Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Unispotter (International higher education student recruitment going mobile)
Período documentado: 2018-12-01 hasta 2019-03-31
Getting into the right university is hard. Students lack guidance and orientation in the university application journey. Today 1.7 out of 5 million international students turn to agents for help, but receive poor and impersonal service that is also very expensive. All agents are human – meaning the market is restricted by human efficiency, error and repetitiveness. The market is non-transparent, fragmented and heterogeneous.
Universities globally spend €3.4 billion on agent commissions because they lack resources and knowledge to recruit internationally themselves. But there are over 16,000 agents globally and they don’t know who to trust. Often, universities work with 100+ demanding agents at one time resulting in high management effort.
Unispotter moves online, under a single app, all the fragmented information provided by traditional agents. Unispotter claims control and transparency for its users, making the complex admission process accessible to anyone, from scouting to enrolment, just like Monster.com did for the job seeking market two decades ago.
Unispotter transforms higher education admission and disrupts the education agent marketplace. Unispotter is a mobile platform designed to match the right students with the right universities. Unispotter is about delivering the changes needed to meet the expectations of universities and prospective students alike in the most efficient manner possible – by replacing traditional agents with a transparent, digital, automated, mobile app delivering end-to-end recruitment support services. This change is supported by two vital digital trends today: mobile internet penetration will double by 2022, and smartphone penetration will reach 70% that year. Already, 52% of students globally use their smartphone to research universities. Unispotter will enable users to get access to information and get in direct contact with universities, while universities will have the tools in hand to reach potential applicants worldwide actively, in a single source.
Unispotter is part of the solution to the problems addressed by the European Unions’ Strategic framework on Education & Training 2020 by ensuring access to higher education, international student mobility, and brain gain in Europe. The ministers of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have agreed to double the proportion of students completing a study or training period abroad to 20% by 2020. One of the ways to achieve this proposed by the EC is to ‘encourage student entrepreneurs and innovative university-business cooperation’ – conditions meet by Unispotter. Students and researchers from non-EU countries are also recognised by the EC as “vital contributors to growth and competitiveness with their knowledge and skills”, and the EC understands the need for clear information to attract these students. Unispotter will help remove accessibility barriers for student mobility by providing a global solution for all.
Universities globally spend €3.4 billion on agent commissions because they lack resources and knowledge to recruit internationally themselves. But there are over 16,000 agents globally and they don’t know who to trust. Often, universities work with 100+ demanding agents at one time resulting in high management effort.
Unispotter moves online, under a single app, all the fragmented information provided by traditional agents. Unispotter claims control and transparency for its users, making the complex admission process accessible to anyone, from scouting to enrolment, just like Monster.com did for the job seeking market two decades ago.
Unispotter transforms higher education admission and disrupts the education agent marketplace. Unispotter is a mobile platform designed to match the right students with the right universities. Unispotter is about delivering the changes needed to meet the expectations of universities and prospective students alike in the most efficient manner possible – by replacing traditional agents with a transparent, digital, automated, mobile app delivering end-to-end recruitment support services. This change is supported by two vital digital trends today: mobile internet penetration will double by 2022, and smartphone penetration will reach 70% that year. Already, 52% of students globally use their smartphone to research universities. Unispotter will enable users to get access to information and get in direct contact with universities, while universities will have the tools in hand to reach potential applicants worldwide actively, in a single source.
Unispotter is part of the solution to the problems addressed by the European Unions’ Strategic framework on Education & Training 2020 by ensuring access to higher education, international student mobility, and brain gain in Europe. The ministers of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have agreed to double the proportion of students completing a study or training period abroad to 20% by 2020. One of the ways to achieve this proposed by the EC is to ‘encourage student entrepreneurs and innovative university-business cooperation’ – conditions meet by Unispotter. Students and researchers from non-EU countries are also recognised by the EC as “vital contributors to growth and competitiveness with their knowledge and skills”, and the EC understands the need for clear information to attract these students. Unispotter will help remove accessibility barriers for student mobility by providing a global solution for all.
The feasibility study answered critical open questions of Unispotter’s business plan, verified major parts of the plan and revealed new growth opportunities. The research involved customer development interviews, focus groups, online secondary research, live app tests & usability tests. The outcome provides a clear conclusion to continue Unispotter's expansion. The current business plan has been updated based on the conclusions of actions from the feasibility study and handed in for the Horizon 2020 SME Phase 2 application. Access to funding like the Phase 2 grant would be useful to execute the updated business plan and build a global student recruitment platform ‘made in Europe’.
