So a great example of something that we're leveraging the TouchNet solution to simplify payment processes that were painful in many ways, because we were relying on paper checks. 

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 Georgetown University's Rico Marea, about their transition from paper checks and processes to digital payments. Hi, Rico. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Hey! Great to be here, Heather.

Well, you know, I have known you for my whole career here at TouchNet. But can you share your background at Georgetown with all of our audience?
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Absolutely. So I started at Georgetown as a temp worker in the Office of Student Accounts, and quickly started working on systems projects and implementation, which included a new TouchNet implementation, TouchNet Bill plus Payment, TouchNet cashiering, and of course, TouchNet payment gateway. And from there, I became the director of the Department of Billing and Payment Services, which includes student accounts. And then we expanded our scope to be the Office of Revenue and Receivables. And I was named senior director of that unit. And most recently, I've incorporated and responsibility for a wide variety of payment systems, non-credit student systems, and finally accounts payable, and recently promoted to Assistant Vice President for Revenue Receivables and Payables.

Well, that's awesome. It sounds like you have a lot under your belt now for sure, don't you?

Yep. There is a lot going on, always,

Well, I'd say especially over the last couple of years, you've had to make a lot of transitions and changes. And you know, like a lot of universities really being forced to conduct your business remotely. But really, that created some opportunities on your campus. So can you talk a little bit about maybe what you had to, in the thick of it all what actually has become an opportunity that you're going to keep going forward?

Yeah, absolutely. So the pandemic, first and foremost highlighted the issues with receiving and issuing paper checks. And that is something that requires physical hands, in physical locations to physically perform the work of receiving and opening envelopes. And even with remote deposits, getting that check through a micro scanner, right. And these are the kinds of tasks that nobody wanted to be doing in the middle of a pandemic. Unfortunately, they still had to be done. But it gave us the opportunity to really push towards electronic payment methods as the solution. We were able to leverage a couple of different solutions from TouchNet, to really minimize the number of paper checks that we were handling. So, for example, TouchNet marketplace, both in terms of U.Stores, and U.Pay allowed us to prop up payment acceptance websites, right for a variety of different use cases across campus. And there were recently graduated students that were still eligible to pay for student health insurance, for example. And these are not students anymore, though, so we're not billing them. So we needed to find a way to facilitate payment from these people that we were calling students that were no longer students. And we decided that the right method was a TouchNet U.Store. Campus organizations in student affairs also had a rough transition as before the pandemic, they were used to doing a lot of student fundraising, student group payment, kind of acceptance in person via cash or via check. And the pandemic really highlighted the need for their ability to organize student groups electronically and they partnered with a software company called Campus Groups, which thankfully is a TouchNet ready partner and so we were able to hook campus groups right into a market place U.Pay site. And they were able to transition all of their student groups to accepting payment for their various fundraisers, and things that they, the groups were selling to happen via Campus Groups and through a TouchNet marketplace U.Pay site. So we were able to significantly cut down on checks and cash receipt that way. So it was, it was all really fraught at the time as somebody's going through this pandemic knows for a lot of different reasons. But it led to some really important improvements that will carry us past the pandemic and into what we're, I think most campuses are, experiencing now is we're back mostly in person. But electronic payment is so much more efficient. And so much easier for not only the back-end staff members, but for the people that are trying to make payments, whether they're students in your student group students that have graduated and need health insurance, right. One use case that we're developing right now, as I've transitioned into being responsible for payables is repayment of personal expenses charged to a university procurement card. Right. Until now, the method for accidental expense charge personal expense charge to a university procurement card was, oh you need to write the university a check and deposit it at the cashier’s office.
And there are so many employees now that are remote or largely remote. Right? And luckily, this doesn't happen too often. But when it does, it's painful, right? Particularly for remote employees to be told that oh, yeah, I accidentally charged this thing, and I'm trying to make things right with the university. But in order to do that, I need to write a paper check. And figure out how to get it to your cashier’s office at a campus that maybe I've never even been to because I was hired as a remote employee in your advancement unit working out of New York.

Oh, yeah. So how do they do that then? Do you have them go through and make the payment through a U.Pay or U.Store site?

