AI & Automation Development for Career Training Institute
- AI Development API Development Custom Software Development
- $50,000 to $199,999
- Apr. - Aug. 2024
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"What made this team different was their deep, almost intuitive understanding of the higher education landscape."
- Education
- West Miami, Florida
- 51-200 Employees
- Online Review
- Verified
Ares Group Business Consulting developed and deployed an advanced Voice AI agent for a career training institute. The team also automated the student operational onboarding process, from CRM to LMS enrollment.
Ares Group Business Consulting exceeded the client's expectations. The team improved the lead response time by initiating contact within five minutes and reduced onboarding time to 15 minutes. Ares Group Business Consulting provided real-time dashboards and was knowledgeable about the field.
The client submitted this review online.
BACKGROUND
Please describe your company and position.
I am a Director at Florida Education Institute
Describe what your company does in a single sentence.
30 Years of Hands-on Training in Healthcare, Culinary, Business & Skilled Trades in South Florida
Florida Education Institute has been providing student-centered, hands-on, career education in the Miami-Dade and South Florida area for over three decades, offering both diploma and associate degree programs within the healthcare, business, culinary arts, and technical fields. Our comprehensive training programs are designed to meet the needs of both students and employers, ensuring our courses equip students with the skills needed to be successful in their chosen career.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ares Group Business Consulting to accomplish?
- Advanced Voice AI Agent to prequalify and Nurture Prospect Students
- CRM Rules to trigger call after defined events
- End-to-End Student Lifecycle Automation. From CRM Lead, SIS, Microsoft and LMS Enrollment
SOLUTION
How did you find Ares Group Business Consulting?
Online Search
Why did you select Ares Group Business Consulting over others?
- Close to my geographic location
- Pricing fit our budget
- Good value for cost
How many teammates from Ares Group Business Consulting were assigned to this project?
2-5 Employees
Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.
Project 1: Accelerating Admissions: AI-Powered Lead Qualification and Proactive Outbound Calling
This project focuses on automating the top of the admissions funnel. The scope involves developing and deploying an advanced Voice AI agent to handle initial outreach, pre-qualification, and nurturing of prospective students. This AI will then intelligently trigger tasks for human advisors in the CRM, ensuring they engage with the most promising leads at the right time.
Scope of Work:
Discovery and Strategy:
Define and document the precise criteria for a "qualified lead" in collaboration with the admissions team.
Map the conversational flows, scripts, and branching logic the Voice AI will use to pre-qualify and nurture prospects.
Define the specific CRM events (e.g., lead score threshold met, positive response to a key question) that will trigger a hand-off to a human advisor.
Voice AI Agent Development:
Configure and train the Voice AI agent with the approved scripts, using a natural and brand-aligned voice.
Implement Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to accurately interpret prospect responses and questions.
Integrate the Voice AI with the CRM to pull lead information and push back conversation logs, summaries, and updated lead statuses.
CRM Automation Configuration:
Build the workflows in the CRM that listen for trigger events from the AI.
Automate the creation of "proactive call" tasks for admissions advisors, pre-populating them with the AI's conversation summary and context.
Develop dashboards and reports to monitor the AI's performance, including call volume, qualification rates, and successful hand-offs.
Testing, Deployment, and Training:
Conduct rigorous end-to-end testing in a sandbox environment, followed by a live pilot with a small segment of leads.
Refine the AI's logic and CRM rules based on pilot performance and team feedback.
Train the admissions team on the new workflow and how to best leverage the insights provided by the AI.
Key Deliverables:
A fully configured and deployed Voice AI agent capable of engaging prospective students.
Documented AI conversation scripts and logical flows.
A set of automated CRM workflows that trigger calls for qualified leads.
A performance dashboard to track key metrics for the AI agent and its impact on the admissions funnel.
Training materials and user guides for the admissions team.
Project 2: End-to-End Student Lifecycle Automation: From CRM Lead to LMS Enrollment
This project focuses on automating the operational onboarding of a student after they have been accepted and enrolled. The scope is to create a seamless, zero-touch workflow that provisions a new student across all essential campus systems immediately after they are marked as "Enrolled" in the CRM.
Scope of Work:
System & Process Analysis:
Map the entire data flow and identify all data points required for onboarding, from the initial CRM record to final course assignment in the LMS.
Analyze the API capabilities of the four core systems: Leadsquared (CRM), the Student Information System (SIS), Microsoft 365, and CipherLMS.
Define the primary trigger (e.g., "Status = Enrolled" in Leadsquared) that initiates the entire automation chain.
Integration Development:
Establish robust API connections to create a cohesive workflow. This may be done using an integration platform or direct connections.
CRM → SIS: On trigger, automatically create a new student record in the SIS using data from the CRM.
SIS → Microsoft 365: Once a student ID is generated in the SIS, automatically create a user account in Azure Active Directory, generate a university email address, and assign the correct Microsoft 365 license.
SIS → LMS: Concurrently, create a student account in CipherLMS using the official record from the SIS.
Program → LMS Course Assignment: Based on the student's program data from the SIS, automatically enroll them in their required introductory courses in CipherLMS.
Error Handling and Monitoring:
Build a resilient error-handling protocol to manage any API failures or data mismatches.
