Rock Valley College: A Community of Learners Unified by StoreConnect and Salesforce

Rock Valley College is a comprehensive community college in Rockford, Illinois, dedicated to empowering its community through lifelong learning.

With a diverse range of programs — from traditional curriculum-based courses to continuing education and everything in between — the college’s growing catalogue created a critical challenge: a fragmented, outdated system that caused chaos, frustration, and significant barriers for students and staff.

This is the story of how Rock Valley College, in partnership with StoreConnect and Salesforce, went from managing disparate, error-prone systems to creating a single, unified platform that has revolutionized operations and dramatically enhanced the student experience.

The Challenge

Before StoreConnect, each of Rock Valley College’s five branches operated in silos. The Community and Continuing Education (CCE) division relied on an enrollment system called “Instant Enrollment” — a solution that was anything but instant or enrolling-friendly.

The system was inflexible, offered zero customization, and triggered an endless stream of operational nightmares:

• Thousands of duplicate records created every year
• Students born after 1999 were automatically registered as over 100 years old (2004 → 1904!)
• Frequent checkout failures that drove students away
• Zero visibility into how (or if) students were registering online

“The whole team knew we needed a new solution. The product that was creating all the duplicate records just wasn’t working. We needed something that was user-friendly and would check all the boxes.”

— David Schneider, Dean of Enrollment Services, Rock Valley College

It was during the search for a modern solution that Rock Valley College was introduced to StoreConnect by their implementation partner, Servio Consulting.

The Solution

Rock Valley College had already begun implementing Salesforce to bring uniformity across departments. The final piece of the puzzle was a registration and payment tool that lived natively inside Salesforce.

StoreConnect delivered exactly that — plus the “Amazon-like shopping cart experience” the CCE team had always dreamed of, complete with photos, rich descriptions, and a smooth, reliable checkout.

“If we can get the data going through Salesforce, that’s all we’re asking for — because the duplication of records is too much for us to clean up.”

— David Schneider, Dean of Enrollment Services, Rock Valley College

The Benefits

The transformation has been profound:

• Unprecedented data integrity — duplicate records are now virtually eliminated
• Modern, frustration-free student experience — parents can register multiple children in one checkout
• Full visibility into online registrations for the first time ever
• Empowered staff finally able to focus on growth instead of cleanup

“Before StoreConnect, manually merging records in our ERP was a nightmare amount of work. Now, with StoreConnect, we can simply run through the merge process in Salesforce.”

— Erik Rodgers, Salesforce CRM Administrator, Rock Valley College

“We can now focus on improvements instead of just trying to tread water.”

— David Schneider, Dean of Enrollment Services, Rock Valley College

Even a non-standard payment processor (ACI) that initially seemed like a roadblock was quickly solved through close collaboration between the StoreConnect and Servio teams.

Looking Ahead

With the biggest hurdles now behind them, Rock Valley College is already planning the next phase. Becky Lambert, Director of Community & Continuing Education, intends to bring the Center for Learning in Retirement (CLR) program onto StoreConnect as well.

When that happens, the college will have achieved its ultimate vision: one unified platform where all student data — across every division, every program, and every campus — flows seamlessly through Salesforce.

Rock Valley College has moved from chaos to clarity, from frustration937 to empowerment — proving that when the right technology meets the right vision, education truly becomes limitless.