“Which platform do you use?” When talking about CRM (customer relationship management) systems, the discussion is often reduced to technical challenges and comparisons of service providers. Also, this work is often de-centralized and led by interests guided by internal organizational issues or technical solutions instead of a clear vision of what the institution wants. We believe that the successful implementation of CRM is a deeper question of institutional culture: how do we collect, share, and use data on our present and prospective partner for better decision-making – and more importantly: why do we do it?

In this workshop, we share challenges and best practices on one organization that has successfully travelled on this data driven road and another in the process of restructuring its CRM approach. We will also discuss the changing landscape of CRM implementation with new AI solutions. In this workshop, we share hands-on how this cultural revolution has taken and can take place, and we invite you to bring your insights and questions to the discussion.

Aalto University has gradually, over a seven-year timespan, implemented a ‘one CRM’ policy which integrates not only alumni and donors but also partner companies, externally funded research projects, start-ups emerging from the university’s innovation ecosystem and customers of campus services into a single CRM system.

This was the result of several years background work mostly focusing on building CRM culture, ensuring management support and mapping out CRM benefits in terms of maintaining and strengthening the university’s partnership management and fundraising. In Aalto University, new user groups are onboarded to CRM on a project basis with separately defined process and steps.

At Chalmers, the entire Chalmers Group – consisting of the University, the Foundation, and the Chalmers companies – is moving toward a single CRM system. Data from the two existing platforms will be integrated and new user groups will be added. At the same time, advancement is looking into more data-driven and AI-assisted prospect analysis and relations management.