Universities across the UK are under more pressure than ever. Student expectations keep rising. Budgets remain tight. And the systems that sit behind admissions, marketing, student support and academic services often still operate in isolation.
I have seen this pattern many times. A prospective student enquires online. Marketing sends a generic email. Admissions updates a different system. Student services has no visibility of the interaction. Faculty later meet the same student with incomplete information. The journey feels fragmented to the student and exhausting for the staff trying to support them.
At Mastek we recently worked with a leading multi-campus university facing exactly these issues. Their experience offers a useful lens for any UK institution trying to improve the student experience while making better use of limited resources.
The Challenge Most Institutions Recognise
The university’s admissions, marketing, student services and faculty teams were working across disconnected platforms. This created four persistent problems:
1. It was difficult to track prospective and current students through complex enrolment journeys.
2. Personalised communications that genuinely drove engagement were hard to deliver.
3. Leadership lacked real-time visibility into student success metrics.
4. Students faced friction when seeking support across different channels.
Many UK universities operate with similar legacy combinations of student information systems, marketing tools, CRM platforms and support ticketing systems. The result is duplicated effort, missed opportunities to engage students at the right moment and staff time spent on manual workarounds.
What Changed When Systems Worked Together
By partnering with Mastek to build an integrated cloud platform, the university achieved practical improvements that matter to both students and staff:
Automated lead nurturing
Prospective students now receive personalised communications based on their interests and behaviour. Instead of broad campaigns, the institution can respond to what each individual has shown interest in. Conversion rates improved because the messages felt relevant rather than generic.
Unified student support
Students can now reach support teams through the channel they prefer and their interaction history travels with them. Staff no longer needs to ask students to repeat information already shared elsewhere. Friction has reduced and satisfaction has improved.
Data-driven insights
Leadership has real-time visibility into enrolment funnels and student success metrics. Decisions that previously relied on delayed reports or incomplete spreadsheets can now be made with current information.
Operational efficiency
Manual processes across admissions, marketing and student services have been streamlined. Staff time has shifted from finding and processing information between systems towards activities that directly support student outcomes.
The best part is that none of these results required complete rip-and-replacement of their existing systems. The focus was on connecting the platforms that already mattered and making the data usable.
How the Integration Worked
Mastek brought together Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud with the university’s existing Student Information System. The result was one unified ecosystem rather than a collection of separate tools.
Analytics dashboards sit on top of this connected environment, giving teams actionable intelligence across the full student lifecycle - from first enquiry through enrolment, ongoing support and eventual graduation. Staff work in systems they already understand, but those systems now share information and present a more complete picture of each student.
This approach is particularly relevant for UK institutions managing multi-campus or multi-faculty environments, where local variations in process often make central visibility difficult.
Why This Matters Now
UK higher education continues to face financial pressure, rising student expectations and the need to demonstrate value. In that context, the ability to engage students more effectively, reduce internal friction and give leaders clearer insight is now part of operating responsibly.
Disconnected student data and manual processes weaken the institution’s ability to support students at the moments that matter most - when a prospective student is deciding whether to apply, when a current student is at risk of disengaging, or when support teams need the full context to help effectively.
If your institution is still wrestling with siloed student data, repetitive manual processes or limited visibility across the student journey, it is worth examining whether a more integrated approach could help. The technology exists. The more important question is whether the organisation is ready to use it to put students at the centre of how systems work together.
What challenges is your university facing in connecting the student journey?