Yeah, I mean, we haven't actually developed it yet. But it seems pretty simple, from our initial investigations that we'll set up a U.Store right to accept payments for reimbursement of a university pro-card expense that was a personal expense, right? We at Georgetown University partnered with you guys several years back to develop a native integration between marketplace and workday finance. So, thankfully, when those payments come through, they can automatically post to our finance system. And we can reallocate it to the right place from there. Rather than, the simplest method of electronic payment is well, the payments in your bank account, but now you have to figure out how to get it into your financial system. And we even have step two solved for there. So yeah, it's not deployed. But it's a great example of something that we're leveraging a TouchNet solution to simplify payment processes that were painful in many ways because we were relying on paper checks.

Yeah, I think that's a really good use case. And I bet a lot of schools are having that same challenge. And it's interesting that you use that example because that actually happened to me recently with our corporate card and you just have things saved and you go to make a purchase and it pulls from your default card. It's like oh, no, not that one. And we were in the same predicament, like how do I get the money back over to pay the card? Without writing a check? So this is absolutely a case that is not unique to Georgetown, for sure. So I think that's a really great solution that you've come up with there.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, I will certainly let you know when it's up and running and assessment can deliver us any more functionality that will make it even easier. But for right now, I think the TouchNet U.Store has been a real boon for us and being able to quickly and easily prop up a payment solution for online payments for a variety of things, right. And with that integration directly into our finance system on the back end, we don't even have to look at the bank statement, we know that is going to show up in our financial system, and we can reallocate the expense from there if needed.

Yeah, that's great, I was going to ask you about that because I know you were both an early adopter of Workday Finance through Workday, but also early adopter, on our side of being able to have that integration. So I know, you talked a little bit already about that integration, but from a, you know, if you want to maybe just talk about a reconciliation perspective, how that's really eased some of your processes.

Yeah. I won't lie to you, Heather, it hasn't necessarily eased our reconciliation yet. Because, you know, in order to use reconciliation, and to really, you know, make things simpler, we have a lot of work to do in driving the majority of the payments to occur through TouchNet U.Stores, or a similar solution that automatically posts to finance, right. Right now, you know, as we deploy, U.Stores, U.Pay sites, and other kinds of solutions that automatically post things to our finance system, we are in a position where there's some activity in the bank account that's automatically posting to the bank account and some of the activities in the bank account that still needs to be reviewed and posted manually, right? And if you don't get to the point where reconciliation is simple, until all of the activity is predictable, and automatic, right. But, but we're on the way there, right? I mean, you have to have some of the activity posted automatically, before you can have all of the activity posted automatically. So we're certainly looking towards a future where, you know, all of the activity in our bank account gets posted automatically, because we have all these kinds of integrations, you know, like the ones that we have with TouchNet U.Stores, right. We're working with you guys and hoping that, you know, eventually you're able to deliver something where Workday customer payments through a customer portal, are received through a U.Pay site and posted automatically. And, you know, you guys have been great partners with us in terms of delivering that first Workday integration. So we're really hopeful and excited about a future where we have even more Workday integrations to work with your solutions on a broader scale. Right? You guys obviously have so many different financial systems that you're trying to work through. Right. And we know that you integrate well, with Banner by Ellucian, ERPs. Both on the student side, we obviously have lots of activity that flows that way. And that works incredibly well. Right. So we're sensitive to the fact that integrations of various sorts have to get delivered iteratively.

Right. Yeah, but definitely shows the importance, I'll say, right, of really unifying and bringing everything into that central system. So like you said, for you guys, you have it from the student side, and now all these different store fronts, and all coming into a single place is going to help in that path of reconciliation being easier, day by day.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, I know another thing that kind of happened during all this timeframe too, was there were some regulatory changes, and most recently, ACH validation from NACHA. And I know that you made some transitions to really accommodate that. So do you want to talk a little bit about that transition?

