Working in college admissions is a lot like that Daft Punk song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”
(With significantly fewer robot voices involved, of course.)
(Unless someone in your department has one of those voice changer toys in his desk drawer, and a lot of free time on his hands…)
(But we digress.)
The goal of Admissions is always to become better, faster, more accurate – to gain that edge.
So integrating your department’s software with your institution’s SIS just makes sense.
And if you’re specifically trying to integrate Slate with Banner, then you’re in luck! Google “integrate Slate with Banner” and you’ll find guides galore, pages describing the existing integration options Slate boasts, and even PowerPoints from conferences giving step-by-step instructions for the integration process.
The common theme in all of these resources?
Don’t panic. It seems complicated, but if you keep things simple and only focus on a few really important areas, it’ll be okay.
And sure, it’s nice that they’re trying to reassure you and all, but it also makes you wonder…is it really that simple, if they have to tell you to calm down?
Here at N2N, we’re not going to tell you to calm down.
We don’t need to, because our Illuminate platform, and its add-on module IDMatch, make integrating Slate with Banner truly simple.
Intuitive, even.
With Illuminate and IDMatch, you don’t have to “only focus on a few areas,” or “keep it simple.”
You can fully integrate all the data from Slate into Banner on an ongoing basis, and not only that – you can be absolutely sure that no duplicate records are ever created during the process. You can even customize the types of data you want to filter incoming data by, in order to make absolutely sure no duplicates slip through the cracks.
All as easy as 1, 2, 3.
In fact, implementation is so simple that you don’t even need programmers to handle it.  Illuminate’s intuitive wizard-like interfaces guide even laymen through the process with ease, and the N2N team is always available to help with any special needs or questions that may arise.
Illuminate is a turnkey API management platform that can be used for integrations of all types, and for institutions of any size. It allows users to easily connect their SIS and ERP systems, whether on-premise, hosted, or in the cloud, to any other system or vendor requiring real-time or scheduled data synchronization, and is one of the few platforms available that does not require complex programming to create APIs.
IDMatch is a fully-customizable, turnkey, automated add-on module for Illuminate that enables higher ed institutions to check student applications (or any other student data feed) against existing student records, in order to eliminate duplicates and filter based on the data of their choosing, and then integrate into their SIS.
Together, these tools are a powerful solution for admissions departments looking for that edge.
Here’s what a typical day with IDMatch and Illuminate might look like for your admissions department: You come into the office and log into IDMatch. Overnight, multiple student applications came through Slate and were instantly filtered by custom data fields you chose during IDMatch set-up, to check for duplicate records in Banner. You’ve got some records that need to be checked, so you quickly scan IDMatch’s color-coded data fields to verify whether those records are in fact duplicates, or not. You mark each accordingly, and then IDMatch and Illuminate handle the rest, integrating only accurate data into Banner and eliminating the confusion of duplicate records.
Simplicity? Check.
Automation? Check.
Accuracy? Check.
Speed? Check.
Peace of mind? Check.
Better? Faster? Stronger? You’d better believe it.
So if you’re ready to give your admissions department an edge, then give N2N a call today. We can answer any questions you may have, or even hook you up with a free demo. We may need to calm you down afterwards – but only because you’ll be so excited about using Illuminate and IDMatch at your institution.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how worried are you about the imminent rise of robot overlords?
If you’re at a 9 or a 10, then you may not want to read this blog post. In fact, you may actually want to take up yoga, or maybe cut back on the caffeine or something.
But if you’re at 8 or below, then it should be safe to ask yourself the following questions:
First of all, how automated is the admissions process at your institution?
Are student applications uploaded directly into your systems without any interventions from staff? Are all of your databases and programs integrated in such a way that data flows between them without the need for manual transfers? Are there bottlenecks because certain steps in the process need to be done by a human – like comparing or verifying huge amounts of data?
 And then secondly, how would you rate the quality of your institution’s data?
Do you know for a fact that there are no duplicate student records in your database? How much of an opening does your admissions process give human error to miss details or make mistakes? Do your current apps and systems have the ability to catch or prevent any such mistakes? Â
We’re not saying it’s time to surrender to the robots – but we are saying you need to take a good hard look at which parts of your admissions process are most efficiently handled by tech solutions, and which parts truly do require manual human involvement, and then adjust your admissions process accordingly.
