Higher Ed

Worcester Polytechnic Institute Leverages Web Forms for Event Registration and Beyond

Adam Epstein

Director of Undergraduate Enrollment Services

Case Study Snapshot

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) was first connected with FormAssembly through the school’s partnership with TargetX. At WPI, Undergraduate Enrollment Services encompasses three main areas, including Undergraduate Admissions, Financial Aid, and Pre-Collegiate Outreach Programs. Adam Epstein, Director of Undergraduate Enrollment Services, focuses on supporting the various offices through Salesforce, marketing, and higher ed business processes. FormAssembly helps drive these important efforts.

“We’re working to make the work of all those areas as efficient as possible,” Epstein said.

About

4-year private university located in Worcester, MA.
Primary focus is in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
Heavy emphasis on project-based and collaborative learning methods.

The numbers

3

offices supported by FormAssembly

5,000

internal form responses collected since August 2018

25-30

active web forms in use

The Need

Modern processes for better UX

FormAssembly helps WPI eliminate … headaches often faced by prospective and current students as they interact with higher ed business processes.

As with any institute of higher education, WPI works with a large population of students, parents, and families. The expectations of these individuals include having easy ways to submit information to the school. FormAssembly helps WPI eliminate the following headaches often faced by prospective and current students as they interact with higher ed business processes:

Manual administrative processes across various offices.
Long delays and turnaround time for simple tasks.
Frustration with improper or outdated technology.

The Solution

Smart web forms create better experiences for students and staff alike

This is really important because when we know something about somebody, we shouldn’t ask them again.

One of the key reasons to use FormAssembly is that it creates substantial benefits for both customers (students and parents) and for university staff members who need to work quickly and efficiently.

“When we’re able to focus on higher value work, that’s where the end user’s eyes really open up,” Epstein said.

Salesforce Connector

WPI leverages FormAssembly’s Salesforce Connector to update and send form data to the university’s CRM in real time. This powerful integration is a popular selling point for many collegiate users whose goal it is to remove data silos from higher ed business processes.

Prefill Connector

FormAssembly’s Prefill Connector helps WPI achieve the high levels of customer satisfaction that staff strive for daily. The Prefill Connector pulls known information from Salesforce into the form and enables staff to pass parameters through the URLs. This then matches back to the correct record in Salesforce upon submission.

“This is really important because when we know something about somebody, we shouldn’t ask them again,” Epstein said.

E-Signature Capability

FormAssembly’s E-Signature capability is useful for offices like Financial Aid, where verification is needed for personal documents. Allowing the student to sign electronically eliminates many extra steps involved in paper processing.

Use Cases

Event Registration

WPI uses branded web forms to power event registration

One of the primary uses for web forms at WPI is event registration. FormAssembly makes it possible for attendees to submit their registration information and RSVP. That data is then moved seamlessly to Salesforce for consistent and up-to-date records.

Internal Data Submission

Staff and student workers use FormAssembly forms for data entry

WPI also uses FormAssembly to remove the stress of manual data entry. Moreover, there is no need to navigate to different places within the CRM. This process produces quality-controlled results that are not time-consuming for staff.

“We have forms that are allowing our team to input student data into consistent and validated forms,” Epstein said.

Pre-Collegiate Outreach

WPI builds forms to collect information for highly-attended summer programs

The university holds special summer events for rising 11th and 12th grade students. These programs are application-based, making them perfectly suited to web form registration. The school can collect information pertaining to housing, dietary restrictions, identification cards, and other relevant data. All of this integrates directly to Salesforce, which makes it easy to locate the right information when questions come up.

“It’s giving [applicants] a better branded experience, and an easier mechanism to give us the information,” Epstein explained.

What’s Next?

In the future, Epstein hopes to make a bigger dent in the paper forms that the university still uses and to convert those to web forms. The overarching goal for the future is to create a seamless, consistent experience for all users. Although there might be an initial time investment to set up more advanced connectors and logic, Epstein hopes to push the boundaries of what FormAssembly can do in order to continually create new and better opportunities.