How a Purpose-Built Industry Cloud
Transforms the Learner Lifecycle—From Recruitment to Alumni Engagement
Every so often, an industry reaches a point where its needs and its tools no longer match. The vision and the reality drift apart, creating friction for leaders, staff, and constituents. In education, that drift has played out as institutions have grown more complex: multiple campus locations, hundreds of academic programs, a shifting student demographic, heightened expectations around digital engagement, and intense competition. It’s a sector perpetually spinning more plates with fewer resources.
For years, educators and administrators yearned for a platform that could meaningfully bring together all of these elements—admissions, enrollment, student support, alumni relations, fundraising, and beyond—without forcing them to wrestle with disjointed systems. At V2, we’ve spent countless hours side by side with educational organizations, seeing firsthand how data fragmentation and cumbersome technology can hold them back. Today, we can confidently say that the “vision” and the “reality” have never been closer, thanks to Salesforce Education Cloud.
A New Foundation for Education
Salesforce has long served education with products built on the Education Data Architecture (EDA). But in the last year, a significant pivot took place: Salesforce re-platformed Education Cloud as an official Industry Cloud, leveraging the same advanced data modeling and processes that have revolutionized other sectors like media, communications, and consumer goods.
This shift feels more like a reimagining than a mere upgrade. We first saw the seeds of it in our own work, when we teamed up with a large education company to overhaul their CRM environment. Even in the early stages, we recognized the raw potential of using Vlocity (the basis for many Salesforce Industry Clouds) to unify data on students, courses, communications, and beyond. Now that this re-platforming has happened publicly, the education space finally has a solution that can tie together the student lifecycle from prospect to alumni—and do it with a sophistication that was lacking in older approaches.
Why That Matters for Modern Institutions
The higher education market can be both cyclical and volatile. A private college might see a significant drop in enrollments one year, only to rebound the next. A global pandemic can further disrupt how students learn, where they live, and what services they require. Meanwhile, the digital expectations of tech-savvy learners—and their parents or sponsors—continue to surge.
What we’ve learned is that having a tool like Education Cloud does more than streamline tasks. It provides the agility and strategic insight that modern education companies (and institutions) need. Deans, CFOs, and program directors can, for instance, peek into a single dashboard and forecast enrollment demand, track prospective students, identify real-time engagement drops, or see which scholarship campaigns are proving effective with donors.
We often describe this single source of truth as the difference between “guessing” what students need and “knowing” what students need. For us at V2, bridging that gap is paramount. When we first entered the education space, we noticed how many organizations had bright, dedicated teams weighed down by rigid spreadsheets and a scattered ecosystem of platforms. They had all the data in the world—test scores, financial aid packages, application forms, alumni networks—but no consistent place to make sense of it or act on it in a meaningful, unified way.
With Education Cloud, it’s no longer about just checking a box for admissions or building a single drip campaign for prospective students. The entire educational operation, from recruitment to completion and alumni engagement, lives together in one environment. That means simpler technology stacks, less confusion for faculty and staff, and deeper connections with learners.
From Disjointed Data to Lifelong Relationships
We often talk about the “learner lifecycle,” but it’s one of those broad terms that can lose its meaning until you see it in action. Imagine a prospective high school student who interacts with your university marketing materials. They fill out an online request for information, perhaps attend a virtual open house, and eventually apply.
In a fragmented environment, those interactions might remain in separate silos—maybe one in your marketing system, another in an events management tool, and yet another in your admissions portal. With Education Cloud, that single prospective student exists in a unified record. As they progress, your admissions team can see every relevant touchpoint in chronological order, any communications that have been sent, open items they might be missing, and how they’ve responded.
Fast forward, and that prospect enrolls, attends classes, joins a service organization, and later graduates. Because of the new data foundation behind Education Cloud, you don’t lose visibility when they shift from “current student” to “alumni.” You simply track the new attributes and continue to nurture that relationship. This might include special invitations to networking events, volunteer opportunities to mentor current students, or targeted fundraising campaigns that speak precisely to their interests.
The beauty of this end-to-end continuity is how it helps you foster lifelong relationships, often turning them into long-term supporters, donors, or ambassadors for your institution. And that leads us to why we think Education Cloud is truly a game-changer. It’s not just about reducing complexity; it’s about strengthening the bond between learner and institution in a way that can last well beyond graduation.
Where AI and Automation Enter the Story
Of course, none of these transformations exist in a vacuum. Digital life is changing fast, and artificial intelligence is at the forefront of nearly every conversation. This is especially true in education, where seasonality plays a heavy role—recruitment and admissions in the spring and summer, a flurry of onboarding in late summer, and intense advising during midterms. Each phase demands different tactics, data points, and interventions.
