You know, it's not a nine to five business, you have people that need to make payments safe from overseas, you have parents that work odd hours that needs to do their business online at night, your students who are studying abroad, you have to be available. And this allows the technology to solve the problem of always having something available.
Welcome to Focus, a podcast dedicated to the business of Higher Education. I'm your host, Heather Richmond, and we will be exploring the challenges and opportunities facing today's higher learning institutions. Today, I caught up with David Katz, the Treasurer of the College of Charleston, on how they've taken a platform approach to streamlining payments, and simplifying PCI compliance. Well, thanks for joining me today, David.
Hello, Heather, glad to be here today as well.
You know, we've been really excited to have you on as a guest, I know you have a ton of great experience that others can learn from. But before we get started, can you just give us an overview of your background?
Absolutely. Well, I've been in higher education, or as I call it, the college biz, since the 90s. Started off in SUNY up in New York, doing accounts receivable, student services, working my way up getting a little bit of knowledge here and there, came down to South Carolina and started at the College of Charleston, let's see in 2005, first as the assistant treasurer, and currently the treasurer since about 2010. The college here, College of Charleston has about 11,000 Students undergrad and grad. We're located in beautiful downtown Charleston. When I look at what I need to do over here, it all starts with customer service. And that's what drives all the functions that we're going to talk about, the need to make it easy to pay, need to make everything easy to reconcile. That's the main goal of what we tried to do over here.
Now, that makes a lot of sense. And obviously, with all your background in payments, you're always looking for that easier way to make that happen. So let's talk about some of those solutions. And you know, really, how's TouchNet working for you?
It's working really well. Basically, we have to look at something that's going to assist us, especially in light of it, you don't have as many people working for you, as you have in the past. You're looking to make efficiencies, and I like to call TouchNet the cashier that never sleeps.
Oh, I love that you got to expand on what that means?
Sure. Well, you know, it's not a nine to five business, you have people that need to make payments safe from overseas, you have parents that work odd hours that needs to do their business online at night, you have students who are studying abroad, that aren't necessarily on US time and need to take care of business. Midnight, one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, whatever is the quote unquote, normal time where they're staying, you have to be available. And this allows the technology to solve the problem of always having something available for the students to take care of business and make it as easy and efficient as possible.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I know again, as you were just saying you have all these different types of students and payments that are happening. So let's talk about all those, kind of drill into those different types of payments you have to account for and what you're doing.
Sure. So for example, let's talk about students who are paying from overseas. So we worked with a TouchNet partner TransferMate. We've always had problems when we get wires in, especially from overseas, where we can't make out the students name, from say the local language to what we have in English and the system here. TransferMate allows us to just simply post the payments into the Banner system, without having to figure out who the student actually is. It's seamless, it works really, really well, solves a huge problem for us. Additionally, we look at things like pay past. First of all, what payback did is helped us out quite a bit in terms of how merchant fees are handled. We were able to save, I'd say close to a million dollars a year in merchant fees. Once we switched to pay path back in, I think it was about 2010 it. A lot of the merchant fees as well as other costs drive tuition up. If we're able to maintain lower fees and pass them on to the users if that's how they're choosing the pay. It can only help all the students by keeping the tuition low. It's also very convenient. You get online, single sign on, you make the payment, it posts, we're good. The other thing that I look at is how we use payment plans. So when you're talking about the bill pay suite. We look at, especially when COVID occurred, we look at what are the different options we can make to help make things efficient to help get the students to pay to give them a lot more flexibility in light of downturns in the economy, different times that they get paid. So we expanded all our payment plan options we have, I think right now a total of six different payment plans, you can work on weekly plans, you can do the bi weekly, you can do the monthly over the course of the whole semester. And what that does, we do have a single due date for the semester. And all that we're asking you to do is either pay it in full by that particular due date, or choose one of the payment plan options that best suits how you're able to pay for your tuition and fees. The other thing that that does is it drives the payments over the course of the entire semester, instead of just one time, instead of having a lobby full of people that want to pay, or the phone's ringing off the hook. Because everybody's trying to do everything at once it spreads it out over a period of time, making it easier to deal with the people that have questions that people have problems, it resolves a lot of the issues we have, by letting the people that if they already know what they want to do, they choose the option they're good to go. But it allows us to handle the students that really do have problems and or questions without making them wait online or wait in person to get everything resolved. It's made things efficient and easy. And they'll always come back to that it comes down, as I mentioned earlier to the customer service, what can we do to make everybody happy without giving away the house, of course. But to make it a non-issue, simply get online, do what you have to do, and move on from there. The other part on the back end, because we give so many options, especially since say, for example, with the payment plans, we require the auto payments, you can set it and forget it. Our AR at the end of the semester has been drastically reduced. We have very, very few numbers of students that owe at the end of the semester. And frankly, when we go through the period of time over a three year period, when we look at write offs, that has dropped off a cliff, we really do not have as many write off accounts as we used to.