Yeah. So we are really thankful for having TouchNet as a partner, because not only did you kind of alert us to the fact that we needed to be compliant with this natural regulation, but then delivered us a solution that was pretty cost effective, and pretty easily integrated in order to be compliant with that regulation. So and, you know, credit to NACHA too for developing a regulation that made a lot of sense for, you know, making payments, more streamlined for all parties involved, right. For, you know, this is a great example of policy working from the top down, right? NACHA said, well, we seem to have a lot of problems with invalid bank accounts, right? Being submitted through web based solutions for capturing ACH payments, right. So we're gonna make a rule that says, now you have to validate them. And then technology companies started developing to satisfy that rule, and to be able to, you know, work with different banks to make sure that, you know, a front end entered bank account number is actually a valid bank account number. And that serves, you know, the people that are trying to make payments, or in this case, also using that same payment profile to get a refund, right to make sure that they're putting in a valid bank account number, because that's the most frequent problem is that someone fat fingers, their account number, right. And there's only so much that you can do with, you know, well enter the account number twice. But if you're looking at something where you wrote down your account number wrong in the first place, then you can enter it twice, but you're still entering the wrong account number twice. So, and having this validation tool pushed by the regulation, and then developed by TouchNet, and its technology partners and easily integrated with, particularly the Bill plus Payment front end for payment profile and refund profile creation, you know, is a great service to our students who, you know, it doesn't happen that often, but the ones that get a notice that are like your bank account, your bank transfer payment failed, because you gave us an invalid bank account. And that's certainly not pleasant for those students and parents, right. And usually, we're as clueless as they are, was to say, well, we don't know, you're the one that put in the bank account information. You need to figure it out with your bank and correct it, right. And being able to kind of validate that upfront and prevent them from submitting invalid bank information, gets them to give us good information. And, you know, they get their payments submitted without hiccups of invalid bank accounts. And we don't have to deal with the back and forth after the fact when we get an invalid bank account.

Yes. And they probably don't mind as much if they happen to have the wrong account number for a payment, it delays the payment, but they really care, if they put the wrong number and they don't get their refund fast. Right?

Yeah, that's certainly although, you know, you'd be surprised, particularly parents get really frustrated sometimes when, you know, they want to have made their payment, they want to have cleared their balance for the semester and having to send an email that says, hey, you gave us the wrong account number, and so that payment didn't go through, and now you have to start again, and your account balance is not cleared. Right? And we're pretty generous at Georgetown, right? We don't kick anybody out of classes for failing to pay on time in a semester. But a lot of parents don't know that. So, they get a notice that a payment has failed, and they start freaking out, you know, like, oh, my god, are you going to drop my students from classes? Are you going to kick them off campus? And, you know, and then we have to write the email or have the phone conversation that says, no, no, no, don't worry about it. Right? But all of that anxiety and all of that back-end communication could have been avoided if we had a front-end solution that said, you didn't put that in right. That's not an actual bank account that exists. And now we have that. Thanks to NACHA and thanks to you guys. So it's a big step forward.

That's awesome. Yeah, you kind of think about ACH validation really being more beneficial in the back end. But I can absolutely see how that helps to really ease the mind too, of the parent or student making that payment that it really did go through, because you do wanna make your payments on time? Well, gosh, it sounds like, you know, you've really cleaned up quite a bit of the last couple of years from, you know, ACH payments to all the different transitions of paper, check processes, and converting those over into U.Stores. So how has all of this really impacted the business office?

In ways that are both positive and overwhelming, right? I mean, the more that we deploy electronic solutions, the more that we have, you know, different units hear about us being able to deploy electronic solutions and want more of them, which is great. But it also is more work, every time that we have a use case delivered to us that says we need to deploy a new U.Store. Right. And not every use case that we get sent by a department is something that's amenable to U.Stores, right? Sometimes we have to suggest something different. You know, and sometimes we have to say, you know, what this is, there are so few payments that you're taking that it doesn't justify the overhead of having a U.Store. Right? So because there is overhead, every U.Store that you set up, right, and thankfully that threshold for overhead is so much lower with U.Stores than it was without a tool like that, where it's, the process for setting up a new payment facility is, in a best case scenario, a day or two, right? Yeah. We don't need the IT department to help us.

That really becomes key to a lot of schools, I think being able to have that ownership and not be put, you know, on a list to get to them when I know they have a lot of stuff on their plate right now, especially and being able to just kind of do it yourself and stand up a storefront. Without IT assistance has been really beneficial to a lot of schools. And I think too, from a compliance standpoint, right. I mean, didn't you know, really having everything unify within marketplace helps you from a PCI position, too, right?

