Analysts pay a lot of attention to revenue, profit margins, cashflow, and other tangible markers of an organization’s value, but this only reveals a fraction of its real wealth. In truth, corporate alumni networks are organizations’ most valuable hidden assets, but they won’t ever appear on P&L statements. These vast reservoirs of talent are a powerful channel for business development. However, many stakeholders struggle with the complex demands of data management, preventing them from ever realizing the full power of their network.
These alumni data challenges (and their solution) took center stage at PeoplePath’s recent corporate alumni networking event, hosted by Accenture. For the panel, “Data-Driven Connections: Turning Insights into Influence,” Altrata’s Strategic Relationship Director Joanne Howard joined Sandy Gelinas, Employee & Alumni Engagement Director at AlixPartners, and Caren Scoropanos, Senior Director of Alumni Strategy & Engagement at KPMG US for a lively discussion about strategies for transforming static alumni lists into dynamic engines for growth. Karen from KPMG and Sandy from AlixPartners shared insights from their leading programs, while Joanne addressed the key challenges around corporate alumni data management, opportunities for data enrichment, and practical steps organizations can take to better engage their former employees.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the conversation.
Corporate alumni: an un-tapped goldmine
Corporate alumni are more than just former employees. Their ongoing journey brings them more decision-making abilities, broader experiences, deeper expertise, and more. All of this positions them as potential clients, strategic partners, advocates, and rehires. Their value extends far beyond a simple contact list, offering tangible benefits like:
- Greater Influence
Alumnae often ascend to high leadership positions at other organizations, massively expanding decision making authority and industry influence. In fact, recent Altrata data shows that consulting alumni now make up 15% of senior executives in the Global 500. At these heights, corporate alumni could become powerful business partners or serve as insider advocates. What’s more, their continued success is a testament to your organization’s ability to develop top talent, making them powerful brand advocates and credible sources for content or speaking engagements.
- Wider Access
Each corporate alumnae is a unique gateway into an entire web of connections at other companies and on boards, effectively making them bridges for new markets if you maintain a relationship with them. More importantly, they possess invaluable, ground level knowledge of the industry and competitive landscapes.
- Talent & Expertise Pipelines
Because of their familiarity with your org, paired with expanding talent and knowledge,
alumnae are also prime candidates for “boomerang” re-hires, mentors, or sources for
high-quality talent referrals.
Whether you’re just beginning to create a corporate alumni database from scratch or contending with data siloes spread across your entire organization, it’s possible to create a robust system that realizes the full value of your network as a strategic asset.
When leveraged effectively, this latent value translates into direct, tangible benefits across the business, from business development, to sourcing event speakers and beyond. Unfortunately, it’s still a challenge to access these potentials.
What is the challenge with corporate alumni data?
Like most challenges in the information age, the central problem with corporate alumni network engagement isn’t a lack of information, but inaccurate, incomplete, and siloed data that’s impossible to take real action on. These barriers manifest in three key areas:
Alumni Data Capture
Professionals are never stagnant, constantly making new connections, growing in their careers, and moving on to new opportunities. Unfortunately, getting that information into your database efficiently is one of the biggest challenges with corporate alumni data. Stumbling blocks include:
- One-Time Collection
Relying on a single data export from HR after offboarding, with no mechanism for ongoing updates about new roles, media mentions, career milestones or other data points that are critical for maintaining accurate profiles.
- Passive or Sporadic Updates
Alumni may lag on updating profiles, or neglect to self-report career advancement. What’s more, those that respond to surveys may only represent a small, highly engaged fraction of the total alumni network, leaving many blindspots in your database.
Data Management
The moment an employee leaves, the accuracy and relevance of the information you have about them begins to decay, quickly becoming outdated with the potential to get fragmented. This can present problems like:
- Duplicate Records
A single alum can have individual records in CRM, HR portals, and dozens more within an organization, creating fragmented profiles with wildly different information. - Tracking Multiple Current Roles
As alumni advance in their careers they often take on board, committee, nonprofit, and advisory roles outside of their job, revealing valuable connections and associations that can get lost in the shuffle
- No Universal Source of Truth
Without a single, “golden record,” it’s impossible to build a unified, accurate view of each alumnae and develop an action plan.
