marketing Cloud Member ID (MID)

There are several ways to locate your MID: when you first log into SFMC and you’re on the main welcome menu, navigate to the top right corner where your login name appears, hover over your account name to the left of your login name, and you’ll see the MID. In addition, you can find it in the Setup Home menu: hover over your login name in the top right and click on Setup. The Setup Home menu has a banner of resources on the top, but if you scroll down a bit you’ll see your account name, ending with the MID.

Make Friends with SFMC Resources

SFMC is software and by nature, ever-evolving. Sometimes it is difficult to keep up with what has changed or you simply want to stay aware of upcoming product releases. SFMC-provided documentation at help.marketingcloud.com is a great resource as you navigate through SFMC and may need supplemental information. Perhaps you’re looking for the steps involved in a configuration or perhaps you just want a little more information on what a particular function in SFMC does. Starting with the documentation is great because it is a living document—it’s kept up-to-date and is published by the source. It might not always be the most entertaining read, but key components and information can be found there.

If you’re looking for a more interactive way to learn about not only the various functionalities and possibilities in SFMC but other Salesforce products as well, Trailhead is a great resource. Trailhead has gamified learning new Salesforce skills and capabilities by leading you through guided learning paths. The paths are provided in digestible, interactive lessons where you can earn badges as you navigate and progress through different skills. Trailhead also helps you prepare for any Salesforce certifications you are looking to earn. The Trailhead website includes a community where you can connect and collaborate with other professionals, post questions or answer any with your own experience as it grows.

As you’re working in SFMC, there may be times when you notice the platform is a little slow and might be taking a while to load a new page you’re navigating to. If you want to find more information on the platform performance as a whole, and if it could be impacting other users, navigate to the Status site. This is where knowing your account’s MID number comes in handy: you can copy it from SFMC, enter it in to the search bar and review if there are currently any outages or interruptions to main functions with SFMC at that time. The Status site provides transparency around service availability, health and performance. Its another resource to bookmark as you work within SFMC.

Organize, Organize, Organize

Once you’re ready to start navigating through SFMC and using the different areas and functions, its key to have a plan when it comes to organizing your content whether it be an email, a SQL query, or an automation. SFMC doesn’t dictate how that content and its assets are organized. Instead, you are able to establish a system that makes sense for you and your team using SFMC. To that end, planning out a structure that make sense for your marketing needs will help your end users have a more efficient and effective experience in SFMC. Will you need to organize by team? By department? By email deployment-type? Maybe chronologically? Think through the best way you and your team will want to navigate through SFMC with ease.

Engage With The Community

In addition to the Salesforce-provided documentation, learning paths, and community, there’s also many SFMC users, thought-leaders, and experts that share their knowledge and expertise. Join LinkedIn groups, Slack channels, Reddit threads, and more to connect with these like-minded professionals, where there is no end of sharing knowledge, best practices, and discoveries.

Connect With Our Experts

Still need some help implementing and navigating SFMC but don’t know where to start? Contact our team today to learn how we can set you up for success using SFMC. We’re here to help whether it is for new implementation or revising an existing configuration. Click here to learn more about how we can support your organization to reach its goals.

Explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce Digital Engagement team.

About the Author

Cecilia Riester is a Senior Salesforce Marketing Cloud Implementation Consultant on the Digital Engagement team at Attain Partners. Cecilia has worked with nonprofit, retail, and higher education clients. She is passionate about helping organizations implement and navigate Salesforce Marketing Cloud to achieve their digital marketing business needs.

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Simple (and often overlooked) Marketing Cloud Best Practices

November 15, 2021/in Best Practices, Digital Engagement, Higher Education, Nonprofit, Salesforce Van Sneed/by [email protected]

How to get the most out of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an incredibly complex and capable set of tools that allows for limitless possibilities in the world of marketing. And although there’s a ton of things to learn and discover, you’ll find that some of the most important things to know have less to do with the platform itself and more to do with your organization skills. In this article we’ll look at a few basic principles that will help you get more out of Marketing Cloud.

