UNICON CRM Group | October 2026 session
At the October meeting of the UNICON CRM Group, Grace Hemenway of Cornell Executive Education walked members through a three-year journey: moving client work off manual templates and into an integrated system built on Salesforce and Tableau. Nearly 20 colleagues from member schools across North America, Europe and Asia joined the session live. Here is what changed, what it took, and what is still in progress.
From templates to one system
Cornell's team is now roughly 90% integrated into Salesforce. Budgets live there too: once a program budget is approved, the team tracks actuals against it inside the CRM and feeds the results into Tableau for reporting. The last piece is a project management tool that is being connected so tasks populate automatically based on program type, whether in-person, virtual, or online.
An hour of survey setup, down to five minutes
The standout win came from connecting Qualtrics with Tableau. Setting up a program survey used to take up to an hour. It now takes about five minutes. Grace called it a "huge win" for the team because of the time it gives back.
Faculty evaluations follow a clear loop. Results go first to the faculty director, then to individual faculty members, and are also shared with clients to drive year-over-year improvement.
Consistency without a design bottleneck
To give every client the same polished experience, the team built standardized program guides and templates in Adobe Express and Pages. That has reduced their reliance on a central design team and made it faster to get materials out the door.
Legacy clients are a mindset, not a field
Asked how the team flags long-standing clients, Grace explained that "legacy" status is not a checkbox in the CRM. It reflects trust and deep knowledge of the relationship, and that trust is what allows more flexibility when customizing content.
Takeaways for members
Thank you to Grace for sharing her team's work so openly, and to everyone who joined live and brought their questions. The CRM Group is open to all UNICON members, and we'd encourage you to join live whenever you can to get the most out of the group and be part of the conversation, as not every session will be recorded. To take part in future sessions, get in touch with the UNICON team.