American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
$how Me the Money
Cost Benefits of
Electronic Exchange of
Student Transcripts
Susan Reyes, San Diego State University
Matt Bemis, University of Southern
California
SACRAO Conference 2015
Presentation Overview




Electronic Data Exchange Efforts at USC – Big
wins and big savings in the last 3+ years
How leveraging EDI data transmission transformed
USC’s processing of international degree
verification
The big $$$ realized through the implementation of
EDI at USC.
The real difference: Enhancing the USC
Experience for matriculating students.
Presentation Overview



Electronic Data Exchange Efforts at SDSU –
Keeping up the ever increasing number of
applicants amid budget cuts the last 5+ years
Leveraging EDI data transformed the transfer
admissions processing.
The real difference: Enhancing the Experience for
matriculating students.
Building EDI Program at SDSU
•
•
•
SDSU has been receiving EDI from 3 main
feeder districts for more than 10 years
4 years ago, with major budget cuts in place,
SDSU’s Enrollment Services decided they
needed to utilize technology to keep up with
the growing number of applicants and students
2014 we climbed to over 100 EDI partners
College Transcript Processing at SDSU
Prior to 2011
• Around 50.000 applications for admission
• Several days just to get mail open
• 8 weeks or more to process college
transcripts during peak time
• 15 staff and student workers opening mail and
manually processing or OCRing transcripts
• More than 25 evaluators to update SIS and
DARS and verify course matriculation
College Transcript Processing at SDSU
2014
• More than 80,000 applications for F2015
• More than 110 EDI trading partners
• 77% of College Transcripts via EDI)
• 4 Full-time staff to support EDI and OCR
processing of Transcripts
• 15 evaluators who spend the majority of their
time with the students because the EDI
posting rarely requires manual intervention.
College Transcript Processing at SDSU
•
Benefits for Staff
•
•
•
No need to manually key in coursework so there
are fewer data errors
Staff deal with exception processing and student
issues instead of handling every transcript
Downside for Staff
•
•
Sometimes feels like all they’re dealing with is
problems
If a data issue is no corrected right away student
sees incorrect information and are not always
happy when they find out their data was incorrect
College Transcript Processing at SDSU
•
Downside for Students
•
•
Data is sometimes incorrect so the initial
information may be incorrect if the course data
or DARS matching is incorrect
Student rarely has control over whether the
transcript is sent in EDI, paper or electronic
PDF format and may be confused as to how to
get their transcript to the correct person or
processing center in the receiving institution
College Transcript Processing at SDSU
•
Benefits for Students
•
•
EDI is usually received and posted to the
student’s record within 24 hours of ordering a
transcript. Students no longer wait for months to
get their matriculation information
Admission decisions can be made more quickly,
although all admissions offers are provisional
because they are based upon automated
transcript processing and self reported
supplemental application information
College Transcript Processing at SDSU
•
College Transcripts 2013 – 2014
Year
2013
2014
# of EDI
18,579
22,211
Total
% EDI
26,329 70.56%
28,605 77.65%
Presentation Overview




Electronic Data Exchange Efforts at USC – Big
wins and big savings in the last 3+ years
How leveraging EDI data transmission transformed
USC’s processing of international degree
verification
The big $$$ realized through the implementation of
EDI at USC.
The real difference: Enhancing the USC
Experience for matriculating students.
EDI transcripts exchange successes at USC
-- EDI development timeline at USC



Began mapping inbound EDI transactions in late 2009 as
part of the EtranscriptCA efforts
Took three weeks to go live in production – found the
inbound effort very easy to configure with existing degree
audit software application system
Joined the Texas Server Registrant list shortly thereafter
and began expanding our trading partner relationships
EDI transcripts exchange successes at USC
What we learned as we broadened our base of EDI
trading partners (i.e. Texas Server deliverables):
 EDI acknowledgement transactions are necessary for
most senders
 Handling EDI data from district schools
 Imaging EDI transactions to existing systems (in real
time)
 Handling prior degree information in EDI transactions
 Mapping FICE, ACT, and CEEB data reliably
 Data rendering interface for Advisor use
 Should have been doing this years ago… and so should
you if you are not actively trading
EDI transcripts exchange successes at USC
Other lessons learned with EDI transcripts exchange:






Handling ‘Unknown’ student transcript transactions
Handling unexpected transactions (unknown CEEBs)
How to handle EDI data for students not yet admitted
Reporting ‘change of data’ instances for administrative
review
The importance of weekly reporting of EDI receipt
activity
Development and production of outbound USC EDI
transcript transactions – a humbling experience
EDI transcripts exchange successes at USC
Where we were, and how far we have come:






2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
-- 1474 inbound TS130 transactions received
-- 2212 inbound TS130 transactions received
-- 4287 inbound TS130 transactions received
-- 5828 inbound TS130 transactions received
-- 10000+ inbound TS130 transactions received
What really has changed? Hassle free, hands free
transfer credit evaluations for every EDI transcript
received (almost)
Financial Impact on Operations

Average transaction time per paper transcript
processed, including:




Mail routing/delivery to technicians
Keying in data, and quality control review
Re-keying in data to correct for data entry errors
Document management – Routing to image
centers, imaging; and indexing of documents;
document destruction management (hard copy
and digital copy)
Financial Impact on Operations




20 minutes per transaction, @ 10,000 transcripts
per year: 3,300 hours/year in resources were
repurposed and moved to other areas
Integrity of transfer data improved dramatically
Full automation of transfer credit reporting for EDI
transactions was realized
The student experience was enhanced, with
turnaround time updated Transfer Credit reports
for electronic transactions was guaranteed within
24 hours of receipt of EDI data.
How EDI Enabled Automation of International
Prior degree Verification Services






During the EDI rollout, USC outsourced its processing of
credentials evaluation services for international schools.
Worked early in the process with the vendor to discuss the
potential of replacing PDF reports with EDI data
transmissions
Leveraged the SPEEDE server, and educated the vendor
on the use of EDI transaction sets
Since going live in October 2013, more than 2800
credentials have been transmitted through TS130
transaction sets.
Has enabled full automation of data processing and
reporting
Two FTEs repurposed as a result of outsourcing/EDI
Contacts
Susan Reyes
slreyes@mail.sdsu.edu
Matt Bemis
wbemis@usc.edu
This presentation was brought to you by the
AACRAO SPEEDE Committee
speede@aacrao.org