Student relationship management : concept, practice and technological support

Information systems used at higher education institution support essentially academic management processes like student’s registration, student’s management, student’s marks, among others. These systems do not permit the closely monitoring of student’s academic activities, the evaluation of their academic success and the support of academic activities concerning with teaching and tutoring. On the other hand, it is largely accepted that there exists a strong correlation between the closely monitoring of the students’ activities and the scholar success promotion. To support the teaching and tutoring processes it is essential to acquire knowledge about the students. This knowledge will allow the adoption of adequate and effective actions/decisions in order to closely follow the students’ activities. In order to be possible such procedures, this paper proposes a Student Relationship Management (SRM) system. This system will support the SRM concept and the SRM practice and will be implemented using the concepts and the technological infrastructure that supports the Business Intelligence systems. The concept, practice and architecture of the SRM system are presented in this paper and its main goal is to provide a technological tool that support higher education institution in the acquisition of knowledge that is essential to the decision-making process.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT