Overview
A behavioral healthcare organization focused on providing treatment and recovery support services for individuals navigating mental health, eating disorder and substance use challenges recently partnered with DecisivEdge.
They wanted to modernize and standardize its alumni engagement operations.
Prior to the engagement, alumni outreach and follow-up activities were managed primarily through spreadsheets, and this reliance on manual inputs created disconnects, operational inconsistencies, and limited reporting visibility.
Using Salesforce, DecisivEdge helped this behavioral health organization centralize alumni data, automate follow-up workflows, standardize coordinator activities, and introduce foundational reporting capabilities. The initiative established a more organized and scalable framework for managing alumni engagement activities.
What is Alumni Management in Behavioral Health?
In behavioral healthcare, alumni management refers to the ongoing coordination of post-discharge engagement, communication, and recovery support for former patients.
Many behavioral health organizations maintain alumni programs to help individuals remain connected after treatment through follow-up outreach, support groups, wellness check-ins, events, educational resources, and peer engagement opportunities.
Operationally, alumni management involves coordinating alumni outreach, follow-up schedules, communication history, engagement activities, and post-discharge support programming.
Challenge
In this particular behavioral health organization’s alumni program, everything was largely operated through manual coordination and disconnected tracking methods such as spreadsheets.
This meant the organization faced several operational challenges:
- Alumni engagement activities were tracked inconsistently across coordinators
- Follow-ups relied heavily on manual outreach and personal processes
- Data was maintained in spreadsheets and fragmented systems
- There was little standardization across alumni engagement workflows
- Leadership had limited visibility into engagement activities and outcomes
- Coordinators lacked centralized dashboards or structured task management
- There was no automation supporting post-discharge engagement journeys
As the organization continued to grow, the limitations of the manual process would become increasingly difficult to scale.
Solution
To guide the transformation, DecisivEdge aligned the engagement to an ‘Alumni Program Maturity Model’ designed to help organizations evolve from fragmented, manual alumni management processes into more centralized and scalable operational frameworks.
At the beginning of the engagement, the behavioral health organization operated in a largely ad hoc environment with manual tracking, limited visibility, inconsistent outreach processes, and little automation.
DecisivEdge implemented a Salesforce-based alumni engagement solution designed to centralize alumni operations and improve post-discharge engagement management.
The solution focused on creating repeatable, standardized workflows that could be consistently used across the organization.
1. Centralized Alumni Management
A centralized Salesforce environment was established to consolidate alumni information, engagement history, follow-up activities, and coordinator workflows.
2. Automated Follow-Up Workflows
The new process introduced workflow automation tied to discharge events.
When a patient was discharged and identified as an alumni candidate:
- Follow-up workflows were automatically initiated
- Scheduled engagement activities were created
- Coordinators received task reminders for outreach activities
- Follow-up timelines were standardized across the organization
3. Guided Coordinator Activities
DecisivEdge also implemented workflow-driven task management within Salesforce.
Coordinators gained visibility into:
- Daily outreach responsibilities
- Scheduled follow-up activities
- Alumni engagement timelines
- Standardized interaction processes
4. Foundational Reporting & Visibility
The implementation introduced basic reporting and dashboard capabilities to improve operational oversight.
- Alumni engagement activities
- Follow-up completion status
- Coordinator workflows
- Overall process consistency
Results
The Salesforce implementation helped the organization transition from a fragmented and manually managed alumni engagement process to a more centralized and standardized operational model.
Following the implementation, the organization established:
- Improved consistency in post-discharge engagement processes
- Greater operational alignment across alumni coordinators
- Reduced reliance on disconnected spreadsheets and manual tracking methods
- More structured and repeatable outreach workflows
- Foundational reporting visibility into engagement activities
The implementation also provided coordinators with clearer visibility into daily outreach responsibilities and engagement timelines, helping create a more structured and repeatable operational process.
Looking ahead, the organization now has a stronger foundation for expanding reporting, engagement measurement, and implementing those learnings over time.