Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62198
Technology to solve business problems and understand technological con- cepts," says Weinberg. That level of understanding can happen only if students have access to the full range of technology that today's corporations use, he adds. "In this lab, students have total control over the machines assigned to them. They can try out new tech- nologies, install any type of applica- tion, and are free to make mistakes without affecting anything else." Online Communities Streamline Admissions Although most business schools understand the need to process MBA candi- dates' applications efficiently, address their questions, and even serve as relocation and transition agents, admissions offices are often under- staffed and overwhelmed. While they may send prospective students a welcome package and/or e-mail, the ongoing communication with the student often stops there. To address this problem, Yann Lechelle, CEO of Paris-based com- pany Etheryl, has developed NetVestibule, a software product designed to manage and encourage an ongoing communica- tions process between prospective students and their new college com- munity. "The level of service at this crucial phase often reaches a bottleneck caused by too many prospects making demands on already overwhelmed re sources," he says. "Incoming students are eager to get started with 52 D ATA B I T "The first line of fire will be hundreds of e-mails, phone calls, and visits from excited, sometimes angry, young professionals who think they deserve attention because of the significant sum of money they're paying to the institution." —Yann Lechelle, CEO, Etheryl the program, so admissions officers are certain to face highly demanding individuals. The first line of fire will be hundreds of e-mails, phone calls, and visits from excited, sometimes angry, young professionals who think they deserve attention because of the significant sum of money they're paying to the institution." NetVestibule is designed to ease its quality of one-on-one service for serious issues that really do require an admissions administrator." When admissions offices lack ade- this deluge of requests through technology, providing a platform to manage an institution's relationships with students, from pre-admission to post-graduation, explains Lechelle. The technology creates an exclusive online community space in which accepted students interact and exchange tips with current students. The community includes a bulletin board for asynchronous communica- tion and a chat room for synchro- nous discussions. Users are also able to post biographies, short resumes, and pictures, and even engage in peer-to-peer e-mailing via password protected accounts. In 2001, Forrester Research Inc., quate resources, prospective students are often handed off from marketing to admissions to academic depart- ments, so that their experiences are fragmented, concludes Lachelle. Technology can fill that gap, he adds. Creating a strong online com- munity that facilitates a relationship between accepted students and their future peers can be an effective way to develop the student-to-institution relationship. Yann Lechelle can be contacted at y@etheryl.com. Eight Publishers to Offer Material Online A record number of Web site defacements—more than 9,000—occurred in September, according to mi2g Ltd., a London security firm. U.S. sites saw the most defacements, 4,157, with most of those related to gov- ernment. Sites registered to Brazilian users experienced 835 defacements; the U.K., 376; Germany, 356; and India, 285, the IDG News Service reported. BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 headquartered in Cambridge, Massacusetts, issued a report on customer relationship management, a close cousin to SRM, or "Student Relationship Manage ment." The results indicated that support phone calls and e-mails cost, on average, $33 and $10 each, respectively. "By transfer- ring some of the repeti- tive 'frequently asked questions' to online communications with current students," says Lechelle, "an institution may be able to reduce its costs of dealing with prospects and improve Ebrary, a leading provider of information distribution and retrieval services, recently announced that eight more publishers will make many of their titles available in a digital format. AMACOM Books, American Enterprise Institute, Career Press, CMP Books, Dearborn Trade Publishing, Idea Group, No Starch Press, and Syngress Publishing have agreed to make hundreds of titles in business, eco- nomics, and computers and technology available online to institutional markets. More than 130 academic, pro- fessional, and trade publishers are currently distributing more than 15,000 titles in digital format to libraries and other institutions through ebrary. Two thousand of those titles, most published between 2000 and 2002, are targeted to the business community.