- Outreach Inaccuracy
Outdated information makes outreach irrelevant and even harmful to relationships if it diminishes credibility.
Utilization
Even companies with the cleanest data don’t benefit unless they can actually use it. Common utilization challenges discussed in the panel included:
- Data Silos
Alumni data is kept in standalone portals or spreadsheets, completely disconnected from the CRM and other systems used by business development, recruiting, and marketing teams.
- Lack of Enrichment
The data is superficial, answering questions about work location and title, but not the critical questions like what networks they’re a part of and who they’re affiliated with.
- Inability to Segment
Difficulty identifying alumnae based on small niche data points that are critical to creating high-value segments for personalized outreach.
Weaving corporate alumni data into gold
Whether you’re just beginning to create a corporate alumni database from scratch or contending with data siloes spread across your entire organization, it’s possible to create a robust system that realizes the full value of your network as a strategic asset. Fortunately, today’s technology makes this an easy shift, replacing time-consuming, manual processes with an integrated, intelligence-driven system.
Here’s how:
- Invest in a People Intelligence and Data Enrichment Platform
Save your team and alumni time and energy on updates and database management with a relationship intelligence platform to proactively receive updates on alumni career moves, new roles, and growing influence, even including insights about personal wealth and professional relationships.
- Integrate Corporate Alumni Data into Core Systems
Break down data silos by pushing enriched alumni data directly into your CRM (like Salesforce), HR systems, and dashboards. This turns static lists into actionable that intelligence, allowing sales and marketing teams to identify and act on opportunities within their existing workflow.
- Enrich and Utilize Data In Phases
Overhauling corporate alumni data is a big task, no matter how big or small your database is. Adopt a phased, segment-first approach to data enrichment and utilization to build positive momentum. Start with your highest-value segment (such as C-suite, senior executives, or boardmembers) who have the most decision making power — and the most potential ROI for successful engagement. Prioritizing a top down approach can help create quick, high-impact wins.
- Adopt Hyper-Personalized Engagement Strategies
In today’s oversaturated sales and marketing landscape, generic messaging won’t move the needle. Use enriched corporate alumni data to move beyond generic outreach with personalized, precise, and relevant messages. This transforms outreach from “sprayand-pray” to actual relationship-building, increasing engagement and conversion.
- Collaborate and Share Intelligence
Maintaining data hygiene and enrichment is a team effort that requires crossdepartmental collaboration. Use data management platforms to create a single source of truth that HR, marketing, and biz development teams can use as a shared asset for client acquisition, talent sourcing, event programming, advocacy, and beyond.
Transform corporate alumni data into an asset with Altrata
It’s true that corporate alumni networks represent a vast goldmine for the organizations that have them — but that goldmine can’t be converted into real wealth without the proper data, management, and utilization. Companies who want to activate their alumni effectively will need to move beyond static databases and adopt dynamic tools for people and relationship intelligence.
That’s where Altrata comes in.
Our platform directly addresses the core barriers to corporate alumni engagement with:
- Enhanced Data Acquisition and Accuracy
Altrata provides a continuous stream of verified, real-time data, automatically tracking alumni career moves, board appointments, and influence to eliminate outdated and decaying information.
- Advanced Data Management and Hygiene
Altrata builds a foundation for effective corporate alumni engagement by offering a single, trusted, and unified profile of each target. The platform uses sophisticated data matching techniques to eliminate duplicate records and ensure higher data quality.
- Integrated Data Utilization and Actionability
With seamless integration with leading CRM platforms (like Salesforce), Altrata transforms clean data into immediate, actionable intelligence. Your teams can instantly identify alumni within target accounts, source qualified speakers, and personalize outreach at scale.
Want to level up your alumni engagement? Schedule a demo with Altrata, today.