The only all inclusive web-based solution allowing MBA students and alumni to build professional networks and interest-driven communities fostering more engagement with your business school!
MBA Community™ by Symplicity brings graduate business students, alumni, faculty, and staff together with online engagement, social networking, email marketing, and event management tools. Click below to find out how each of the tools can benefit your business school!
Core features
Related Integrated Products
MBA Directory
With MBA Community you can have all the people associated with your institution together on one system. Now you have the opporunity to manage your own social and professional networking site.
Allow students and alumni/ae access to your complete community. They will be able to perform powerful searches and make meaningful connections to build personal and professional relationships on day one and beyond! Read More...
Email Marketing Suite
MBA Community by Symplicity provides Business Schools with an array of email marketing tools enabling institutions to immediately analyze the effectiveness of any campaign.
By tracking emails by campaign, user open rates, click throughs and more, you are able to see how many of your constituents respond to each email. You can also track emails by individual user. Read More...
Engagement Toolset
Increase engagement with your business school with MBA Community's unique engagement toolset. Give your users the ability to voice their opinions in the Public Forums of the system. Allow users to vote in elections or evaluate new course options via the in-depth polling and surveying tools.
Allow users the opportunitiy to easily donate money straight to the business school with MBA Community's advanced and highly intuitive gift giving tools. Track donations and outreach campaigns all from within the system. Read More...
Clubs and Chapters
Make your club registration and chartering process completely paperless! By using MBA Community’s customizable form editor, you’ll never want to go back to paper again.
Keeping track of student organization funding and finances is always a challenge. Help MBA students manage their club budgets with our comprehensive budgeting toolset. Read More...
Event Management
The integrated calendar function allows alumni to see up-to-the-minute information about the events currently scheduled on campus. The integrated event request form makes event submission a breeze for students, alumni and staff.
Customizable routing, workflow, and approvals ensure that the appropriate people on campus are notified about events. Read More...
Powerful reports
The integrated reporting engine allows for reports based on alumni data, involvement, and organizations to be generated with ease using our point-and-click report builder.
Many institutions are leveraging the tool to get member counts, GPA roster reports, involvement statistics, and much more! Read More...
Customization Tools
Every office is unique, and most administrators want to tailor their system’s interface to align with their precise vision. Knowing our customers’ desire for interface control, we provide ultimate customization and configuration capabilities. Read More...
Powerful integration options
Data Synchronization
Do you use Sungard, Raiser's Edge, TouchNet, PayPal, or another student information system, fundraising system, or merchant services provider? Working with over 500 institutions over 15 years, Symplicity delivers sophisticated systems integration.
We offer online integration via web services or batch synchronization to ensure the core information in your systems are always up-to-date and donations and event fees are processed seamlessly!
Calendar Integration
Symplicity provides full integration with Microsoft Exchange and supports iCal and SyncML so that you can easily synchronize with Outlook, Lotus, and Google calendars, as well as smart phones by Apple, Blackberry, etc.
The personal calendar shows your schedule for the day/week/month - all from a single web interface. Our visibility controls ensure that students only see events that are relevant to them.
Authentication Integration
Make your software even easier to use by integrating your portal with single sign-on or shared authentication. We support CAS, Shibboleth, uPortal, Luminis, LDAP, Active Directory, and many other options!
Flexible Pricing
Whether you are a small institution or a large public university, Community offers an extremely customizable solution that supports MBA programs of all sizes.
Our pricing is extremely simple with no hidden costs and is based on your business school's full-time enrollment with price points that make Community a smart decision for campuses of all sizes! Unlimited users? That's included, too!
We’re here to help
Symplicity’s MBA Community support team is comprised of student affairs professionals that have years of experience in business schools. We know how important great customer service is to our partners and have many easy ways to reach out to our friendly MBA Community support experts.
MBA Community Support Resources
Have an Extranet Account?
If you need an account please contact us.
Symplicity Client Extranet:
The Symplicity Client Extranet is where clients can login to ask system related questions, report and track issues, and access documentation. It is the best and easiest way to connect with us!
Email:community-support@symplicity.com
Phone: 703-647-3140
*Note: Our client extranet is monitored 24 hours.
