AI tools and platforms to watch
Higher-ed teams are pushing TargetX and Outcomes CRM, while scholarship workflows and donor tracking are being automated by platforms like Tactiv — and a new Student Founder Copilot bot is verifying student status and surfacing opportunities for engagement. Those specific tools are showing up in recent social posts as practical tech options for scaling personalized outreach. ( )
Liaison completed its acquisition of TargetX in October 2020 and markets its combined suite as supporting more than 1,500 institutions worldwide. (insidehighered.com) The University of North Texas at Dallas publicly documented a TargetX rollout on July 11, 2025 that paired a new vice president and a dedicated CRM administrator with TargetX Premier Services to launch a “Trailblazer Express” direct-admissions program and centralized communications across admissions teams. (liaisonedu.com) Liaison’s Outcomes CRM is promoted for admissions-to-engagement continuity and has been deployed for GradCAS/EngineeringCAS workflows at Washington State University while Liaison runs webinars showing Outcomes’ integration with PharmCAS for pharmacy-school applicant management. (gradschool.wsu.edu) Tactiv’s Enquire scholarship module reports operational gains in a client case study: BUSY at Work expects to save up to 10 hours per week with automated check-ins, cut application processing KPIs from 60 days to 10 days (with most handled within five days), and produce ad-hoc reports within an hour. (tactiv.net) Tactiv positions Enquire as a fully configurable lifecycle-management platform used across scholarships, grants, research funding and impact reporting for higher-education, government and nonprofit programs, highlighting bulk actions, e-forms and on‑the‑fly reporting as core features. (tactiv.net) The open-source Student Founder Copilot project on GitHub describes a Telegram-based AI assistant that converts a student’s prompt into a project plan and supporting materials for hackathon submissions and can optionally generate a simple on‑chain proof of work. (github.com)
