Salesforce boosts University innovation networks

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The University of Bath has implemented Salesforce in an attempt to boost the productivity of its Innovation Centre.

The institute houses its own hub for start-up companies growing within the university, as well as offering space to new private firms just starting off. The research portfolio alone is worth £100 million and the work done by the Innovation Centre’s business networks has brought 160 jobs and £1.5 million into Bath’s local economy.

Running these business networks is no easy task, however, and after using an inadequate spreadsheet system for too long, the university looked around and decided Salesforce was the answer.

“We’re passionate about the innovation and research that goes on within the University of Bath’s walls and its impact on the real world, but until now, simply maintaining this many networks has been a full-time job for my team,” said Simon Bond, director of the Innovation Centre.

“Salesforce.com has allowed us to not only manage our subscribers in a fraction of the time but as a result, we have been able to expand our business, launching two new networks for our clients.”

The university partnered with Fujitsu to speed up the transfer to the cloud, executing what it called a “hot-migration.” This is a week long phase over for the business networks in an attempt to minimise downtime and enable the centre to run as normal in the interim.

"In recent years, we’ve helped a number of education establishments move from spreadsheet and manually-intensive systems to the latest cloud-based solutions," said Mark Peplow, senior consultant at Fujitsu UK and Ireland.

“It’s great to see this implementation not only expediting the University of Bath’s processes but actually enabling it to expand its business.”

In addition to security being tightened, the business network system runs more smoothly, with extra benefits such as being able to log-in to Salesforce through an iPhone app.

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