Email and Phone support available between 9am – 7pm Monday – Friday.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does your system fully integrate with our Information System?
A: Absolutely! Community supports full connectivity with university information systems using systems integration best practices and methods such as sFTP and/or web services-SOAP. Other integration methods are also available upon request based on the institution's preference.
Q: Is there online and telephone support available? Online self-help?
A: Symplicity provides technical support 24/7/365. Additionally, live online and telephone support is available between the hours of 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time. We also provide context sensitive online help, detailed user manuals, cheat sheets, and training videos at your fingertips through our client extranet!
Q: Is Symplicity focused on MBA Programs?
A: Absolutely. The MBA Community Group is an autonomous organization within Symplicity that focuses solely on creating and managing systems for MBA Programs. Furthermore, Symplicity understands the unique needs of business schools and designs specific systems around those needs.
Q: Do you conduct nightly backups? If so, to how many geographic locations?
A: Yes. Symplicity conducts nightly backups in two geographic locations on Symplicity's own server infrastructure. If anything happens to your data, you can rest assured that we have your back. You never need to worry about losing data.
Q: What is the process for training?
A: The Community Group offers unlimited web-based training. Training sessions are conducted by former higher education professionals who have implemented Community before and have a deep understanding of the product at the higher ed administrative level. Additionally, you'll have your own training specialist completely concentrated on your needs during the transition.
Q: Is the email tracking included in the base system?
A: Yes. Symplicity knows how important communication is to a business school. Since this is such an important tool to MBA programs, Symplicity decided that it should not be a module but in fact a part of the base system.
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Location: Hyde Park, Illinois
School Size: 2,816
Year of MBA Community Implementation: 2010
Modules Used:
Online Directory
LinkedIn Integration
Facebook Integration
Club and Chapter Management
Challenge
The question of how to bring students and alumni/ae together and ensure that they are involved with the institution is something that many institutions struggle with. Having the right technology is crucial to ensuring that you are able to enhance connections between students and alumni and foster long term involvement with the business school.
Alums and students are the lifeblood of an institution and how an institution utilizes them can mean the difference between a good program and a truly great one. Without donations from former students, institutions would not be able to grow and develop more programs and reach new markets. It is also crucial to keep them engaged and connected with current students so that they can be resources for finding jobs and internships.
Knowing the importance of connections, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business was looking for an online community where their alums and students could connect for networking purposes. They also wanted to have access to robust tools on the administrative side as well. They had seen other systems that were designed for alumni/ae to reach other alums but as far as engaging and connecting students with alums, the systems out there were inadequate.
Solution
They then reached out to Symplicity to see if Symplicity could provide a solution to their problems. Working together, Symplicity and UC Booth created an MBA system designed around a business school's unique needs that has powerful and intuitive tools designed for networking, email marketing and information management.
Knowing that having a system in which alums and students would help update their data would make the system much more impressive, Symplicity included a user interface with a modern look and feel that allowed users to easily navigate the system and keep their information up to date.
Since the system supports both students and alums, they also saw an increase in usage after graduation. This is due to the fact that those using the system as students were much more likely to continue using it after graduation, because they didn’t have to learn a brand new system.
They also wanted the system to be able to handle their student and alumni groups, as well as their events. Partnering with Symplicity, they created an in-depth group management system with an intuitive and easy to use event module. They also wanted it to be able to integrate with a students calendar so that there would be a higher adoption rate for the system.
Outcome
After implementation of the system, UC Booth has seen record numbers of alums and students logging into the system and using it for networking purposes. They have a minimum of 300 unique visitors per week and over 12,000 active users on the system.
They are able to more easily keep their alumni/ae information up to date thanks to the large amount of alums using the system and keeping their information current. They also were able to see a huge increase in the number of events created by students and able to easily track attendance by event like never before.
They have also been able to maintain a high level of employment upon graduation in spite of the adverse economic conditions. By connecting students with alums and employers the Booth School of Business can be sure that they are providing their constituents with the network they need to be successful in any economic climate. Alums and students the peace of mind in knowing that their information is not being shared with third parties.
By using the MBA Community system saves Chicago Booth both time and money. They now require fewer staff members dedicated to alumni/ae outreach, and they benefit from the increased employment opportunities provided by a very active online community.