Data quality is a crucial aspect of every facet of a higher ed institution’s functioning.  But with the massive amounts of student data needing to be checked and processed on an ongoing basis, it would take a massive commitment of resources to handle it all manually. Automated solutions definitely speed up the admissions process, but without human involvement, they don’t have the capacity to prevent certain errors or duplicate records. And the various mash-ups of these two options that university IT departments often attempt simply end up slowing things down or causing more mistakes.
So what’s the answer? A tech solution that handles the time-consuming, nitty-gritty parts of the process, and then hands it off to your humans at critical junctions to make important judgements.
The answer is IDMatch.
IDMatch is a fully-customizable, turnkey, automated solution for higher ed institutions to check student applications against existing student records, in order to eliminate duplicates and filter based on the data of their choosing, and then integrate into their SIS.
Humans call the shots during the initial set-up, when the data fields that student applications will be filtered through are chosen based on an institution’s unique needs. Then IDMatch takes over, comparing new student data to existing student records in your systems, and creating lists of applicants who may be duplicates. At this point, humans take the wheel again, clicking through the intuitive interface to see whether they are in fact doubles or not, and making decisions about how to handle each case. Then, it’s back to IDMatch for the final integration into your SIS.
An add-on module to N2N’s Illuminate API Management Platform, IDMatch also brings with it the capability to seamlessly integrate all your data, in every app, system, and database, and automate its transfer between them.
So if you’re looking for a way to automate as much of the admissions process as possible, but get human eyes on the data to ensure quality – and do so without slowing things down or providing opportunities for mistakes to be made, then give us a call today. The robots are waiting.
Just kidding, just kidding – we humans at N2N would be happy to walk you through a free demo anytime.
See, Waubonsee plays an integral role in its community.
Located about 30 miles west of Chicago, it’s a learning hub for many students in the area, providing opportunities to fit just about any young adult’s educational and career goals. Â
Local high school students take dual credit classes through Waubonsee.
Some students use it as an affordable stepping stone to a 4-year degree.
Others get their Associate’s there and then dive headfirst into their careers.
And still others take a few classes for enrichment, continuing ed, or just for fun.
But a bustling community college means a bustling admissions department – and that’s where the trouble lay.
With so many students applying for different reasons and at different times in their school careers, the number of application submissions can get pretty overwhelming. To complicate matters further, students who took dual credit classes in high school often start the application process from scratch again if they want to take regular college classes at Waubonsee – even though they’re already in the database. And sometimes new students begin an online application, abandon it, and then start over a year or two later from scratch – once again creating multiple records in the database.
Waubonsee needed a way to ensure that, no matter what path a student took through the application process, only one record would be created for each student.
And that wasn’t all.
Illinois’s community college tuition rates are based on whether a student resides within a particular community college district or not. So Waubonsee needed a way to differentiate between student applications from their district, and those from different districts (none of which are based on ZIP codes) – without having to manually go through each one to check.
Together, these two challenges made for a situation that just wasn’t able to be effectively addressed without a tech solution.
Enter N2N’s Illuminate platform, and its innovative new add-on module, IDMatch.
Waubonsee partnered with N2N to automate the process, and hasn’t looked back since.
IDMatch is a fully-customizable, turnkey, automated solution for higher ed institutions to check student applications (or any other student data feed) against existing student records, in order to eliminate duplicates and filter based on the data of their choosing, and then integrate into their SIS. Â
We worked with Waubonsee to customize the data fields the community college needed to be able to check in order to ensure that no duplicate records were being produced, and students were being charged the correct tuition based on their district of residence.
It wasn’t simply a matter of First Name, Last Name, Social Security Number – this was a much more in-depth approach, including multiple variations and combinations of names and other personal student information in order to definitively prevent duplicate records. We created fields to match by the 1st 3 letters of the First Name and Date of Birth…First and Last Name reversed…Maiden Name and Date of Birth…Residence/District Codes…the list goes on and on.
Since the end of June 2018, when IDMatch was implemented, Waubonsee reports that 64% of student applications uploaded to their system turned out to have duplicate records already in the school database – and Illuminate and IDMatch caught them all, ensuring that no duplicates were created, and preventing confusion for hundreds of students.
64%! Just imagine how long it would have taken to check all those applications manually – and how often human error could have missed a duplicate here and there.