That's really fantastic. And like you said, it sounds like you're also providing that service to the students. But it sounds like it actually is benefiting you on the back end too for your staff.
It's both, you have to look at options that are gonna resolve both things, you don't want to, like I said, give away the house, you don't want to give it all to the student side. And you're gonna suffer because you can't reconcile, or you can't keep up with the work, you have to make it so that it works for both sides.
Absolutely.
And you can't make it where its just for the college because then the students and the parents suffer. And we've taken also the older non student options such as to the marketplace, but not student options. We have conferences, we have noncredit classes, we have camps that are occurring. We don't have to have the people come down to the treasurer's office or send something through the mail, we can have these various departments on campus, set up their own storefronts, take care of business that way, have everything funneled right to their general ledger, and the general ledger at the college. And in the constituency that's purchasing these conferences and so on, find it very, very easy to fill out the form, make the payment and done with a very, very short period of time. It's made a huge difference in terms of how ecommerce is handled in this area.
Oh, I bet and it sounds like you know, you have a lot of events. That's what we find a lot of our schools, you know, the storefronts really are on the events, but you really have kind of store fronts campus wide don't you?
We do, we have quite a number of them set up everything from athletics, through housing. We've had with concerts, too. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to think of all the different things that we've had going on here, we try to do as many varied things as we can to make it easy for the department to run an event to get the money in without having to deal with the cash on hand, or deal with a credit card machine. Just simply set up one time, monitor everything that's going on, and provide just, that word again, customer service, back to the people who are making the payments and signing up for the events on campus.
That's great. Well, it sounds like you've had a lot of success. And this type of success obviously doesn't just happen overnight. So how have you approached implementing these new solutions and really kind of bringing the culture to the table saying, hey, we have solutions for this now?
Sure. Well, we're still making changes. We're not done. So every time we look at what we have going we take some time every few months and reexamine what we're doing. So there's no such thing as being done and we're good to go. We're always looking to see what we can improve. But we don't want to just take a say a TouchNet solution and adapt to it, it's got to go both ways. It's got to fill the need of what we're trying to do on campus. So by talking to the various departments that might need a widget to do this, this or that, what is it that they're looking for? What is it that say TouchNet or the partner can provide? And we come up with a solution of where do we have to meet the solution? Where's the solution come to meet us? So it's always adjusting. It's always tweaking existing processes and working, maybe changing the culture a little bit about how we handle things over here. But it's being flexible, it's watching to see what we have to do, not just accepting, say, a straight solution out of the box. It's adjusting all the parts, whether it's man, or whether it's the personnel department, who's best to handle various aspects of what we're doing, and just making it work to be the best solution we can make a day.
Absolutely. We're never done with anything, are we ever David?
Never, ever keeps us going?
That's right. But you know, that's what's really key. By having that single platform, everything's unified, because you do have the ability to tweak and see what are you trying to adopt now, and having a solution that can really fit the needs campus wide?