Yeah, I mean, certainly, it's something that we are driving towards, right. TouchNet, and, you know, payment, software companies, like TouchNet are experts at, you know, keeping data secure, right? And universities like Georgetown University, are less so, and we'd love to be able to outsource that to you. So, you know, before TouchNet U.Stores, there were a lot of units that wanted to take credit card payments, but they didn't know how to collect that information. Right? You know, particularly with remote payments, it was like, well, we can get you a clover device provided by our bank account, by our bank rep. And then we can set up a plain old telephone service fax line for people to fax in their credit card information, which is painful for the person trying to make a payment, it's painful for the back-end office. And then you have to have all sorts of mitigation efforts to make sure that you're not storing that credit card information, right. So being able to outsource PCI compliance in large part to you guys, is a big help. Now, of course, we still have our PCI compliance obligations. But we don't run anything over the Georgetown network, right. And just a couple of weeks ago, someone from IT said, we're going through our cybersecurity and insurance review, and they want to know how much credit card information we store. And I said, well, we don't store any of it. We certainly process a lot of credit card information, but it's all through third party partners primarily TouchNet that you know, you guys do the heavy lifting in terms of PCI security. And we're able to kind of point to your sock ones, sock twos and say, well, they've got it, and we have these management considerations, but otherwise they've got it. It's not on our network.

Yeah, it's nice. When you're asked a question like that you don't have to go try to find a report and go, I know the answer, it’s zero. That's great. Well, it sounds like, you know, again, you've been able to make, you know, a lot of changes that may seem small, but really have had some big impact, you know, for not just your constituents who are trying to make payments and refunds, but also your business office personnel. And so any advice would you say to our listeners on how to really continue improving your processes in that in that experience?

You know, I think that, the first thing is to keep on looking for those stacks of paper checks that are coming through your Cashiers Office, and then have follow up conversations with the units that are bringing you those stacks of paper checks and say, hey, is there a way for us to do this better for you? That's something that we are working on a continuous basis is trying to identify where we're getting those stacks of checks. And then figuring out who's bringing them to us and having a conversation with the those business owners to say, hey, I see that, you know, every week you bring us 50 checks, or maybe it's not every week, right? And this is where it gets more complicated. And you have to be constantly vigilant. But maybe it's the once-a-year event where you get 500, checks, or even 100 checks, right? And you keep an eye out for that. And you say, hey, I saw that you bought us 100 checks, what was that about? Right? And it could be a variety of things, right? And again, not all of them are going to be amenable to an electronic payment solution. But a lot of them are right. And a lot of these folks will say oh my God, I didn't know that you could do it this way. I would have gotten in touch with you a lot earlier. And so they're thankful. Right? But particularly, you know, it's important to keep front and center the experience of the person that's paying initially, right? You know, we as back-office personnel often get lost in what's inefficient about what we're doing and where it's causing pain points for our staff and for reconciliation. But primarily, we ought to continue to be focused on, you know, where are things inefficient for that front end user? Who wants to send us a payment for something? And maybe we're making it difficult for them? And something that should take 30 seconds is taking them, you know, five minutes, and in the worst-case scenario, because it's something that they see takes five minutes instead of 30 seconds that they don't send us the payment. And in the best-case scenario, they're frustrated, right, and for spending the extra four and a half minutes submitting a payment to us. Right. And you know, that they have a slightly lower opinion of Georgetown University. And those four and a half minutes, you know, accumulate across all the different payers that you're asking to pay. So that's the thing that I would advise everybody at different universities and other organizations to keep front and center is what's the experience of the person that's trying to pay me?

Yeah, I think that's great advice. And I think, you know, we've definitely seen that shift of let's pay attention to the student experience, constituent experience, really, that front end. And, and ultimately, at the end of the day, when you make that better, it really is going to be better for your staff too, because they're not going to take those cranky phone calls they're trying to get though what's going on and doing that research. Right.

Exactly, exactly.

That's awesome. Well, great advice, Rico. Thanks so much. You know, it's always a pleasure to catch up with you and hear all the cool stuff that Georgetown is doing. So thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me, Heather.

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