Budgets are tight, teams are lean, and many of the forces reshaping higher ed are beyond any student accounts and finance office’s control. When there are few levers left to pull, one of the biggest innovations available is freeing up everyone’s time. That was the message from 150+ higher education finance leaders gathered in Austin for Flywire Fusion this week.
These leaders are taking real and big steps to elevate and automate the student financial experience to create efficiency and effectiveness for their teams and their students. They know every friction-filled process that wastes time for students and families leaves a lasting impression, and saps energy from their already resource -strapped staff. Making the leap to a better experience sets in motion countless positive ripple effects.
“Automation is a simple way of being able to increase efficiencies in staff tasks and reduce the tedious and monotonous daily work,” said Susan Rose, Director of Financial Services at UC Irvine. “This increases the morale of your staff.”
That student payments are forces of innovation – and the benefits of fewer clicks are measured in more than seconds – was clear from Flywire clients and speakers who shared powerful stories over the three days of education and networking. They talked about the benefits of moving to Flywire Student Financial Software (SFS), the ease of making the move all integrated with their SIS systems, how they’re using AI in their roles to innovate, and their strategies for cost cutting and revenue generation in today’s challenging landscape.
“We are seeing the momentum in innovating the student financial experience. Leaders know that they need to move away from the status quo, and every story shared here this week is evidence of that,” said Sharon Butler, Flywire’s Co-President of Global Education.
3 major themes stood out in conversations and sessions at the event.
1. Automation is a retention tool – for staff and students
Multiple speakers covered the “game-changing” effects of Flywire innovation on their staff. The system is easy to configure, and new functionality allows for easy posting of communication messages to the portal. When a student defaults on a payment plan, they are removed automatically. And real-time integration with the SIS eliminates manual reconciliation. It all means fewer handoffs, headaches for staff and more time and energy to serve students and look for other ways to innovate.
“Institutions are stitching together multiple systems and every handoff creates friction. There are more opportunities for something to go wrong,” said David King, Flywire’s Chief Product Officer and Co-President of Global Education. “Today’s students don’t have the tolerance for friction. Getting every financial moment right takes the right system.”
2. In making a change, let the data do the talking
Flywire’s Chief Operating Officer Rob Orgel opened Fusion highlighting the incredible impacts of those who had made the switch to SFS. “You are the change makers. And the impact you all make is quite incredible,” he said.
Several clients – including the University of Connecticut, Penn State, Bates College, Stanford University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), The University of Northern Colorado and more, shared stories and benefits of moving forward with a system change, and what to expect in an implementation. Each one built the case on aligning stakeholders around the evidence of end results.
“We just kept providing the data,” said Amin Lahlou, Director of Student Financial Services from Ball State University in talking about their move to implement Flywire SFS Collection Management to drive stronger retention.
3. A big change positions the institution to continuously improve
The right technology positions the student accounts and finance teams to be flexible and innovative. At Penn State, for instance, Flywire SFS Billing and Payment Management opens up the flexibility to handle unique financial situations and move a payment date a few days to, for instance, accommodate a family’s paycheck schedule, to keep their student on track and enrolled.
“Higher ed is not just about processing transactions. It is about creating clear pathways,” said Flywire’s Chief Commercial Officer Allison MacLeod.
What is new in Flywire SFS?
A major milestone, Flywire revealed at the event that students have enrolled in 1 million payment plans in SFS – with average schools seeing a 50% increase in plan enrollment and default rates under 2%.
Over the past year, Flywire shipped 61 releases – including 44 major releases – relevant updates and upgrades to functionality in SFS this year. What’s more, everything was implemented with 99.8% uptime – ensuring zero disruption and continuity critical to higher ed. Some of those include:
- Sponsor payments and cashiering within SFS. Sponsor payments and payments made in-person post in real-time to the SIS.
- Collection Management Analytics Dashboard. This allows data and analysis on placement dates, amounts, and resolutions, as well as collection plan activities and performance.
- 529 plans. More than 50 529 plans have been connected plus Scholarship America. This has eliminated 1.1 million paper checks.
During the annual Hackathon, engineers built three pieces of new functionality live over 24 hours – sitting directly on the show floor and chatting with customers along the way. As voted on by attendees, these include new features that will enable clients to support a secure, one-time guest payment link, to customize the sender address when emailing students, and use bulk search functionality to retrieve multiple students' data from their ERP or SIS.
Hope and resilience pervade
While no one danced around the real issues facing higher ed at the conference (being that the event was in Austin, there was of course, line dancing), confidence and resilience was strong.
“Take a breath. Show grace where you can,” said Bryan Dickson, NACUBO’s Director of Education Policy, during his annual policy update. “There is good news. Enrollment is up. FAFSA completion is up. People still believe in higher ed.”
