Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand: Transforming Early Education with StoreConnect

Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand (ECNZ) has long been at the forefront of shaping early childhood education, ensuring that every child’s potential is ignited.

Looking to always bring the highest value to their members and customers, Te Rito Maioha undertook to upgrade their online offering to provide a true seamless digital experience. With their mission is to inspire, empower and educate teachers and learners, embracing cultures and languages to ensure every child’s potential is ignited - they recognized the need to elevate their online presence and had experienced significant challenges with their extant software solution and needed to make significant changes.

With the help of StoreConnect commerce, built on the Salesforce platform, Te Rito Maioha has now transformed its operations, creating a more efficient, user-friendly, and impactful online presence and member experience.

The Vision Behind the Transformation

One of Aotearoa New Zealand’s top tertiary education providers, Te Rito Maioha is a bicultural organization committed to advocacy, teaching, and the delivery of world-class early childhood education.

Te Rito Maioha offer a comprehensive range of educational programmes tailored for those interested in early childhood and primary education. Their offerings span from professional workplace development to diplomas, undergraduate degrees, graduate diplomas, postgraduate and masters degrees. Their programmes integrate online learning with practical experience, reflecting Te Rito Maioha’s commitment to bicultural practice and flexible study options

Their purpose (“Tō tātou kaupapa”)¹ focuses on inspiring, empowering and educating teachers and learners, embracing cultures and languages to ensure every child’s potential is ignited, while their commitment (“Te Pae Tata”)² centers on the delivery of world class teacher education for tamariki³, whānau⁴, kaiako⁵, ECE services and schools.

When Te Rito Maioha’s outdated online storefront began hindering their ability to communicate this mission effectively, they turned to StoreConnect commerce to solve their problems.

As an existing Salesforce user, Te Rito Maioha’s Salesforce implementation partner, GravityLab, helped them to evaluate all possible solutions and StoreConnect met the majority of functionality needed straight out of the box, at a highly competitive price.

A key bonus was the fact that StoreConnect is built on Salesforce, meaning Te Rito Maioha could capitalize on their existing Salesforce investment without having to go off platform to third party suppliers and integrate with Salesforce.

Key features implemented include:

• Different price books for standard and membership pricing.
• Restricted product access based on membership levels.
• Event management for both face-to-face and virtual events.
• Customized themes reflecting Te Rito Maioha’s brand.

Challenge #1: An Outdated, Inflexible Storefront

Te Rito Maioha’s previous website platform lacked customisation and failed to represent their brand identity. The layout was inconsistent, and users struggled to find essential information. They were restricted from building exactly what they wanted.

The StoreConnect Solution:

It didn’t take long for the management team at Te Rito Maioha to realise that StoreConnect offered a comprehensive out-of-the-box solution and was the solution they had been searching for. They saw that StoreConnect allowed for branding in a more elegant way and ticked all the boxes. Its flexibility would allow Te Rito Maioha’s mission to be reflected through a clean, concise, and visually engaging website, easily managed from within their Salesforce org.

Results:

• A website that mirrors the organization’s values and brand identity.
• Enhanced user experience with information displayed in a clear and organized manner.
• Customers can now find what they need with ease, significantly reducing support queries.
• All website content is managed within Salesforce - no separate login to update and manage the site.

“Our purpose and values are the first thing you see on the homepage. The imagery reflects what we do. We can now display more information in a clear, clean, consistent, and succinct way, not only saving our customer’s time but also our internal team,” Alissa shared. The experience when booking and paying for PLD and purchasing physical products (books) has been improved.”

Challenge #2: Frustrating Application Processes

Previously, prospective students and members frequently struggled to find the “Apply Now” button, leading to numerous inquiries and a poor user experience. This led to frequent messages from applicants asking how to apply to study.

The StoreConnect Solution:

With StoreConnect, Te Rito Maioha implemented a pinned navigation bar, ensuring that key actions like “Apply Now” are always accessible at the top of any page, no matter where users are on the site.

Results:

• Seamless navigation that empowers users to apply for programmes quickly without navigating back to earlier pages.
• A streamlined experience, reducing frustration and saving time for both users and staff.

My aim was to have everything available to our users in 5 clicks. With StoreConnect that goal was achieved, said Alissa. In our recent member survey (November-December 2024), 63% indicated that it is easy to find information on our new website with 30% indicating it was very easy.

Challenge #3: Complex Membership Management

Managing memberships and pulling reports were cumbersome tasks on the old platform. The backend interface was complicated, leading to inefficiencies and frustration among staff.

“If someone made a purchase, our team had to go off and find more information. It was so hard. The user interface was so unfriendly in the back end,” explains Alissa. Our membership advisor has seen efficiencies.”

The StoreConnect Solution:

Built on Salesforce, StoreConnect provided an intuitive interface for managing memberships, subscriptions, and reports, directly from the Salesforce interface. All purchase information is directly in Salesforce in real time. Accurate tailored reports can be created and accessed with a click of a button. The single sign-on integration with Salesforce Experience Cloud allowed Te Rito Maioha to authenticate users and manage members with ease, with no third party system complexity involved.

Results:

• Streamlined membership management with reduced manual work.
• Positive feedback from staff, who find the system intuitive and efficient.
• Customizations, including different price books and benefit tracking, tailored to Te Rito Maioha’s needs.

“Our team can now pull reports effortlessly. The frustration is gone, and positivity has replaced it, with praise of the new system,” Alissa remarked.

Additional Benefits and Future Opportunities

• Rapid Landing Page Creation: Landing pages that once took the better part of a day to build can now be created in minutes.
• Reduced Dependency on Third-Party Tools: StoreConnect’s comprehensive functionality eliminates the need for multiple SaaS products, bringing everything into Salesforce, with a single source of customer data.
• Continuous Learning: The StoreConnect Academy provides ongoing support and learning opportunities for Te Rito Maioha’s team, with help articles, how to video tutorials and guided learning ensuring they can leverage the platform to its fullest.

Having the StoreConnect Academy back you up, wherever you are, is invaluable. It’s user-friendly, interactive, and fun, said Alissa.

“StoreConnect is a bit of a beast in terms of functionality, and we haven’t even scratched the surface yet,” she concluded.

Partner Collaboration: Building a Customized Solution

Te Rito Maioha’s Salesforce implementation partner, GravityLab, did the full StoreConnect implementation for Te Rito Maioha.

StoreConnect worked by providing a completely new storefront, with subscription management capabilities and the ability to authenticate via the Salesforce Community. This then goes back to StoreConnect straight away and allows different pricing options with different price books, said Jarrod Siebert, Senior Salesforce Consultant at GravityLab, who led the implementation.

StoreConnect met the majority of functionality straight out of the box. We then customized the memberships section and then we also built on a benefit component into the mix which tracks usage and purchases. We then customized the theme with help from the StoreConnect team.

Because StoreConnect’s powerful out-of-the-box functionality required minimal customization, Jarrod noted that support tickets have been rare: This allows us to focus on building the knowledge base and proactive education, rather than reacting to issues.

The Impact

Te Rito Maioha’s digital transformation with StoreConnect has revolutionized their operations and user experience. By aligning technology with their mission, Te Rito Maioha is now better equipped to support tamariki[3], whānau[4], and kaiako[5] across the country.

With StoreConnect and Salesforce, Te Rito Maioha has set a strong foundation for the future of education in New Zealand.