Integrating payments software with the Student Information System: 3 common CIO questions answered

David King
David King
is CTO at Flywire.

What’s the footprint required of our computing environment?

Payment integration requires a footprint on the school’s computing environment. Our core system, for instance, is hosted – but there’s a chunk of code that needs to be dropped into the ERP/SIS system so that Flywire and the system can communicate. That’ll obviously require security review, networking and hardware considerations and planning in application lifecycle management. The deep integration can take up to 90 days.

Who do I need on my IT team to accomplish the payment integration?

Depending on the size and complexity of the institution, integrating a payment solution will require different IT team members. But as a general rule, this project will need:

  • An ERP admin or/and developer
  • A representative from the networking team to set up an additional application server and firewall rules to ensure secure networking and communication
  • A security and identity management team members to do the security review of the code and provide single sign on capabilities

Projects are typically most successful when there is representation from all the functions that the integration will touch – and that could be as many as four to five different people.

How do we maintain it?

On the maintenance end, a dedicated account manager will be in frequent communication with the client’s technology team, informing them about new releases and coordinating and providing support when the school plans a system-wide upgrade. Our releases are backwards compatible, and we push out new functionality monthly. As one example of what those updates look like, we recently made enhancements to give institutions the ability to easily reconcile placement status and balances for past-due accounts against their ERP/SIS.

When IT and finance collaborate early on integrating payment solutions with major student information systems and ERPs, it goes a long way in removing the friction from the process and paves the way for productive conversations with other stakeholders.

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What’s the footprint required of our environment?

Payment integration requires a footprint on the school’s computing environment. Our core system, for instance, is hosted – but there’s a chunk of code that needs to be dropped into Oracle PeopleSoft so that the two systems can communicate. That’ll obviously require security review, networking and hardware considerations and planning in application lifecycle management. The deep integration can take up to 90 days.

Who do I need on my team to accomplish the payment integration?

Depending on the size and complexity of the institution, integrating a payment solution will require different IT team members. But as a general rule, this project will need:

  • An ERP admin or/and developer
  • A representative from the networking team to set up an additional application server and firewall rules to ensure secure networking and communication
  • A security and identity management team members to do the security review of the code and provide single sign on capabilities

Projects are typically most successful when there is representation from all the functions that the integration will touch – and that could be as many as four to five different people.

How do we maintain it?

On the maintenance end, a dedicated account manager will be in frequent communication with the client’s technology team, informing them about new releases and coordinating and providing support when the school plans a system-wide upgrade. Our releases are backwards compatible, and we push out new functionality monthly. For PeopleSoft, for instance, we just rolled out functionality in the United States that automates access to the 1098-T tuition statement for tax purposes.

When institutions involve IT early when integrating payment solutions with major student information systems and ERPs, it goes a long way in removing the friction from the process and paves the way for productive conversations with other stakeholders.



Thinking about upgrading your payments processes?