The Importance of Documentation

Several different users can have access to the same Marketing Cloud instance. This means that the various things you create can (and often will) be visible to others. Whether you’re designing emails, building journeys, or managing data, it’s important to document your activity within the account. And although you can do this in a myriad of ways, here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Data Dictionary

A data dictionary is a repository of information that defines how data is structured within your account, most likely in a Data Extension. A good data dictionary will provide the name of the various fields, descriptions of the field’s function, the data type, data length, and whether the field is a primary key, required, or nullable. This ensures that there is no ambiguity around your data as well as providing standardization in the data’s formatting. It’s also useful to note how various Data Extensions can or will relate to one another.

2. Change Log

A change log is an ongoing document that houses notable changes to a particular process or configuration. It should record the item changed, a detailed description of the change, the date of the change, and the person responsible for the change. Change logs work well to document things like the pausing/unpausing/stopping of triggered sends, or updates to automations. This is a fantastic tool to ensure that you always have a record of recent activity of key processes.

3. Blueprints

A blueprint documents the primary functions and goals as well as the technical details and dependencies of processes within your Marketing Cloud account. Journeys, automations, and overall account configurations are great things to document. Blueprints should include an overview of the process as well as a list of any assets or other processes that relate to what you are documenting.

All the above documents should be easily accessible and consistently updated. Nothing is more frustrating than finding the documentation you’re looking for is out of date by several months, or even years! Using documents like this will take time to create and maintain. However, in my experience the benefits are always worth the extra effort.

The Importance of Standardization

Along with documentation, you’ll also want to think about using standardized naming conventions across your account. Done right, this will allow even new users of your Marketing Cloud instance to easily navigate your account. Here are a few places where having consistent naming conventions matters most:

1. Folder Names & Structure

Marketing Cloud doesn’t stipulate how you should name or organize folders so it’s up to you and your team to come up with a system that works. Keep in mind that your folders will be visible in multiple places. For example, the names and folder structures you create in Content Builder are visible in Journey Builder, Automation Studio, MobileConnect, Mobile Push, and Cloud Pages. The best time to come up with (or reorganize) a system for your folders is right now; you’ll undoubtedly have more folders and more content to organize as time passes.

2. Data Extensions

Having a name that is succinct but descriptive is always a good practice. Data extensions can (and should) live within a specific folder structure, so you’ll want to make sure similar conventions are used account-wide. You’ll also want to be consistent with the names of the fields within your Data Extensions. For example, don’t have a field titled “Email” in one Data Extension and “EmailAddress” in another. Differences in how data extensions are formatted (be it naming conventions or data types) can occasionally lead to issues when importing data or relating data via SQL queries.

3. Emails

Like Data Extensions, the names of your email names should be as succinct and descriptive as possible. Will there be a send date as a prefix in the name? Perhaps campaign type as a suffix? These are things you’ll want to decide as early as possible. Also, some Marketing Cloud users elect to have email names appended to their URL links by configuring the Web Analytics Connector. For this reason, you’ll want your email names to be “customer facing”, meaning that you’d be okay with an email recipient seeing the name of the email.

Closing Thoughts

None of these ideas are difficult or technical. However, their consistent use will ensure that Marketing Cloud users of all skill levels can have a better grasp on their account. An organized account will allow you to not waste your time finding items or troubleshooting. And the time you save can be much better used interacting with the folks with whom you’re trying to communicate.

Connect with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Experts

Here at Attain Partners, we have a team dedicated to the digital engagement that Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot can provide for your email marketing programs. We’re here to help whether it is for new implementation or revising an existing configuration. Click here to learn more about how we can support your organization to reach its goals.

Explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce Digital Engagement team.

About the Author

Van Sneed is a Senior Salesforce Marketing Cloud Implementation Consultant on the Digital Engagement team at Attain Partners. Van has worked with retail, nonprofit, and higher education clients. He loves helping organizations discover and implement innovative Salesforce Marketing Cloud solutions that meet goals and exceed expectations.