HE Partnerships
The higher education sector is innovating and expanding through the support of partners. Universities need to be reassured that they have the best commercial or charitable partnerships in place. Our job is to forge strong and credible connections that work for everyone involved.
To enable partners to stimulate interest and fulfil demand among universities, we help them to:
- Understand the needs of educators.
- Promote their expertise and services effectively.
- Ensure partners link into the sector’s priorities.
- Demonstrate the value and difference partners can deliver.
The issue
There are audiences crying out for the knowledge held within universities. Commissioners in consulting, applied research, training, legislation and justice, publishing, conferencing, policy and media are keenly aware of the need to draw insights from credible experts. But higher education is often perceived as introspective and slow to respond to this demand. ExpertFile offers a platform that bridges this gap by driving attention, interaction and trust between academics and their key audiences. Communications Management has worked with ExpertFile since 2018 to make this service available to 7 UK clients including 6 universities.
How we worked together
We realised the opportunity.
ExpertFile commissioned us to undertake a full UK sales and marketing assessment. From our 30 years working in the sector, we identified the universities with the most to gain. We defined the benefits of encouraging their academics to share their expertise broadly – with the public, the media, commercial organisations and their research partners.
We advised on a sales approach that enabled ExpertFile to promote long-term partnerships in a way that’s accessible to institutions’ budgets. And we developed content and services that keep ExpertFile ‘top of mind’ in UK higher education.
ExpertFile’s audit of academic experts is one example, supporting universities to review, update, equip and expand the pool of academics ready and willing to engage in sharing their insights.
The results
Our involvement has made ExpertFile’s platform available to universities outside Canada and the USA. There are now over 500 UK academics whose expertise can be searched for and found globally. ExpertFile tracks the number of enquiries to each academic every month. Key to forging successful partnerships has been our work to clarify the strategic benefits for universities and the issues that matter to their communications professionals.