Right, you have to do that you have to be able to make something work for everybody, to the best of your ability. And I'll go back again to you can't give away the store, you can certainly come up with solutions that are going to make it work. And when the departments are happy, when the staff is happy, when the administration is happy, when the students and the parents are happy, it works. It just really makes life a lot easier when you can come up with a universal solution, or universal platform that is, to come up with solutions for what's needed on the campus.
Yeah. And so it sounds like that you really not just software, but the processes and culture a little bit. That's a lot of change. So how do you go about getting really this widespread adoption?
I carry a baseball bat around with me and that does the talking. No, no, no, it all services comes down to solving the needs on campus listening to what people need, listening to what the problems are, and trying to come up with solution. And when you work with everybody on the campus and not just force something upon them, you really get a widespread adoption over a period of time. And once people try something if it gets them a little out of the comfort zone, but they can see that it's a better solution for them. Then it’s a lot less work and hassle efficient, giving them time to do other things that they might want to do. You get the buy in, you really do you show people how to do everything, you train them, and you let them run, say for example, marketplace, their own stores and get a feel for what they can put out there. When they're in control, and they feel that they have the creative input into the product as well, you get the buy in. It's convincing them to give it a shot is really the hardest part. But once they do, they're very happy with it. And that's what it comes down to is vetting the various solutions, seeing what works, not plugging a square peg into a round hole. But making sure that it works for the processes we have or with little tweaks, we can make that work. And its training, it comes down to train the trainer is a big thing over here too. We train a few people, we ask them to train others, we ask them to keep a procedures and policies manual. In fact, we inspect those every year to make sure that those are completely updated. But to keep handing down the knowledge and to constantly update what people know, makes for a huge successful campaign. When it comes to implementing new software and new partners or working through the system over here, overseeing the general ideas of what people want to do, the funding coming in, that's for us to handle. But in terms of running the individual departments, as long as they have the tools to do it correctly, and we've made it work. Everybody's very happy. So it becomes widespread adoption by being successful. Basically, this success breeds success.
Absolutely. And I think you know, we were talking earlier, it was really interesting to me that I think another reason for your high adoption rate is really making sure everybody knows what solutions are available. And so can you talk about how you bring everybody together and really show it to, kind of, I look at it as a show and tell?
Sure. Well, this has slowed down a little during the COVID years. But what we try to do is a couple times a year if we bring the departments together, we let them know about marketplace, we let them know what solutions are available. We ask them first of all, what is it that you need if you're showing up and you want to know about marketplace, what is it that you're trying to do that you're not able to do successfully now, and we let them know what products are available, which is mostly marketplace, since a lot of the solutions that people are looking for tend to not be student related or tuition related, I should say. And once we show them what it can do, we'll meet with them one on one, we'll play with them in the test environment, we'll let them mess around with a few things here and there and get a feel for what it can do what it can't do. And we'll work through the solution there. We do a lot of one on one training. We do PCI workshops, at least once a year. And we talk about what can we do to make what you need to do more PCI compliant and make getting to the compliance easier. We want to let them know that we're here to work with them and provide the solutions, not just force them into doing something, but to work together in a partnership to make sure that everybody is successful. But it comes down to training. And the training is all about being a good provider of customer service. And just being plain successful, is what it comes down to. Help everybody get to that point.
And I bet a lot of those folks, when you have the PCI compliance are like, what is PCI? You mean, I just have to, I can't just take a payment?
Well, you know, some people still think you can, we're always training, we're always putting our policies out there. But, you know, it's what you have to do to protect yourself, to protect the college, protect the reputation of the college, and everybody is really big on doing that everybody has pride in where they work. And that makes a huge difference. And when you have that pride, when you're given the sense that what you do makes a difference. They realize that the safety of the data is paramount in order to get things done and to keep doing the work that they want to get done.
Yeah, I'm sure that makes them feel good too, like, ‘oh, I am helping to protect the campus.’
Absolutely. And we call them out on it. When we have some of these meetings, we do talk about our success stories. People need recognition when you're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Recognition is one of those, those fulfilled needs that are up there. And it really makes a difference when you reinforce the good.
