Managing Salesforce Data in Educational Institutions: Data Archiving Made Easy

Each day, more and more of the world’s leading enterprises generate a massive amount of data. One of the domains where huge volumes and variety of data exists is the higher education industry. On a daily basis, copious amounts of education-related data is captured and generated from various sources in different formats. This can vary from data produced from students’ usage and interaction with different learning management systems (LMS) to information about learning activities and courses including syllabuses, learning material and activities, examination results and courses’ evaluation.

Big data in the education sector offers unprecedented opportunities for educators to reach out and instruct students in new ways. It will give them a deeper understanding of students’ education experience, and thereby help them evaluate the state of the education system. Such data has various other benefits as well, as discussed below:

• Improving Student Results– Through strategic leveraging of big data within the educational system, the quality of student results can be improved. By properly using the data, it is possible to monitor different student actions, automatically answer questions and give instant feedback to them, thereby improving their overall performance. 
• Customizing Programs– With the help of data, customized programs for each individual student can be created. This allows students to opt for classes that they are interested in and also work at their own pace, through a personally designed learning strategy of offline and online courses. 
• Enhancing the Teaching Quality– Through effective use of technologies that produce a huge amount of data, teachers can easily identify students who are lagging behind and can offer them timely help. It also allows teachers to quickly prepare and adapt their lessons according to students’ needs. 
• Reducing Dropouts– Since strategic use of education-related data helps improve student results, dropout rates at schools and colleges also reduces. Predictive data analytics gives insights on future student outcomes which help minimize the need for trial-and-error and would also help future students choose the right college and course.

However, when it comes to managing such massive data, educators and educational institutions using the Salesforce CRM face multiple challenges. They become even more complex as these institutions deal with highly sensitive and personal data like names, Social Security IDs, addresses, financial information, and much more. Some of the top challenges that educators and educational institutions using the Salesforce system face today are discussed below:

• Limited Storage and High Additional Storage Costs– Educational institutions deal with massive datasets that are difficult to manage and exert pressure on the already limited storage. This usually results in purchase of additional Salesforce storage, which comes at an extremely high cost. 
• Security Threats– Another major issue is the security threat looming on the data. There is a constant concern for the data’s security and integrity owing to its immensely personal and sensitive nature.
• Compliance Concerns– Even the educational institutions are governed by compliance and regulatory procedures, like FERPA and FRCP, which ensure the privacy and accessibility of student records. But it becomes difficult when poor quality data has to be retained for a longer period.
• Performance– With all these challenges, even the CRM performance takes a hit due to the piling up data which leads to a decrease in productivity.

Bearing in mind all the above complexities, archiving the Salesforce data emerges as an ideal data management strategy. Archiving is essentially moving out old legacy data from the original storage space to some different, usually cheaper storage system which ultimately boosts the performance, reduces storage costs, and enhances user experience. One such well-known AppExchange solution that was developed with the sole aim of saving the Salesforce storage costs and offering a top-notch data archiving solution is DataArchiva. 

DataArchiva is a flawless digital application that archives the rarely-used Salesforce data intelligently within the platform itself, at a native level in Salesforce’s big data-based storage system called Big Objects. This compliance-ready, user-friendly, and highly scalable application can also manage a large volume of data without any hassle. With DataArchiva, you can also save more than 85% of your data storage costs. It also ensures top-notch security, seamless accessibility, better CRM performance along with data governance. For more information, you can get in touch with us.