Betty Bechtold, Data Specialist at Waubonsee, shared the following:
“Our registration and records people were super nervous about starting to use IDMatch, but once we got it up and running, they were saying that they had lost all that sleep for nothing! It was a huge relief – beyond what we could have imagined!! We keep discovering little surprises where it goes above and beyond what we were expecting it to. IDMatch is pretty user-intuitive, and the people at N2N bend over backwards to make sure we’re happy with how it’s working. N2N has been so good at working with us to give us exactly what we wanted – the product itself is really, really good, and the customer service might even be better.”
Here at N2N, we’re honored to have the chance to work with schools like Waubonsee. If you’d like to find out how IDMatch can help your higher ed institution, contact us today.
ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced a strategic relationship with N2N Services, Inc., a leading platform provider for higher education systems integration. ACI will integrate its campus commerce system with N2N’s turnkey cloud integration platform, Illuminate, to improve students’ payment experiences. The need for higher education institutions to improve integration between payments and student information systems is highlighted by a recent Ovum survey, which showed that 88 percent of institutions had plans to do so in the next 12 months.
N2N’s Illuminate empowers its customers to create, manage, secure and monetize APIs, and build bridges between two APIs without any need for programming and additional infrastructure. With a network of more than 200 academic institutions, N2N is offering students and families the benefit of a comprehensive, simple payments experience with ACI’s campus commerce system. Through the N2N platform, higher education verticals will be able to connect their student information systems, including Ellucian™, Campus Management®, Peoplesoft® and Jenzabar® with ACI’s student payment portal and simplify payments while improving payments security. In addition, colleges and universities will be able to offer more ways to view and pay student bills, whether through modern mobile experiences, simplified account management or interest-free payment plans.
“We are committed to enabling enterprises of all sizes to participate, benefit from and compete in today’s digital economy enabled by APIs,” said Kiran Kodithala, CEO, N2N Services Inc. “Partnering with ACI on its solution for the higher education vertical will allow our customers to deliver more payment options to students and families, which will help reduce delinquent payments, make refunds easy and improve the overall payment experience. In the future, we hope to expand this program beyond higher education.” Â
“It’s neither easy nor convenient for students and parents to manage student payment accounts because they typically have to go through different websites to pay tuition bills in full, set up payment plans or resolve delinquent accounts,” said Andrew Sajeski, business leader, biller solutions, ACI Worldwide. “This partnership will deliver an innovative payment portal to all of the schools in N2N’s network and provide one place for payments, payment plans and delinquent collections.”
More than 300 higher education institutions trust ACI Worldwide for improving student satisfaction and payments security with its campus commerce systems. On average, higher education institutions report a 24 percent increase in student satisfaction after partnering with ACI Worldwide, according to independent third-party research.
Find the press release at https://www.aciworldwide.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2018/september/aci-worldwide-and-n2n-services-deliver-college-students-a-better-bill-payment-experience
Most, if not all, problems that arise during and after implementation can be avoided by hashing out vital details beforehand.
And the donuts don’t hurt, either.
So grab a cuppa, and let’s take a look at the five burning questions you’ll need to address.
1-Does your business have an overarching mobility strategy?
A couple years ago, Forrester Research came out with a report describing the 4 stages of enterprise “mobile maturity.” The first entails simply applying current PC-based strategies to a smaller screen. The second puts mobile first, considering how your business can use the unique features of mobility to its advantage. The third considers how you can transform your customers’ experience via mobile, so mobile ceases to be a goal in and of itself, and the fourth has businesses developing new products, services, and business models that wouldn’t exist if not for mobile.
Depending on where your business lies in that spectrum, your strategy will differ, but the most important thing is that you have an overarching strategy. Trying to address mobility piecemeal will just make things more complicated for everyone involved, so take the time to make a truly comprehensive plan right from the start – and one that answers each of the following questions, as well.
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2-How will you ensure data security?
This is an aspect of mobile integration that most departments don’t even seem to realize is an issue – but gets IT staff tearing their hair out at the slightest mention. Sure, it’s easy to download and start using an app on your phone – but if it hasn’t been securely integrated with your enterprise data, every mobile user could be putting your business at risk.
3-How will you integrate your mobile apps with your enterprise data?
Speaking of integration, how will you handle that? Monopolize your in-house IT team’s time for weeks as they work on custom coding? Hire some expensive developers to do the same? Or will you use an API management platform, like N2N’s Illuminate, that allows for secure mobile integration in minutes, no coding required?  Â
4-Will your mobile apps’ user experience ensure high adoption rates?
