How Ellucian Increased Buyer Engagement by 40%

Ellucian believes in the transformative power of education. Today, it brings that vision to life with a suite of administrative solutions empowering thousands of universities — and 20 million students — across the globe. From enrollment to alumni relations, Ellucian solves the problems that matter most for higher education clients. Better yet, it helps universities plan, implement, operate, and optimise their technology stacks to ensure every experience across the student lifecycle is a positive one. To help internal reps and external channel partners effectively communicate its value to prospective university clients, Ellucian switched to Highspot. 

Searching for a New Solution

Twenty million students worldwide have felt the impact of Ellucian’s services and solutions. “Almost 3,000 universities use our solutions to empower student success in everything from enrollment to advancement, finance, and beyond — with a complete, integrated SaaS platform that uses data to drive student success.,” began Rebekah Bernard, revenue enablement program manager at Ellucian. The edtech leader’s reach is incredible — even still, it felt that something was missing. While Ellucian had an enablement solution, sellers expressed dissatisfaction with its disjointed experience and lack of comprehensive support. “ The sales team has asked us for years: ‘Can we just have one place to go?’” shared Bernard. 

The frustration wasn’t limited to internal sellers: Ellucian relies on an extensive channel organisation, which operated in a silo and faced similar struggles with surfacing materials and messaging. “Our partner team and revenue enablement team are separate organisations, so we’ve traditionally been siloed,” added Bernard. Unfortunately, investments into a previous solution hadn’t had nearly the desired effect. Teams remained siloed; internal and partner sellers still lacked a single source of truth. To align its go-to-market teams and smash sales silos, Ellucian decided it was time to make a change. “We started to look at some tools and think about  what else is out there that might serve us better,” explained Bernard.

As Ellucian evaluated other solutions, a clear winner emerged. “We were super excited about some specific things with Highspot,” continued Bernard. “One is the analytics platform and having actionable insights at our fingertips, and then basic things like the functionality of search, the ease of finding content, and the fact that it offers a streamlined administrative experience.” Seeing the value of a natively built platform and the capabilities its previous solution had sorely lacked, Ellucian switched to Highspot.

Breaking Down Go-To-Market Silos

Ellucian hit the ground running. In its first 90 days with Highspot, it achieved what its previous solution had not. “Our big win so far has been breaking down cross-functional silos,” enthused Bernard. “We’ve been able to do that in such a short time.” Ellucian credits this newfound alignment to the platform’s versatility, which supports teams across the organisation. “Highspot is not just a revenue enablement tool,” added Bernard. “We have licenses across many different functions in the organisation, from marketing, solutions consulting and partner sellers to product, services, and customer success.”

Cross-functional usage has sparked new alignment. More specifically, it has brought the once-siloed partner organisation into the fold. “We’re able to have one instance of Highspot,” shared Bernard. “Our partners can see everything they’re permissioned, and our employees can be in the same system. It works seamlessly.” Between internal sellers, channel partners, and other key players, nearly three-quarters of the go-to-market organisation — 73% — regularly use the platform. 

High platform adoption sparked new usage: Now, every go-to-market initiative is executed from within Highspot. “ We’re working on initiatives many different levels right now,” noted Bernard. “Highspot is our one-stop shop for all of that.” With Highspot, Ellucian’s internal sellers and channel partners have the single source of truth they asked for, which makes it easier to pivot and effectively support each new initiative. “We’re creating a Sales Play that pulls together all the information they need,” continued Bernard. “We’re doing that for a new product launch, our user conference coming up in the spring, and our sales process.” Ellucian has seen near-unanimous adoption of this strategy, with 92% of its sales force adopting Sales Plays. It’s a win-win for both sellers and the organisation — sellers have the guidance they crave, while Ellucian gains the consistent, aligned go-to-market execution it sought.

Ready to Achieve New Potential

A unified platform quickly proved essential. Now that internal sellers and channel partners have unified access to content and guidance, Ellucian has noticed improvements in go-to-market execution — including a 40% increase in buyer engagement. Including teams beyond sales only amplified the impact: Alignment and awareness across the organisation meant that every team operated in lockstep, ready to move the needle on Ellucian’s go-to-market initiatives.

The switch to Highspot enabled Ellucian to amplify the impact of enablement efforts. “Highspot helped us align communication within our revenue organisation, which is super important,” enthused Bernard. “It also helped cross-functional teams align across the organisation — the possibilities from that are endless, so I have high hopes for what we’re going to be able to do.” With a natively built, unified platform helping it power execution across go-to-market teams, Ellucian is ready to achieve new growth and bring its vision for transformative education technology to more universities across the globe.