Salesforce’s own AI and Data Cloud capabilities mesh with Education Cloud perfectly. We’ve seen how an AI-powered chatbot can manage mundane tasks—answering common questions about application deadlines, dorm fees, scholarship criteria—so that human advisors can focus on the higher-value, face-to-face engagements. Or how Agentforce, Salesforce’s approach to bringing digital “agents” into day-to-day operations, can help automate scheduling, track course prerequisites, or even match students with tutors based on real-time performance signals.
This goes back to the theme of bridging the gap between vision and reality. Could a single admissions counselor personally handle 2,000 prospective student inquiries with detailed, thoughtful interactions? Probably not. But with an AI-backed system automatically segmenting those students, personalizing the messaging, and flagging the counselor only for the highest-priority or most at-risk prospects, that’s suddenly feasible.
V2’s Perspective: Bringing Industry Know-How to Education
At V2, we approach Education Cloud from a place of deep respect for each client’s mission. Whether we’re collaborating with a major university or a growing education-services startup, we see ourselves as strategic partners, not just system integrators. Our background in multiple Salesforce Industry Clouds has taught us that success goes far beyond simply turning on features. It’s about curating the right combination of data models, workflows, user experiences, integrations, and training that truly reflect the goals of your institution.
In many ways, the re-platformed Education Cloud gives us the perfect playground for this. The underlying technology is robust and proven (thanks to Vlocity’s architecture), and the potential for synergy with new Salesforce offerings—like advanced Data Cloud integrations and Einstein GPT for content generation—means we can design solutions that remain relevant for years to come.
We aim to optimize how your teams work so that your technology becomes a catalyst, not a constraint. That includes setting up real-time dashboards for leadership that display student enrollment trends or early-warning indicators of attrition. It might mean equipping alumni relations with marketing automation journeys that send personalized event invitations. Or it could be creating an AI-based scheduling system that matches advisors with students who share similar interests, so that academic advising feels less like a chore and more like a mentorship opportunity.
When done well, these capabilities put education professionals back in the driver’s seat—no longer mired in the details of day-to-day data wrangling but free to engage with students, conduct deeper research, and innovate on new program offerings.
Looking Ahead: Education Summit 2025
One of the most exciting aspects of being in the education technology space is seeing how quickly it’s evolving and how passionate practitioners are about improving outcomes for their learners. This March (the 10th to the 12th, 2025), we’ll be on-site at the Salesforce Education Summit in Chicago at McCormick Place. With over ninety sessions planned, plus hands-on workshops, it’s poised to be an incredible forum for anyone who wants to push the boundaries of what their education institution can achieve.
We’re particularly intrigued by the new “Agentforce” theme—how humans and automated agents can partner to elevate the learning experience in ways we’re only beginning to imagine. The lines between academic support, student-facing AI, and staff tools are blurring. The result could be more adaptive learning, better resource management, and a truly 24/7 approach to student success.
If you’re planning to attend the summit, we’d love to connect. It’s an ideal setting to see real-life demos, share best practices with peers, and learn from the entire ecosystem of solution providers, administrators, and educators. For us, it’s also a chance to meet face-to-face with people who are as excited about the new Education Cloud—and its potential to simplify and amplify everything in education—as we are.
An Invitation to Transform
Education is never static. Each new academic year brings fresh faces and new expectations; each cycle of alumni engagement reveals new opportunities to deepen connections. But if your institution is swimming in cumbersome processes and outdated tech, it’s easy to feel stuck.
Our belief, forged through years of consulting engagements, is that Salesforce Education Cloud offers a transformative path forward. By centralizing data, automating repetitive tasks, harnessing advanced AI, and giving teams the tools they need to manage the entire learning journey, it allows you to realign your focus where it matters: on teaching, mentoring, innovating, and building lifelong relationships with learners.
We’re here to help you unlock that potential. As a management consulting firm with deep roots in Salesforce Industry Clouds, V2 is uniquely positioned to guide your transformation. We invite you to reach out—ask us how we’ve helped other education clients optimize recruitment and admissions, streamline academic advising, or revolutionize alumni relations. Or simply share your vision, and we’ll show you how Education Cloud can help turn it into reality.
Building Trust Starts With A Conversation.
Whether we see you in Chicago this March or connect virtually beforehand, we’re excited about what’s ahead. The future of education demands not just technology but smart strategy, experienced partners, and the courage to reinvent. Together, we can shape an education system that delivers unprecedented value to students, parents, faculty, and society at large. And that, to us, is the real promise of Salesforce Education Cloud.
