Keeping digital students in the know

Universities often host pivotal events and seminars for students. However, on many occasions, attendance to these types of events can be far lower than administrators anticipated.

What went wrong?

The answer is that the events were likely only advertised through paper flyers on bulletin boards – boards not all students see. This situation is not uncommon.

Paper-based systems used to announce these events often create unfavourable outcomes:

• Students miss out on events. It is vital that students have a positive opinion of their universities, and these events can help foster this image. If students aren't aware of these events, universities lose out on the chance to advance positive perception.
• Event participants are disappointed or upset at the low turnout. This may seriously hamper the university’s chance of enticing participation in future programs.
• Monetary waste. When the overall cost (catering, booking hosts, venue rental, etc.) is considered, it's clear that setting up events is expensive. Low turnout means a lot of money that doesn’t serve desired outcomes or purpose.
• Inefficient use of employee time. Printing paper notifications and posting them on campus – an especially rough task in the harsh Canadian winter – for a low-turnout is an inefficient use of employee time.
• Loss of a great PR opportunity. Imagine the overall value that would come from a full field house or auditorium. Students, especially in today’s social media age, share great experiences.
• Safety or legal concerns. There may be important news about the university or a policy change, which all students need to know about. If students don't get this information, it can have adverse consequences to their progress.

Ricoh can help your programs perform

Ricoh loves education and knows how to make schools excel. Through our digital solutions, students can be automatically notified of pertinent events. We can:

• Deploy a sophisticated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, which acts as a repository of detailed student data and information, including their address and the different ways in which they can be reached. Through this system, students can be reliably notified via multiple channels - through email, a university portal, or their mobile devices.
• Create automated business processes, so that whenever an event is planned for a certain department, the staff and students are automatically notified (e.g., if a biology event is planned, then an email can be automatically sent out to all students enrolled in biology).
• Give staff the ability to create email templates for different departments and purposes (e.g., a campus-wide email would be formatted differently than an email to faculty). These templates can be linked to the ECM system and can dynamically populate content being sent out with available student data, creating a more personal experience for the student and reducing manual data entry at the same time.
• Distribute vital safety or legislative information to students in a timely manner.

Events should grow a university’s reputation, not tarnish it.