Tired of Tedious Tasks? Meet RNL Answers

Tired of being told that you have to do more with less or to drink another cup of coffee and keep going? Let RNL Answers help you get the more tedious parts of your day done faster so you can focus on relationship building and the student experience.

RNL has launched Answers, the newest addition to the RNL Edge AI portfolio. Answers is our AI-powered assistant for higher education institutions designed to enhance efficiency, improve decision-making, and streamline operations. 

What does that mean for your day-to-day operations? Let’s use this five-minute-read to unpack what RNL Answers is and, more importantly, specific ways it will make your life easier and your work output stronger. Think of this article like the recipe inspiration printed on the back of your pancake mix box. This will get you started—but the use cases extend far beyond what I am including here.

What is RNL Answers?

Think of all the benefits, features, and user experience of a ChatGPT-type tool. But now also imagine that experience built on top of a secure, privately hosted large language model (LLM) that can reference important information about your institution through a document library. This includes the ability to reference documents, processes, and information you would prefer to keep confidential.

That’s what RNL Answers delivers. You can use it for a wide range of generative AI functions:

• “Draft an email…”
• “Organize and summarize these meeting notes…”
• “Generate content blocks for a new webpage…”
• “Help me brainstorm themes for our office holiday party….”

But unlike other GPT tools, what happens in your Answers instance stays in your Answers instance. This enables you to go a level deeper with how you can responsibly use the tool:

• “Summarize this applicant’s essay….”
• “Craft a personalized email to this donor and cite their donor history provided in this prompt…”
• “Summarize and evaluate these survey responses…”

That means you can say goodbye to that nagging concern about submitting personally identifiable information (PII) or other confidential information into commercial blackbox AI models (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini) you may have used. Embrace doing that comfortably and securely with RNL Answers.

How to incorporate RNL Answers into your daily tasks.

Maximizing efficiency with your ultimate road companion

Any enrollment professional reading this has likely experienced the joy of sitting in a half-empty Starbucks (or local coffee shop if that is your speed) at 6 p.m. triaging an email inbox after a long day of high-school visits.

Scenario 1—Answering emails from students after a recruitment visit: Imagine you have an inbox full of students you saw that day sending thank you notes or reaching out with questions. Simply copy those emails directly into Answers to assist with efficiently responding to them in a personalized way. And because Answers is supported by your institution’s knowledge base, you can feel confident it will answer even the most specific prospective student questions with a high degree of accuracy.

To quantify Answer’s value for this use case through a different lens: think of this as the tool that will enable you to go from ordering that large coffee to ordering a small coffee because Answers has sped up your work.

Scenario 2—Answering questions from a donor quickly and accurately: You are a major gift officer meeting with donors while out on the road. Even with the best institutional knowledge, you cannot always be prepared for the types of questions you may receive from donors and alumni. Imagine having Answers in your back pocket to get immediate responses to those questions. Save the time and delays that accompany having a “follow-up on…” item on your always-growing to-do list.

Empower your team with instant knowledge access and streamlined onboarding

Staff turnover continues to be a pain point for higher education. We hear this from our clients all the time and we know how resource-intensive hiring and training are. This problem can be even more taxing when important knowledge leaves after a staff member departs or their documentation is hidden deep with a box folder structure.

Allow us to introduce Answers as your onboarding assistant. Build your document library in Answers with everything from training documents, onboarding manuals, important HR policy documents, purchasing guidelines, etc. The world is your oyster here. If you use it to train—you can add it to Answers.

Answers has now become a 24/7 resource for new staff members during their first few weeks on the job (and beyond). Employees can simply ask their questions to Answers and receive accurate information back in real-time. Use Answers to keep your team moving without additional meetings during those critical first weeks on the job.

But why stop with new employees? You can leverage Answers as your institution-wide conversational HR knowledge base. For example: we all have experienced the confusion open enrollment windows can bring.

• “Which benefits plan is best if I have multiple dependents?”
• “What is the difference between high and low deductible plans?”
• “Do we offer elder care benefits?”
• “How do I select my benefits?”

As an HR office you have all of this information documented. Drop that information into your document library in Answers and let Answers do the heavy lifting for your HR team.

Analyze surveys in seconds

Surveys are a staple in our institutions, whether for campus events, donor feedback, or prospective student insights. The insights from them are incredibly helpful, but we can all likely agree that getting those insights can be a pain. Sifting through hundreds or even thousands of rows of ratings and open-ended responses in an Excel file can take hours of staff time, especially when leadership wants the results quickly.

With Answers, you can streamline this process. Simply drop your survey data into Answers, and it will provide summaries, key themes, and areas for improvement—whatever you need. This allows you to focus on strategic decisions rather than compiling and interpreting the survey results.

Furthermore, Answers ensures confidentiality, handling sensitive information with the utmost privacy. This is especially critical when responses contain personal or confidential feedback. Rest assured, your data will only be used to generate your intended deliverable.

With Answers, the uses are almost limitless

I promised a 5-minute read so I will stop here. But this just scratches the surface of the ways your institutions can leverage Answers to increase operational efficiency and better serve your wide range of audiences. Other notable use include:

• Customized appeal letter creation
• Document repository with centralized storage, search functionality and version control 
• Budget analysis and cost savings identification 
• Employee giving program development
• Policy and procedure storage and compliance with a Q&A interface
• Course content Q&A bot 
• Event planning strategies
• Thesis/dissertation evaluation 
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and social media content creation for marketing 
• Writing support that is in line with your writing center’s guidelines

To learn more about how RNL Answers can help you get more done at your institution, talk to one of our AI experts. We can answer your questions about how you can use a more secure AI solution for the tasks you can automate so that you can have more time for the tasks that require your focus. Contact us know to set up a time to talk.