University Business - March 2009 - (Page 25)

Advertisement Streamlining Financial Services: Doing More with Less A University Business Web Seminar Digest Originally presented on Feb. 12, 2009 In these days of tIght budgets and Increased student enrollments, streamlining back office financial operations can save time, money and manpower. our panelists participated in a discussion of how institutions are successfully delivering a higher level of service through electronic tuition and fee payment and automated refund disbursement. Working with third party partners Casey McGuane Senior Vice President for Client Operations Higher One, New Haven, CT With the current economy and its effect on state and campus budgets, there’s more pressure on colleges and universities than ever before to do more with less. Many are turning to third party partnerships in this regard. Why would a college or university need to establish a partnership? Why not do it internally? The reason is to focus on costs, and not just financial costs but opportunity costs. In other words, what’s the cost of an organization getting distracted from its core mission by peripheral activities? Partners can provide a sole focus for an operation and deliver great results. Of course, with financial matters there is quite a bit to consider in terms of liability, security, privacy and compliance issues. Two sets of federal regulations should ease these concerns as they relate to working with third party partners for electronic disbursement of student refunds. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Education issued regulations that now encourage the adoption of electronic distribution of refunds and credit balances. These regulations also established better guidelines to help colleges and universities partner with third party vendors to realize benefits of electronic distribution and move away from the paper check process. And in January of 2009, changes to the FERPA rules clarified what kind of information schools can share with vendors, which reflected this emerging trend of colleges and universities to engage with third party partners. any of the labor costs that we have saved or have been able to re-deploy for other very important functions. One of the most valuable things this has allowed us to do is handle the doubledigit enrollment increase that we’ve seen over the last several years while experiencing declining state support. Regarding labor costs, we actually calculated the little bits and parts of all the people that had a hand in preparing checks, distributing checks and all the functions that go along with that. We came up with probably a little bit more than half of a FTE that was handling this process when we first started it. Since then, our enrollment has increased considerably and we’re probably looking at something much closer to a fulltime equivalent, probably something in a $45,000 or $50,000 position that we have not had to hire. Improving convenience Karen Pettit University OneCard Administrator Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY In working with a third party partner for electronic refund disbursement, one of our goals was to make sure that all students would have a uniform ID card, which was an option with Higher One’s service. In other words, all of our meal plans, access control, library services and other services could be used with the OneCard. This way students didn’t have to carry around a refund card as well as a student ID and get confused. They have the OneCard that they can keep on them at all times and use for all facilities around campus as well as using it for ATMs to withdraw money or going to WalMart to make a purchase. One of the reasons we chose Higher One is that they are willing to give cards to all students, and that this card could truly provide universal use. For more information about Higher One’s electronic refund disbursement program, as well as access to the archived edition of this web seminar, please visit www.UniversityBusiness.com/HigherOne. Recognizing savings Carol Probstfeld Vice President for Business and Administrative Service Manatee Community College, FL In working with Higher One on the electronic refund process, we have distributed about 40,000 refunds totaling just over $32 million and about 88 percent of those are done electronically. We’ve saved about $64,000 since inception just in the hard cost of printing the checks. This is not including http://www.UniversityBusiness.com/HigherOne http://www.UniversityBusiness.com/HigherOne

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - March 2009

University Business - March 2009
Contents
Editor's Note
Company Index
Advisory Board
College Index
Behind the News
Human Resources
Viewpoint
Money Matters
Special Report: Higher Ed and the Economy
Helping the Help Desk
Acts of Adaptation
10 Questions & Answers About the Cloud
What's New
End Note

University Business - March 2009