Companies in the industry have garnered some $10.5 billion in funding
– with two Chinese EdTech businesses recently receiving $1.75bn in funding alone. Company valuations too, are soaring. BYJU’s – an India-based e-learning start-up and itself the recipient of a recent $400M investment, became the first EdTech to be dubbed a ‘decacorn’ with a valuation in excess of $10 Billion. And, over the pond, MOOC (massive open online course) providers Udemy and Coursera are both valued in excess of $2 Billion, and climbing rapidly.
Although EdTech has seen healthy growth over the past few years, it is the events of the past few months that has put it firmly in the spotlight. The pandemic saw educational institutions closed in 107 countries, affecting more than 860 million students – with many classes migrating online. But it’s not just traditional education that’s turning to digital. With lifelong learning expected to become a societal norm, adults too are tapping into online education – both for business and leisure – and it’s growing fast.
With the sector poised for accelerated growth rates, EdTech must be prepared to scale like never before. Investment in internal systems to support growth in customers – both B2B and B2C – will be critical. Operations need to well managed – not only to support the student experience, but to ensure that rapid scale can be supported effectively as demand accelerates.
Critical to success
Deliver a great Student Experience
- From the decision to invest in a new course, right through to course completion, the experience needs to be supportive and tailored to the individual. Technology can help you to support your students’ experience. Companies can offer a range of self-service tools and digital interaction capabilities – including AI-enabled chatbots, online and social capabilities alongside more traditional channels such as email and phone. More meaningful relationships can be built using tailored communications throughout the student journey and the delivery of data-informed alerts – including reminders and key dates and personalised support can be based on individual progress, attainment and engagement levels.
Streamline business process to reduce operational cost
- Call centre agents and frontline staff can be supported by tools that help reduce the administrative burden. Integrated systems deliver a centralised 360 repository of all student history, case notes, engagement scores, course progress and attainment levels – helping to resolve issues faster, and tailor and support the student journey. Enrolment and onboarding can be streamlined as can payment, purchase history and collections. The triggers and alerts based on engagement levels of students to the relevant stakeholders will help with the retention of students and help prevent any revenue leakage.
Deploy advanced analytics accelerate sales growth
- Growth in data volumes requires powerful BI capabilities. AI-powered analysis can support revenue growth by helping to deliver relevant communications through predicting and recommending the right audience, channel, timing, content, and offers. For example, AI can automatically send emails to individual students at times when they are most likely to open them. AI can also help you get to know your students better by combining demographic and behavioural data analyses with their history — allowing you to make tailored recommendations.
Support an increasingly mobile workforce
- With homeworking increasing in popularity, cloud-based, social and mobile apps are rapidly becoming the norm in helping to support a great customer experience. Building out a remote and mobile infrastructure can help customer service teams to continue to offer a great service while reducing the need to be office-based.
Helping to deliver the Salesforce Service
