Koç University manages student applications, communications, and reporting with the Zoho One suite

The challenge

Each year, Koç University receives around 100,000 applications from prospective students. Although the university has a dedicated student management platform in place to manage enrolled students, it recognised the need for a CRM system to process its huge — and growing — volume of new applications in a timely, effective way.

It also needed a way to filter those applications by region and academic program, and a centralised way to communicate with prospective students about the status of their applications. So in 2017, the university implemented Zoho CRM to achieve these goals.

However, it wasn't long before the organisation relished Zoho's strong value proposition and upgraded to the Zoho One bundle of 45+ business applications. "Compared with other CRMs, the Zoho standalone app - and Zoho One - are really affordable," lauds Emin Devrim Fidan, the university's in-house Product Manager.

The solution

"I would definitely recommend Zoho as a bundle, which gives you the opportunity to access different applications...it has tools which you may not need right now, but you are going to need in the future. Zoho One gives you an extensive toolkit at your fingertips."

Emin Devrim Fidan Product Manager, Koç University

Today, the university utilises multiple applications within the Zoho One suite to manage its operations, including CRM, Forms, Social, PageSense, and Vault. However, Zoho CRM is still very much at the core, tightly integrated with Zoho Forms to streamline the entire prospective student process from lead to enrolment.

That process begins when an interested student submits their details on Koç University's website. "All of our programs have a landing page, and each page has a particular Zoho Form. We collect the prospective student's name, surname, email, and the interested program. We push that data into our CRM," explains Emin.

Once the prospective student's data reaches the CRM, a number of workflows are triggered. Each of the 100,000+ annual leads goes through automatic lead scoring and automatic assignment to an appropriate admissions officer for review. "All those leads are managed by a workflow. There are several use cases. First of all, a territory use case, based on the selection of country in the form. The second information is grad, undergrad, or the interested program. That level of segmentation goes into the process. When leads are qualified, a person is assigned to either call or write a personal email to that prospective student," Emin advises.

By capturing all prospective student data inside Zoho CRM, before advancing successful recruits to its student management software, Koç University can run detailed reports and glean useful insights about the application process. "We make a report out of a lead that came through our website and went through our application system. We see a funnel of leads turning into contacts, and with the application from the pulled system, we can assess the student application cycle. Then, when they turn into an enrolled student, we also see that path from lead to enrolled student," Emin shares.

In order to communicate with all of the prospective students in its pipeline, Koç University uses the mass mailing capability of Zoho CRM. Emin explains how a combination of workflows, templates, and tags helps to keep the students updated at critical points in the application process. "Our team assigns the templates from Zoho CRM, and using workflows rather than doing a campaign...we tag and do mass emailing."

Elsewhere, Emin's team have discovered the advantages of Zoho Vault for data security. Rather than sharing sensitive passwords or login details for its subscriptions in an internal Teams message or an Excel file, Emin's colleagues use Vault to store and share credentials. "We can save social media accounts, we can save apps that we use, like Perplexity, or generic accounts we use across the teams. We prefer to have a secure programme to share them, and Zoho Vault is a perfect tool for that."

Koç University's core Zoho stack includes:

Zoho CRM: The heart of Koç University's prospective student management. It handles automatic lead scoring, territory-based assignment, segmentation by program type, and mass email communication. Detailed reports give the team full visibility into the funnel — from initial enquiry through to enrolled student.

Zoho Forms: Embedded across every program landing page on the university's website, Zoho Forms captures the details of every prospective student — including name, email, and program of interest — and pushes them seamlessly into Zoho CRM without any manual entry or data duplication.

Zoho Vault: Used by Emin's team to securely store and share credentials for shared accounts, social media logins, and third-party tools. It replaces less secure alternatives like Teams messages or Excel files, giving the team a compliant way to manage access to sensitive information.

Zoho Social, PageSense, and more: Additional apps within the Zoho One bundle support social media management, website behaviour analytics, and other operational needs — all natively integrated with the rest of the stack.

Bundle benefits

Emin is a firm advocate of Zoho One and strongly champions its use in universities, summarising its advantages succinctly.

"If I had to describe Zoho in three words, it would be cost-effective, flexible, and scalable."

Emin Devrim Fidan Product Manager, Koç University

Other benefits Emin enjoys include:

• A budget-friendly price point, ideal for a non-profit research university like Koç. "Zoho One provides an extensive toolkit to all higher education institutions at an affordable price. That's the most important part that I would say."
• The Zoho One Directory. This provides a central admin panel to manage users, rights, and permissions on a granular level. Emin says, "The way Zoho handles user management and data management, we love it. It's compliant, and as a product manager, when I log into Zoho, I can see all the logs and manage a user's access for each application. Having a tool to manage access levels is a great opportunity for us, and managing all my users through the Zoho One Directory is very simple."
• A future-proofed operation. "The bundle gives you the opportunity to access more than 50 different applications," Emin adds. This extensive roll-call of tools means that as the university's needs evolve, it will already have access to platforms that will serve it well.
• Seamless data flow. Zoho One's applications are natively integrated, meaning that student information flows between Forms and CRM without any APIs or code. No manual entry, no data exports, and no data duplication required.

Looking forward with Zoho One

As Koç University's Product Manager and the super admin of its Zoho account, Emin is always looking at ways to refine and improve processes. He's keen to explore the powers of Zoho Marketing Automation to deliver even more tailored email journeys to prospective students. "We are testing Marketing Automation. If I succeed, I will move some of our workflows into it."

He's also keen to expand Vault's use across the organisation, stating, "If I can roll it out to more users, I think we will use Zoho Vault in our wider teams too."

Whatever the future holds for Koç University, it's clear that Zoho One will continue to be a foundational part of how the institution attracts, engages, and onboards the next generation of students.