And you said earlier too, I'm sure all of this kind of coming together really has, you know, helped ease the pressure on your accounts receivable team as well.
Absolutely. So we use, let's say bill payment, we use actually the email system to help with accounts receivable. So let's say we're at the end of the semester, we can send out generic emails if we want to various addresses. But we can do things like either we'll take the cover letter, let's say for the students in the authorized users, we'll create our first accounts receivable late notice, and we’ll create a population search into those people and send them out with the bill through the email system. A touch of a button and boom, it's delivered to everybody instantaneously, you have a very, very fast and easily documented bill response by using the system there. We don't have to send out snail mail right away, we can really call through the accounts quickly have a lot of people respond at once and then determine where the problems are. So it allows us to be really efficient in terms of using the system. You know, when we do the drop for non-payment process, we create a list of all the students who are currently behind. And I'll take the authorized users list, which we really push for authorized users here. And I'll drop that into that particular listserv. We wrote a program that matches the students to their authorized users. So that when we send what I call a ‘danger, danger Will Robinson notice,’ which by the way, is not as recognizable as it used to be, which means I'm getting old, I’ll come up with a better pop reference on that one. But I can instantly merge that list in in seconds and send that out so that everybody is getting the notice that something needs to be done right away. It just makes it more efficient. And we get to everybody, we don't skip anybody. And we know whose paying. So we need to get the authorized users just involved. So if there's way for us to drop the authorized users into the list and get in touch with them, they'll see that there's an issue, they contact us right away. And that drives the number of people that do get cancelled for non-payment down. We really don't have very many people that that happens to. Really what we wind up with, other people who maybe just were not intending to go, but the people who say ‘Oh my gosh, I got to do something about payment,’ whether it's fishing their financial aid, whether it's making that payment plan setup, whether it's simply just paying in full, we got their attention. And we can do it as many times as we want. There's no additional cost you can send and send and send, because the efficiencies of the system are there.
Yeah, that's great. And I really, you know, love how you're utilizing, that's really the key, the integration, be able to utilize the different systems and bring it all together to be able to have this great end result.
It makes a difference. And we talked about being the cashier that never sleeps, it's really the tool that never sleeps. It's always there for us to use. And we're always looking for different ways of well we've got the system here, we can reach out to everybody, we've got this huge database, how can we use it to communicate what we need to do to get everybody's reaction by sending it to all the addresses that we have saved in the system?
Right? Well, you've done such a great job of doing a lot of this kind of prep work and set up and you know, that really shows in the long run, how much time that saves. And so I'm sure you have some other outside the box thinking in some programs that you're using the solutions for, too. So you want to talk a little bit about that?
Sure. So we look at, let's talk about orientation. Students that are coming in from all around the country, and they're trying to choose where they want to live for the semester. So one of the things that they can do is during orientation, they can stay at one of the dorms that we have, they can get a chance to see what it's like to live in the dorm or even just experience, what would I need to be comfortable in the dorm for the entire semester. So for orientation, we have a marketplace site that allows you to rent one of the rooms for a one or two day period. Get in the room, check it out, take a little bit of measurements, decide how you want to set it up what color scheme you want, what kind of bedding you want. And it makes you more prepared to start school with a little less stress because you know what to expect. It's not just an unknown item that they have to get ready for and be surprised with and then have to say have things shipped from Omaha over to Charleston because they didn't bring, let's say a bedspread with them that would really make a difference here at the at the dorms. The other thing that we do is we use a lot of deposit types in the email system in the bill payment. What we found is everybody in the various departments that have a specialty student, talk about the MBA program, grad transfer students, talk about incoming freshmen, other programs, we have what we call the BPS program, which are for adult students who are coming in to finish their degrees. Everybody who runs those programs wants a list of who made their payments, so that they can reach out to those people and create the next step for them. So by creating different deposit types, with good description so that the students coming in will know exactly which deposit they’re supposed to choose, we can let the various departments know immediately through reporting, who paid what, who is intending to come to the campus, and allows the department to start the process of welcoming the students to the school, instead of just waiting to see who shows up, or have one master list where they have to discern? Well, I think this one's mine, I think that one… we really can help identify these people to make it easier to get things going on the right foot.
