At a glance
| Industry | Education / Nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Reach | Michigan statewide |
| Scale | 56 ISDs 18 university partners 1,000+ participants |
| Products | Sales Cloud Experience Cloud Einstein Activity Capture |
| Integration | OpenPhone |
Executive summary
MI Talent Together was created to address Michigan’s teacher shortage — connecting aspiring educators with certification pathways across all 56 ISDs and 18 university partners statewide. The constraint wasn’t funding or program design. It was operational: managing 1,000+ participants across disconnected spreadsheets, with state funding compliance at risk and human coordination approaching its limit.
SMBHD designed a scalable Salesforce architecture around what MI Talent Together could actually operate — including pivoting from a complex MuleSoft approach to a right-sized Experience Cloud Community Portal. The organization now manages its full program lifecycle in one platform with accurate compliance reporting.
Key outcomes
The business problem
Michigan faces a persistent teacher shortage — and MI Talent Together was built to solve it at scale, connecting aspiring educators with alternative certification pathways across the state. As a newly formed organization, it had been built with a startup’s urgency and a nonprofit’s limited resources. The systems hadn’t kept pace with the mission.
Without a reliable system of record, program compliance reporting for state funding was at risk, participant outcomes were difficult to track, and the human coordination holding everything together was approaching its limit. An early attempt to use MuleSoft for data synchronization proved too complex for the team’s capacity to maintain, requiring a full strategic reset.
The challenge
- 1,000+ participants, no central system: applicants and participants managed across disconnected spreadsheets that couldn’t scale
- 18 university partners requiring data sharing: no reliable mechanism for consistent, accurate data exchange across partner institutions
- Compliance and funding risk: without accurate outcome tracking, state funding reporting was exposed
- Human coordination at the breaking point: volume overwhelmed what manual effort could sustain
- Early technical misstep: an initial MuleSoft attempt proved too complex for the team’s internal capacity to maintain
The solution
SMBHD designed a scalable, flexible Salesforce architecture built around how MI Talent Together actually operated — not what the product catalog offered.
- Salesforce Sales Cloud as system of record: centralized tracking of applicants, participants, and outcomes with seamless transitions from application through program completion
- Custom application portal: applicants submit directly into Salesforce as leads with automated conversion into participant records
- Communication tracking: integration with Einstein Activity Capture and OpenPhone for full visibility into email, text, and call engagement
- Experience Cloud Community Portal: replacing error-prone spreadsheets with secure, structured data sharing across all 18 university partners
The results
MI Talent Together now manages its full program lifecycle within a single platform, without the administrative overhead that was threatening to overwhelm the team. Compliance reporting for state funding is accurate and accessible. The organization can iterate on processes without rebuilding systems from scratch each time.
The pivot from MuleSoft to Experience Cloud — a decision SMBHD recommended based on operational fit rather than technical capability — became one of the most important decisions of the engagement. It’s a story about a partner willing to say ‘that’s not the right tool for you’ rather than pressing forward with a complex solution.
AI readiness
- Structured participant data: clean, centralized records for every applicant and participant are the foundation for AI-driven program intelligence
- Predictive risk scoring: AI can identify participants likely to disengage before they do, enabling proactive outreach
- Automated outreach recommendations: Agentforce can surface follow-up actions for at-risk participants without manual pipeline review
- AI-driven compliance reporting: pattern recognition across participant outcomes could automate a significant portion of the state funding documentation currently produced manually
How we worked
- Right-fit solution over right-product: when MuleSoft proved too complex, SMBHD identified Experience Cloud as a better-fit alternative based on what the organization could actually operate, not what was technically impressive.
- Startup-speed adaptability: SMBHD provided strategic guidance through pivots, including the MuleSoft reset, without losing momentum.
- Built for lean internal teams: every architectural decision was evaluated against whether MI Talent Together’s staff could maintain and extend it.
- Compliance architecture from the start: outcome tracking and reporting structures were designed into the data model from day one, not retrofitted after the fact.
