Case study · HEC Rabat · Admissions
How HEC Rabat’s website became the engine of its admissions.
HEC Rabat recruits all year round, for several programmes across several segments. Since March 2026, every brochure request on its website becomes a BrightStep contact, tagged and assigned, before anyone at the school has seen it. The candidate then does the rest: file, fees, interview. Enro, BrightStep’s AI agent, qualifies, scores, and leaves the team what concerns it.
- contacts in seven months
- 30,000+contacts in seven months
- from the website, nothing typed in
- 8 in 10from the website, nothing typed in
- applications online
- 4,300+applications online
- interviews booked by candidates, 0 scheduled by the team
- 600+interviews booked by candidates, 0 scheduled by the team
Context
Several programmes, one front door.
A business school that recruits all year round: admissions campaigns open month after month, segment by segment. Each programme has its page on the website, its brochure, its admissions campaign and its jury. What was scattered across a generic CRM, spreadsheets and inboxes had to fit in one circuit, run by the admissions team itself.
- All year round
- admissions campaigns open
- 40+
- programme pages on the website
Where it started
Five moments in the candidate’s journey, before and after.
Where it started is as the HEC Rabat admissions team describes it. It carries no figures: the numbers on this page measure the after.
First contact
- Before
- One form for every programme, on which the candidate ticked their own. The team pulled contacts out of HubSpot into a shared spreadsheet, which became the real admissions register, then called each of them to say what came next.
- After
- Each programme page has its own form. It creates the contact in BrightStep with the programme asked about and assigns it to an advisor at once. Nobody types it in, and there is no spreadsheet any more.
The application
- Before
- No file, a conversation. Documents arrived by WhatsApp and by email as the exchanges went on, and it was the team who knew, from memory or from the spreadsheet, what was missing from whom.
- After
- Fully online, inside the programme’s campaign: 4,300+ files opened by the candidates themselves, each at the step it has reached.
The application fee
- Before
- A bank transfer, or a payment link generated by hand, candidate by candidate, with the right amount typed on it. Every payment then had to be matched back to the right file.
- After
- Paid online from the file, 9 in 10 by card, collected in 10 min at the median. 2 in 10 are paid outside office hours.
The interview
- Before
- Calls to the candidate, calls to the professor, and gymnastics to land two diaries on the same slot. Once the hour was found, somebody created the Zoom link and sent it to both.
- After
- The candidate picks a slot in the jury’s availability, on a recorded video call. 600+ interviews booked this way, none scheduled by the admissions team.
WhatsApp, at the weekend
- Before
- On the team’s own phones. In the middle of a campaign, people worked the weekend. Otherwise the question waited until Monday. Answering everything was impossible, and nothing told a serious candidate apart from a passing question: qualifying and scoring were done by hand.
- After
- On the file, no longer on a personal phone. Since Enro, a message received at the weekend waits 15 min at the median instead of 34 h: the agent drafts the reply, records the candidate’s interest and score, and the team sends it with one tap.
The circuit
From a click on a brochure to enrolment, with nothing typed in twice.
The website is the door. BrightStep is the only table. The candidate moves from one step to the next on their own, Enro answers them on WhatsApp, and the admissions team steps in where a human decision is expected: reviewing the file, the interview, the admission.
What we did
Five layers, in the order they were built.
The last one is being delivered. It carries its date.
01
The website, built to convert
More than forty programme pages, one per degree, each with its brochure and its apply button. A short brochure form, protected against bots, and audience measurement behind consent. The website is an acquisition tool before it is a shop window.
02
The API into BrightStep
Every submitted form creates or updates the contact in BrightStep, with its origin, the kind of request and the programme in view. The contact is assigned at once to an advisor in the admissions pool. Each page’s « Apply » button opens the programme’s campaign directly.
03
BrightStep, the candidate’s journey
One admissions process per kind of programme: form, application fee, interview, decision. The candidate sees where they stand and what is left to do. The jury assesses inside the tool, every status change carries the name of the person who made it, and leadership reads the pipeline without asking for a spreadsheet.
04
Enro, on WhatsApp
Since August 2026, Enro reads every incoming message, finds the programme it is about, drafts a reply grounded in the school’s knowledge base, and creates the task when a person has to take over. A reply that fails its checks is withdrawn before it is proposed. The team approves every send: 400+ replies sent this way in the first six weeks.
05
The automations (under way, September 2026)
A rules engine is landing in BrightStep: welcome a new contact, chase one who has gone quiet, remind before a deadline, unblock a candidate stuck on a step. Each rule respects quiet hours and explains itself on the file. HEC Rabat is the first school to switch it on.
Milestones
In the order things actually landed.
- 01January 2026: first campaigns opened in BrightStep
- 02February 2026: contacts carried over from the old CRM
- 03March 2026: new website live, wired to BrightStep through the API
- 04August 2026: Enro in assisted mode on WhatsApp
- 05September 2026: automations engine (under way)
- 06Coming: Enro autonomous, tests conclusive
What changed
What the admissions team no longer does.
Figures computed by GEERD in the school’s BrightStep database, 09 February to 20 September 2026, and rounded. None is an estimate.
- contacts from the website, nothing typed in
- 8 in 10contacts from the website, nothing typed in
- interviews scheduled by the team
- 0interviews scheduled by the team
- median WhatsApp response time, before and since Enro
- 1 h 45 → 45 minmedian WhatsApp response time, before and since Enro
- median response time at the weekend
- 34 h → 15 minmedian response time at the weekend
- of application and enrolment fees paid through BrightStep, traceable
- 100%of application and enrolment fees paid through BrightStep, traceable
Typing in a contact
The contact arrives from the website with its programme and request type, already assigned. The team calls them; it no longer creates them.
Chasing a time slot
The jury posts its availability, the candidate picks. The video link, the recording and the assessment sit on the file.
Matching a bank transfer
Application and enrolment fees all go through BrightStep: a card payment records itself on the file, a transfer leaves its proof there. Every payment is tied to a candidate, a step and a date.
Sorting enquiries by hand
Enro records the candidate’s interest and gives them a score as the conversation goes. The team decides who to call back first, instead of reading everything to find out.
Answering cold on a Saturday
Enro has already read the message, found the programme, drafted the reply and created the task if one is needed. What is left to the team is an approval, and, with Enro autonomous, a list on Monday morning.
“In under three months, our admissions team went from chasing spreadsheets to an audited pipeline, from first enquiry to enrolment.”
Hamza El Kouhen
Deputy General Director, HEC Rabat
What comes next
Enro on its own, and rules that chase instead of the team.
Enro’s tests in assisted mode are conclusive. The next step is autonomy: Enro will answer the questions it masters on its own, weekends included, and leave the team, on Monday, the list of what needs a person. BrightStep’s automations, delivered in September 2026, will chase quiet contacts and remind of deadlines without anyone thinking of it.
What this case study shows
- Grow your admissions →Follow every applicant from first enquiry to enrolment.
- Track payments →Give the right teams clear financial information.
- BrightStep →Admissions
- Business schools →Entrance exams, parallel admissions and cohorts to fill every year.
- Executive Education →Executive cohorts, corporate clients and per-programme invoicing.
Does your website fill your pipeline, or just your inbox?
HEC Rabat’s circuit can be wired to another school’s website. See BrightStep from the candidate’s side, or tell us what happens today between a brochure request and an opened file.