That's wonderful. Sounds like you really have listened as you're talking campus wide of what the pain points are and some of these unique uses of the solution are definitely fulfilling that need.
Absolutely, again, listening to everybody creating the ability to be a welcoming community. We have people from all over the country and all over the world, we want to make sure especially when you're moving across country, or even if you're just moving across town, if you're from Charleston, going to college can be scary. It's a whole new experience. We want to do something that everybody feels that they've been recognized. And that helps us tell it.
I love that. And you know, again, really kind of thinking about bringing all the payments under a unified platform, easing the burdens of reconciliation, accounts receivable, but at the same time finding that great student experience too. So any other advice or anything unique you want to let people know about?
Sure. One thing that I always tell everybody, especially when it comes to reconciliation is set your close out time for credit cards, especially as close to midnight your time as possible. It's so tough, I find and other schools have said the same thing, if you're closing out say midday or later in the day, it's much easier to work on a midnight to midnight schedule to reconcile things. Yes, you'll have a few in transit items. You know, we're on the East Coast. You at TouchNet process things over on central time so occasionally, we'll have things in transit. But those are so few based on the midnight to midnight time. It makes the back end reconciliation a heck of a lot easier. The other thing I talk to people about when they asked me is, don't just implement a solution and don't just test it, test it, test it, but map out the entire process of what you expect it to do, how it's going to come in, but how it runs through every single step, all the way through posting, including all the way through to the reconciliation point, because just putting a solution in doesn't resolve all your problems. If you put something in and you didn't think about how A affects B and how B affects C, you're not going to have a good solution.
Yeah, that's great advice, you have to really think ahead. And like you said, you don't just say, ‘Ope, here's technology installed, it's just going to magically work.’
Exactly. And you got to find the right personnel to deal with this too. Train more than one person. Get, as many people involved, so you have as many eyes on the process as possible. And you get so many ideas, you know, I may look at something, I may plan at what I need to do, I may map it out. But I'm doing it from my point of view, if I bring that solution to somebody else and say, What do you think they might say, ‘Oh, you forgot about the widget on step eight.’ ‘Oh, let me add that in!’ Get people involved. It's not just a one or two person solution, and train those people and train the backups and provide as many different backups for continuity as you can get, because people come and go, people retire, you want to make sure that something always works, and that you have the knowledge to take care of that. And the last thing that I always tell people, and this is what I like, about going to conferences, especially in conflict, we have a lot of people with similar circumstances, asked other institutions, how they did something, or what their solution is, because there's no point in having to reinvent the wheel have somebody's already done that before. And I found in the in the higher education community, people are really helpful. They're anxious to help other people, the more than happy to help other people. And you do the same thing to help other schools as well. So don't reinvent the wheel. Talk to other schools.
Yeah, they're absolutely right. That's my favorite part, I’ve said it over and over about working in the higher ed industry is this community and everybody wants to help each other. And it's just, I love conferences, too. Especially Comtech, right? It's just a really wonderful place to network and share ideas. And we always tend to hear people say that one little nugget was worth it for me to come here. I now know how to go solve this problem. So it's great.
Absolutely. And I find that wherever we go, even if it's just meeting up with, say the South Carolina Bursars Association over here, we'll talk. We'll talk about our solutions. We'll talk about our problems. Somebody will have some sort of answer. But on a grander scale, when you get to some of the larger conferences, the listservs everything that's out there just makes life a lot easier. When we all work with each other. Yes, there's competition in terms of getting the students, but there should not be competition and making it work for everybody and making their lives easier.
Absolutely. That's fantastic. Well, this has been an awesome conversation. David, thank you so much for taking your time today.
Thanks for having me, Heather. Appreciate it.
It is so clear the importance of taking a platform approach to provide a better experience for both students and staff. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Focus. Don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up to date on the business of higher education. For more information, check us out at touchnet.com.
Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file