Custom coding gets the job done, but it leaves a convoluted web of connections behind – and one that will only get more complex as you add more apps in future. If there’s one thing Dad taught us, it was that the most complicated a car is, the more likely it is to break down – expensively. The back end of your mobile apps needs to be simply and elegantly integrated with your enterprise data by a platform like Illuminate in order to avoid any costly user experience snafus, and boost adoption.
5-Will your mobile integration strategy leave room for future agility, as apps, devices, platforms, and the Internet of Things evolve?
It’s one thing to get all your existing systems integrated with the mobile apps you’re using today. But what about the ones you’ll be using tomorrow? Or in 10 years? And that’s not even considering all the new devices and platforms that will be developed by then, too – and what about the IoT? You need to integrate using an API management platform like Illuminate, that makes future additions and changes simple and easy, so that you can stay ahead of the curve and take full advantage of every opportunity new tech presents. Â
You know what? You may not need both pots of coffee after all. This discussion is actually pretty simple when it comes down to it. Use Illuminate for your mobile integration, and you’ll be able to securely, quickly, and easily integrate all your enterprise data with your mobile apps without using up resources or risking UX glitches, while leaving the future wide open to pivot and adapt as needed.
So. Mobile integration. Nice to have in place. Definitely cool. But necessary?
Maybe it seems like something you can take care of in the future – something that isn’t urgent.
Maybe it doesn’t seem necessary at all – you’re getting along fine without it now, so why add one more project to your IT department’s workload?
Maybe you feel like you’re basically mobile already – a couple of the apps you and your team use for work can be accessed on your phone, and that’s enough to keep you going when you’re not in the office.
So why would mobile integration be a necessity for your enterprise?
Let’s take a look at your business goals and break it down from there.
Pretty much every company out there has the same basic goals, right? High productivity, low costs, and the ability to beat out the competition. That’s the path to success, right?  Â
So when a tool is developed that helps enterprises significantly in achieving those goals, it quickly becomes standard in the business world – a necessity, truly, in order to keep up.
Just think how much apps like Basecamp, Trello, and Asana have improved project management processes – and how much of a disadvantage companies are at who don’t use a similar app.
Or what about Agile methodology? While it doesn’t work for everyone, for startups and tech companies, Agile is without question the way to get things done today.
The cloud is another example of something that many businesses were skeptical of at first – and now it’s the companies who don’t use the cloud in some capacity that are the odd ones out.
But how does mobile integration contribute to those basic business goals we mentioned above?
Let’s break that down, too:
1 – Productivity
Sure, you probably use some apps already that you can access from your phone no matter where you are. But not every enterprise application is accessible as a mobile app – especially not legacy systems with massive databases and labyrinthine webs of point-to-point connections with every other unwieldy application used. Wouldn’t it be great if they were? Full access to your company’s data and systems, anytime, anywhere – and a corresponding spike in productivity and possibilities.
That’s where mobile integration comes into play – and specifically, N2N’s Illuminate API Management Platform. Illuminate enables enterprises to quickly and easily build out APIs that can make that enterprise data available securely via mobile – no coding necessary.
2 – Cost Reduction
Wondering how much mobile integration is gonna cost you? You should be thinking about how much you’d be shelling out if you choose a different path to mobility. Starting over and building new mobile apps to replace legacy systems…painstakingly transferring data from old systems to new ones…custom coding APIs for every new incarnation of an app, for every new mobile device or operating system that’s developed in the future… It’s not for the faint of heart – or the pincher of pennies.
Mobile integration via Illuminate eliminates every single one of those issues – and their associated costs. No need to create new apps – just integrate the existing ones for seamless communication in minutes. Be prepared for any new device the future may hold, confident that you’ll be able to integrate it into your system in a snap. You’ll be saving yourself money both now and in the future.
3 – Competitiveness
When every other company is using computers, you don’t want to be the company stuck using a typewriter. Putting mobile integration into place now means that you’ll be prepared for the future, agile enough to pivot and adapt to any changing circumstances – and strategically take advantage of any innovations before your competition does.
Illuminate future-proofs your company by giving you the ability to integrate any future apps with your existing systems, quickly, easily, and affordably. While others struggle to catch up with mobility, or expend resources custom coding their way to integration, you’ll be no more than a few minutes away from a quick pivot that can mean the difference between being an industry leader…or an also-ran.
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