Implement an automated notification system to alert administrators of any failures in the workflow.
Create detailed logging for the entire process to enable quick troubleshooting.
Testing and Validation:
Perform comprehensive end-to-end testing in a sandbox environment to ensure data integrity across all platforms.
Run a supervised pilot with a small batch of new students to validate the workflow in a live environment.
Key Deliverables:
A fully functional, end-to-end automated student onboarding workflow.
Active and documented API integrations between Leadsquared, the SIS, Microsoft 365, and CipherLMS.
A centralized system for logging and error notifications.
Complete technical documentation of the integration architecture, data mappings, and business rules.
A final validation report confirming the success of the pilot program and readiness for full deployment.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
Project 1: Accelerating Admissions (AI Voice Agent)
The primary goal here was to increase the speed and quality of our lead engagement. The results have exceeded our expectations:
Lead Response Time: Our speed-to-lead has seen a dramatic improvement. Previously, it could take our team up to 48 hours to contact a new prospect. The AI agent now initiates contact within 5 minutes of a lead entering our CRM. This immediate engagement has been a key differentiator.
Admissions Advisor Efficiency: By automating the initial pre-qualification calls, we have freed up approximately 15-20 hours per week for each admissions advisor. They no longer spend time on repetitive outreach or chasing unqualified leads. Instead, their time is now dedicated to high-value consultations with prospects the AI has already vetted and warmed up.
Lead Qualification Rate: The AI is successfully qualifying leads at a consistent rate. More importantly, the quality of the hand-off is higher. We've seen a 35% increase in our lead-to-application conversion rate for prospects handled by the AI, as our advisors can build rapport from a much stronger starting point.
Operational Insight: The dashboards give us a real-time view of the top of our funnel that we never had before. We can track how many calls are made, the outcome of those calls, and qualification trends, allowing us to be much more data-driven in our admissions strategy.
Project 2: End-to-End Student Lifecycle Automation (Onboarding)
This project was about eliminating manual bottlenecks and improving the student experience from the moment they enroll. The success here is measured in speed, accuracy, and scalability:
Time to Full Provisioning: This is our most impressive metric. Our previous manual onboarding process took anywhere from 3 to 5 business days. The new automated workflow provisions a student across all systems—SIS, Microsoft 365 email and license, and LMS with courses assigned—in under 15 minutes.
Reduction in Manual Errors: By eliminating manual data entry across four different systems, we have virtually eradicated common errors like misspelled names or incorrect ID numbers. This has led to an 85% reduction in onboarding-related IT support tickets during our peak enrollment periods.
Improved Student Experience: New students now receive their login credentials and access to their courses almost instantly after completing their enrollment. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. They feel welcomed and ready to go from day one, rather than feeling frustrated by administrative delays.
Scalability for Growth: During our recent Spring 2025 intake, we onboarded a record number of students without hiring additional administrative staff or requiring overtime. The system handled the peak volume seamlessly, proving it can support our future growth ambitions without a proportional increase in operational costs.
In summary, these projects have provided a significant return on investment, not just in terms of financial savings and efficiency, but in building a more modern, responsive, and student-centric institution. The solutions delivered were robust, technically sound, and exceeded our initial goals. We saw immediate and significant ROI through improved efficiency, accuracy, and a vastly better student experience.
Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?
They managed both complex projects with a level of professionalism and transparency that gave us a great deal of confidence throughout the entire process.
Their project management approach was both structured and agile. From the outset, they provided a clear project charter with a detailed timeline, key milestones, and deliverables. We had weekly sync-up meetings without fail, and their status reports were always concise and informative, so we never had to guess where things stood. They gave us access to a shared project dashboard, which was fantastic for transparency. Even when we encountered an unexpected issue with one of our legacy systems, their team managed it so effectively that the project remained perfectly on schedule. We had complete confidence in their time management.
The gains in staff efficiency, reduction in operational errors, and direct impact on our student conversion rates have delivered value that far outweighs the initial cost. It was a strategic investment that has already paid for itself.
What was your primary form of communication with Ares Group Business Consulting?
In-Person Meeting
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
Many companies can build you a piece of software or configure an automation. What made this team different was their deep, almost intuitive understanding of the higher education landscape. They didn't just talk about APIs and workflows; they talked about the student journey, enrollment funnels, and the importance of the student experience from first contact to first class. The entire process felt like a genuine partnership, the results were transformative for our operations, and they have earned our trust completely. We would re-engage them without hesitation and give them our highest recommendation.
Are there any areas for improvement or something Ares Group Business Consulting could have done differently?
Let me be clear, the technical documentation they provided was incredibly thorough and has been a great resource for our core IT team. But something like a series of short, two-minute video tutorials or a simplified "if-then" troubleshooting guide would have been tremendously helpful. Overall highly recommended
RATINGS
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Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
"Outstanding. Exceptional. They operated as true strategic partners, not just vendors."
-
Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
"Amazing. They provided a clear project timeline from the very beginning and met every single deadline without exception."
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Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
"Excellent value. The return on investment has been phenomenal."
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Willing to Refer
5.0NPS
"I have already recommended them to a peer institution in our network.
