Datafiltr Customer Story

In the world of schools liaison and student recruitment, it is very easy to get bogged down in multiple layers of administration, spreadsheets, uncoordinated processes and systems. This was very much the case of our team as little as 3 years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, they were useful spreadsheets and the processes and systems we were using felt coordinated at the time but looking back now, it gives me the shivers to think how time was so inefficiently used. You live and learn.

"One thing that always surprises me with Datafiltr is the speed in which you can get what seem like quite complex problems or queries resolved"

We onboarded with Datafiltr in early 2018 and looked to embed in all that we do regarding working with schools from the get-go. With all of the data we were using (previously across multiple spreadsheets!), plus additional UCAS and DfE data, our targeting has become 100% data driven, sophisticated and transparent.

One thing that always surprises me with Datafiltr is the speed in which you can get what seem like quite complex problems or queries resolved. Recently, we have invested in fairly significant data sets which even I, as a bit of a data nerd, was a bit overwhelmed with when presented with by my boss.

However with all the inner workings of the Datafiltr platform, in particular the visualisation of the mapping function, I have been able to embed this new data into our schools targeting over a period of about a week, present to senior management and gain their buy-in for what we’re wanting to do. In the previous fictional town of Spreadsheet Land, this simply would not have been possible. Like, properly impossible.

"...resulting in a 2% rise in applications from target schools at a time when the demographic dip is at its lowest"

With a separate piece of segmentation work we undertook, we were able to use the additional data sets available from the platform, particularly via the DfE, to identify different characteristics of schools and colleges and likely student personas. Through some careful filtering and a bit of blue sky thinking, we were successfully able to embed school segmentation into our work resulting in a 2% rise in applications from target schools at a time when the demographic dip is at its lowest.

Both of the above examples identify how, if you know what you’re doing, you can complete very sophisticated pieces of targeting in hours, sometimes minutes, that would take days, maybe even weeks in Excel. When you add in being able to visualise via maps, charts and reports, this shows how valuable a platform Datafiltr has become in the work of our team.