Achievements during the feasibility study:
- Handled applications from 10+ students
- Successfully changed the app internationalisation strategy and built a pipeline of 1,200+ students planning to study abroad the next 3 years
- Signed 7 new direct university partnerships from 4 European countries
- Signed 2 contracts with partner networks accessing 150+ universities from Australia, New Zealand and the UK
- App process: 8 new app releases with features and concepts developed during the feasibility study
Commercial conclusion of action (summary):
1) Positioning Unispotter as a global brand ‘Made in Europe’
2) Unispotter will roll out the global university database and commission partnership network in two phases (first partner networks & then direct partnerships)
3) Unispotter will change the app internationalisation strategy from a global to a transnational strategy. The two key elements of Unispotter’s internationalisation plan are a global brand strategy and a local marketing & operations strategy
4) Unispotter’s growth strategy is based on success stories of students and a referral (affiliate) program
Technological conclusion of action (summary):
1) Unispotter will continue the mobile-first approach and expand the university database with universities from selected European countries
2) Unispotter will put more emphasis on a content strategy to engage users, build trust, increase user retention (combination of chatbot, video content & article database)
3) The product vision has been refined with new value added services for students & universities
Achievements during the feasibility study:
- Handled applications from 10+ students
- Successfully changed the app internationalisation strategy and built a pipeline of 1,200+ students planning to study abroad the next 3 years
- Signed 7 new direct university partnerships from 4 European countries
- Signed 2 contracts with partner networks accessing 150+ universities from Australia, New Zealand and the UK
- App process: 8 new app releases with features and concepts developed during the feasibility study
Commercial conclusion of action (summary):
1) Positioning Unispotter as a global brand ‘Made in Europe’
2) Unispotter will roll out the global university database and commission partnership network in two phases (first partner networks & then direct partnerships)
3) Unispotter will change the app internationalisation strategy from a global to a transnational strategy. The two key elements of Unispotter’s internationalisation plan are a global brand strategy and a local marketing & operations strategy
4) Unispotter’s growth strategy is based on success stories of students and a referral (affiliate) program
Technological conclusion of action (summary):
1) Unispotter will continue the mobile-first approach and expand the university database with universities from selected European countries
2) Unispotter will put more emphasis on a content strategy to engage users, build trust, increase user retention (combination of chatbot, video content & article database)
3) The product vision has been refined with new value added services for students & universities
Agents are unreliable. All agents are human – meaning the market is restricted by human efficiency, error and repetitiveness. The market is non-transparent, fragmented and heterogeneous. The growing number of agents caused new problems in the market. The fight for students made agents only look after their own profit and pairing up students with random international universities where they get the highest commission. Students have lost trust in non-transparent agencies but have no other solution they can turn to. Instead of orientation, students receive poor service. In Europe, 19% of students used an agent to find the right university and only 38% are very satisfied with the service they received. Even more dramatic, in 2016, in Asia, 41% of students used an agent to go abroad. Only 19% were very satisfied, and more than 21% are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the service they received.
Unispotter made significant progress showing that empowering young people as opposed to creating fear can have a much broader impact on young peoples lives. Unispotter became an even more learner oriented company during the last 6 month focussed on building relationships with students through a digital approach. Unispotter is a flexible service with many growth and spinoff opportunities, ready to serve the growing student mobility market currently in full transformation.
Furthermore, Unispotter is using AI and automated processes to revolutionise the way universities establish first contact with prospective applicants, radically modernising their recruitment processes. This approach responds to H2020 call for Socioeconomic and cultural transformations in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, and specifically to the DT-TRANSFORMATIONS-02-2018-2019-2020: Transformative impact of disruptive technologies in public services call for the use of disruptive technologies in public institutions, by bringing public universities recruitment processes to the next generation of digitalisation.
Expected results at the end of the project
> Global brand ambassador / testimonial network
> Financial break-even by Q1 2021
> Reach ~€2.85M in revenues by matching 1,900 students per year with the most fit university in year 3
> Find partners in the job market to bridge the gap between graduates and entry level jobs
Unispotter made significant progress showing that empowering young people as opposed to creating fear can have a much broader impact on young peoples lives. Unispotter became an even more learner oriented company during the last 6 month focussed on building relationships with students through a digital approach. Unispotter is a flexible service with many growth and spinoff opportunities, ready to serve the growing student mobility market currently in full transformation.
Furthermore, Unispotter is using AI and automated processes to revolutionise the way universities establish first contact with prospective applicants, radically modernising their recruitment processes. This approach responds to H2020 call for Socioeconomic and cultural transformations in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, and specifically to the DT-TRANSFORMATIONS-02-2018-2019-2020: Transformative impact of disruptive technologies in public services call for the use of disruptive technologies in public institutions, by bringing public universities recruitment processes to the next generation of digitalisation.
Expected results at the end of the project
> Global brand ambassador / testimonial network
> Financial break-even by Q1 2021
> Reach ~€2.85M in revenues by matching 1,900 students per year with the most fit university in year 3
> Find partners in the job market to bridge the gap between graduates and entry level jobs