How to choose the ‘Right’ Alumni Management Platform
Ask anyone what is most important in the corporate world — Building and nurturing relations tops the list. It’s no different for businesses or companies, their employee relations have now come to the forefront. Alumni relations have become a major human resources strategy for most companies nowadays to nurture their alumni relations. But the bigger question is — How do we keep Alumni in the loop and strengthen the bond? With technological advancement starting to play a major role, in order to penetrate wider segments of alumni, companies have found the ultimate way — An Accessible Alumni Platform.
What exactly is an Alumni Platform and why do companies need one?
An Alumni Management Platform will enable you to retract the data about your ex-employees, engage them through a dedicated and targeted medium and access detailed and customized analytics. They help you to centralize all your alumni management tools in one place by dramatically simplifying the management of your network. Plus, with all your vital data in one place, it allows you to make data-driven decisions to manage members better and refine engagement strategies.
Importance
Providing your alumni with a branded and dedicated online platform rather than interacting with them solely through non-branded and generic platform/s, will increase the emotional link by bringing a sense of belonging and therefore the level of meaningful engagement you can achieve. A branded platform will be perceived as bringing more value and fostering a sense of belonging as the platform is exclusive to your alumni.
Alumni platform/software helps you create deeper alumni connections and leverage the alumni capital by adding more value as it is exclusive to your ex-employees. It acts as a smart strategy that keeps all the data intact for managing talent as company leaders grapple with the tightest job market in more than 15 years by improving the quality of hires by rehiring top performers and innovators (boomerang rehires are cost-effective, have higher retention rates and reach productivity much more quickly than most external hires).
By improving the ability to target communications to the exact right audience, an alumni platform helps you reach high levels of community engagement. With the easy extraction of information that the ex-employees would be looking for, it inculcates trust and pride that helps in strengthening the bond, adding brand value to the employee and employer throughout the industry.
Key Features — A well-designed corporate alumni platform can benefit the organization in many ways. But what makes an Alumni portal stand out and what are the parameters to be considered before opting for one such platform?
- Data Validity and real-time updates — The ability to pinpoint the right audience by filtering and revising with real-time updates is a must-have for any Alumni management software. Access to identify relevant and the correct data along with extraction, transformation, and load data from the source database is needed. Adapting advanced solutions for keeping up-to-date alumni profiles on the platform is as important as maintaining the available data.
- Community building and management — Best alumni management software includes a community-building platform and member management software. An alumni networking platform should be able to offer you the tools to grow and manage your ex-employee community without asking for the usage of a bunch of other platforms. It should further have all the integration of tools that you would need for a more robust membership.
- Hassle-free exit and access — Services that provide an access to reach out or a direct download, for all the post-exit queries like FnF, Visa Letters, etc. are much appreciated by your ex-employees. An alumni platform with tools for hassle-free post-exit experience for streamlining operations like Exit interviews and providing resource services lower chances of waiting and delay, which will further leave a positive note to ex-employees giving you a competitive edge.
- Customization — Not every company runs on the same principles, the provision to customize your Alumni Platform according to your business needs and requirements is not to be neglected. The Alumni portal in line with the company values imparts the professionalism and uniqueness that you represent in your ex-employee community, improving the brand advocacy.
- Expertise — No matter how many features can be provided, Expertise is one thing that narrows down your selection. Adding credibility to any feature that has been offered on the portal, expertise drives to attain optimal use. Having known the life cycle, experts in the domain will help you start with and also stabilize your process of Alumni relations.
ROI — The benefits of maintaining an Alumni platform for all your ex-employee activities can not only lead to significant cost savings for your organization but increased revenue and ROI. A one-to-go platform with all the tools like direct access, the possibility to forward applications that speed up the implementations, and automated processes through integrations with the existing systems yield better results that you can not compromise on. Alumni platforms will help you discover new networking opportunities by reimagining your ex-employee experience.
Companies are now recognizing the significant investments that have to be made in exploring ways to leverage their Alumni and the Alumni Platform is one effective solution that has been offered. Due to advances in technology and social networking, the cost of maintaining and operating alumni platforms is far low while the ROI is proven to be higher than ever.
As the world begins to put the pieces back together and transition to a new way of doing things, relationships and networking are the strongest things that anyone has to offer and your Alumni Community is full of such opportunities. A powerful way to leverage the value and ensure strong relationships and engagement amongst your Alumni community is the Alumni Platform. It offers you all the features that make the journey seamless and stress-free by giving you the comfort of much more positive workplace culture. If you don’t have one, you are definitely missing out on many serious advantages.
Here at Vaave, we designed a powerful alumni management tool that takes care of your corporate alumni community. With 10+ years of leading the market, Vaave has been at the forefront of enabling meaningful alumni relations.
Visit: https://www.vaave.com or write to us at hello@vaave.com to understand more about Alumni relations.
