Customer Story: University of Exeter

Access Alumni CRM is designed specifically for the complex needs of higher education institutions. It brings together alumni relations, fundraising campaigns, and engagement activity in one comprehensive, user-friendly platform, with built-in advanced reporting, customer journey tools, and direct integration with mass email platforms. As a UK-based provider, Access is fully compliant with UK data protection regulations, so universities can be confident their data is in safe hands. And because Access works with institutions across the sector, the platform is shaped by the real-world needs of the people using it every day.

Key outcomes at a glance

• Bank reconciliations cut from 2 to 3 days down to under an hour (record: 18 minutes)
• Email engagement data visible for the first time: opens, clicks and supporter behaviour tracked automatically
• Power BI dashboards built on live CRM data, refreshing overnight and available to the whole team
• Manual data exports between systems significantly reduced
• A step change in how the team thinks about and uses data

A growing need for something better

The University of Exeter’s advancement team is one of the busiest in UK higher education. They needed a CRM that could properly keep pace. The previous system had served them well for over 32 years, but as the team’s ambitions grew, so did the need for a more modern, integrated platform.

Email was a clear example of where greater integration would make a real difference. The previous system had no direct connection to their mass mailing tool, so every campaign required a manual sequence: search the CRM, extract the data, import it into the mailing platform, then send. Feeding results back into the CRM afterwards was too time-consuming to do consistently, which meant engagement data was largely invisible.

“We were sending a lot of emails, but we had no real idea who was opening them or clicking on anything. We just didn’t have the capacity to do that analysis manually.”

Reporting followed a similar pattern, with everything needing to be exported and rebuilt in Tableau or Excel. Bank reconciliation, a task that can now be completed in 18 minutes, was regularly taking two to three days. The University was ready for a step change, and the search was on for a system genuinely suited to the specific demands of university alumni relations.

Lisa Williams, Assistant Director for Advancement Operations, led the procurement process alongside Hannah Jones, Programme Manager. Their brief was precise: a ready-to-use system built with the higher education sector in mind, with data hosted in the UK and a supplier relationship that felt like a genuine partnership.

“We needed an oven-ready fundraising and alumni engagement system that works in the higher education sector. It was really important to us that the data was held in the UK to meet our GDPR responsibilities.”

Access met those requirements. But one further factor carried real weight: the way Access is structured. As a large company, Access brings the investment in product development, security, and infrastructure that a major software provider can offer. But working within a dedicated higher education division means the University of Exeter gets the responsiveness and personal feel of a specialist team: people who know the sector, know their customers, and are genuinely invested in their success.

“You’re not one of these worldwide huge companies, and that meant we had genuine engagement and could have influence over the direction of the product. That was really important to us.”

For a University with the distinct and complex needs of alumni engagement and fundraising, that kind of ongoing influence was a deciding factor. And having gone through a full procurement process, Lisa’s view of where Access sits in the market is straightforward: “I’m not hearing of another product that’s fitting that bill, that’s not massively expensive.”

Going live with Access Alumni CRM in June 2025 was more than a technology project. For the University of Exeter’s advancement team, it was an opportunity to step back and look at how they worked, what their processes were built around, and where they could do things better. The implementation became a genuine catalyst for positive change, prompting conversations about ways of working that had simply never happened before.

“It’s not just about the IT. It’s about the people, the culture, and how the software supports what you’re trying to achieve. The whole process made us think much more carefully about what we’re doing and why. That has delivered real dividends.”

Throughout the process, the Access team was a consistent and responsive presence. The same people who supported the implementation are still there when questions arise, and as the University of Exeter has moved into a more established phase, conversations with the customer success team have opened up new opportunities to push further.

“The team were really responsive, and the same people have been there throughout. That continuity matters.”

Ask Lisa where Access Alumni CRM has made the biggest difference and three things come through immediately: time saved, a far clearer picture of supporters, and smoother financial processes.

18 minutes! That’s a record time now for a bank reconciliation (previously 2 to 3 days)

The integration with Dot Digital, now several months live, has transformed how the team understands the people they are trying to reach. Opens, clicks, supporter behaviour over time: all of it feeds back into the CRM automatically, building a richer picture of each alumni relationship than the team has ever had before.

Reporting has taken a significant step forward too. The University of Exeter’s Insight Manager has built a Power BI platform connecting directly to Access Alumni CRM, producing dashboards that refresh overnight and are available to the whole team. Questions that once landed in the data team’s inbox can now be answered independently, in seconds. And with further reporting developments already on the Access roadmap, Lisa knows this is only the beginning.

“Questions that used to come into our team, like how many alumni have got this, or what’s happening with that campaign, people can now just answer themselves using the dashboard. That saves everyone time.”

The next phase of the University of Exeter’s work with Access Alumni CRM is about doing more without growing the team. The focus is on building out customer journeys: setting up triggers, automating communications, and freeing up staff to concentrate on the relationships and decisions that genuinely need human attention. In a higher education sector under real financial pressure, the ability to scale activity without scaling headcount is central to how universities will need to operate going forward. And with Access developing at pace, particularly as AI opens up new possibilities, Lisa feels confident the system will keep evolving alongside them.

“The team isn’t growing, but we need to do more and raise more money. We’ve got ambitious targets. The system gives us the tools to automate what we can so that we can focus our people where they’re needed most.”

Without hesitation. Lisa’s message to any Head of Advancement Operations considering a switch is a straightforward one: the process will challenge you, and that is precisely the point.

“Going through the process is a challenge. But, by not doing it, you wouldn’t do the thinking that transforms how your team works. Both the system and the whole process have delivered great dividends.”

For universities with ambitious alumni engagement and fundraising goals, the University of Exeter’s experience is a compelling picture of what is possible.