Why We Made the Switch to Parchment’s Transcript Services
Welcome to why we made the switch to Parchment's transcript services. Appreciate you joining. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and introduce yourself in the chat. Give us your name, your role, and the institution that you're with. And we are so happy to have doctor Fisher with us today, university registrar at TCU, and that's gonna be the bulk of our conversation today. Before we get started, a few housekeeping items.
Your phone lines, computer audio, everything like that is muted. So the way that you can interact with us today is one of two ways. So go ahead and use that chat feature to introduce yourself. If you have a question throughout the webinar. .
. And we hope that you have questions and we welcome your questions. That's kind of the beauty of a webinar like this. You can ask questions directly to us or to Nicole. And so ask your questions.
If you do that, use the q and a feature. So a little bit different than using the chat, but that'll allow us to manage what questions have we answered, which ones are outstanding, that type of thing. At this point, everyone is a Zoom veteran for better or worse. So there's the chat. Go ahead.
Tell us who you are. Then And if you have a specific question you want us to address, use that q and a. And, again, please ask your questions. We want your questions. We wanna know what you're curious about, and that's obviously the beauty of a webinar like this where we can kinda bring everybody together.
And I always say this. If you have a question and you're like, should I ask this question? Someone else on the webinar will be glad that you asked it. Someone else is wondering the same thing that you are, so ask your questions. And this meeting is being recorded. So if you have to jump off a few minutes early or maybe you have a colleague that you wanna share this with at some point, we'll send out the recording to everybody that registered for the webinar.
So quick agenda, pretty simple agenda. We'll do some introductions, then it's a q and a with Nicole, and that's gonna be the bulk of our conversation. Then I'll highlight some of the differentiators, you know, what we think Parchment does differently on the transcript services side as well as kind of the comprehensive platform for credentialing. And then we'll talk next steps as well if you. .
. If anything piqued your interest today. So brief introduction of myself. My name is Matt Sternberg. I'm the director of customer advocacy at Parchment.
I've had the joy of meeting many of you. Really, my role is to just connect with our customers and tell the stories of how Parchment has impacted their business and their operations. And, really, when you think about it, it's. . .
If we say it, it's it's. . . You know, you you kinda don't trust it. Like, well, of course, Parch.
. . Of course, Parchment's gonna say how great they are. But when institutions say that we've created value for them or we. .
. We've made their lives easier or we've reduced the stress on their office, that means so much more. And that's candidly why we're doing a webinar like this. Right? Like, let's hear from institutions directly. I've been with Parchment for eleven years in a variety of different roles, and I'm in the wonderful state of Michigan in Grand Rapids.
But with that, Nicole would love for you to introduce yourself. Sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Nicole Mancombe Fisher. I am the university registrar at Texas Christian University, TCU, in Fort Worth, Texas.
I will be here as of three years in November, but I've worked at a variety of institutions across The United States from Boston to North Carolina, to Louisiana to Texas, and have worked with Parchment at several of them across the years. So I'm really happy to be on the call today with all of you and talk about our our switch to Parchment here at TCU. And, Nicole, do you have any interesting facts about yourself? Let's get to know you a little bit. Anything interesting? Interesting fact. I.
. . And, you know, I I would be remiss, Matthew, if I didn't say this, but I am a Jeopardy champion. I was on Jeopardy about twelve years ago. I was on for two days.
I won one day, so I will forever be able to say I'm a Jeopardy champion. It was a fantastic experience. If people have questions about, like, how to get on or how I did it, please shoot me an email. I'm always happy to chat about the Jeopardy experience. It was phenomenal.
And if they would let me, I would do it again. So absolutely phenomenal experience. And I've already grilled her with a number of questions because I've told Nicole that being on Jeopardy is one of my dreams. I've tried out a few times. So I think it's.
. . Jeopardy champion is a big deal. Like, not just on Jeopardy. Jeopardy champion is huge.
So you win the interesting fact contest, Nicole. Mine is usually I've been to every state but North Dakota. I can't even, you know, say I've been to everyone. But, anyways We gotta get you to North Dakota. We gotta get to North Dakota.
Well, it's great to get to know you a little bit, Nicole. And, you know, now is the q and a portion. And so we're talking today about why make the switch, why you made the switch to Parchment's transcript services. And kind of the elephant in the room is like, man, it's hard to make a switch for any technology when when you're working at an institution. Right? You've.
. . You gotta get people bought in. You know, you've gotta identify what we're trying to solve for. You gotta trust that the solution that you're moving to is gonna be better than than what you have currently.
So just walk us through your experience. Why did you switch over to Parchment for transcript services? Sure. So let me start by saying I. . .
I've implemented an an etranscript solution several times at institutions that previously weren't on an etranscript solution. So we're going back some years. And so I I have had familiarity with a bunch of different vendors, most of whom across the years have been acquired by Parchment. The first one I acquired was eScrips. .
. I purchased with eScrips Safe. So it's a Parchment product now. So familiar with all of the players over the years and, you know, truly coming back to the hallmark that Parchment is, like, the standard bearer in terms of the service and the quality. And so having worked with Parchment and others at other institutions, when I got to TCU and looking at the service that we had and the experience that we were having, you know, my immediate thought was, well, let's.
. . We're not getting any traction with our current service provider. Let's look at Parchment. Now I will preface this by saying, I work at a private school.
And so I do recognize that for those of you on here that are public institutions, there are probably a few more layers of decision making in that process. But having also done this at public schools, I I can speak to kind of both sides of that equation. But, really, you know, looked at what we were currently getting and what I knew we could get from another provider, that was really the jumping off point for starting the conversation with Parchment about switching over to them at my current institution. So you make the switch. Give us the idea of how much heartburn was it.
You know, implementation. . . Like, this, I could just put myself in people's shoes where they're like, yeah. Maybe I want to, but how big of a lift is this gonna be? You know, there's someone on the webinar today that's like, yeah.
I'd like to do this, but we're switching over to Workday coming up. You know, we've got all these things going on. Like, give us the idea of how big of a burden it is to actually make the jump. Sure. I will say a lot of it probably depends on the current stability of your other processes.
So at the time we made the switch to Parchment, we were. . . We're on PeopleSoft, and we knew in the foreseeable future, we weren't we weren't changing student information systems. If you're in the middle of a student information system, I would say finish that first, and then maybe.
. . Then then do your your switch over to Parchment from wherever you're at just because. . .
While the lift is not hard, I would really just hate. . . For me, like, to put my IT people just through additional hours of work when we're just repeating the same thing. Again, they were.
. . They looked at the document and were like, oh, this is easy. We can knock this out. No problem.
But I would just feel bad making them do that twice when I also. . . When I know they have a huge list of other projects and priorities that they wanna get to. So I would just keep in mind where where are you at with some other projects that you might have going on.
But, overall, the lift the lift was not hard. You know, we sat down with our customer service people from Parchment, you know, our rep, and had the conversation about here's what here's what we're looking for. Here's what we're needing. Tell them about the. .
. You know, and they sent over the documentation about here's what the implementation timeline looks like. Here's what we'll need on your side in terms of. . .
You know, we'll look at the transcript, and we'll do the the imaging for that. And, you know, we go went back and forth to figure out and make sure everything looked the way we wanted it to. But then they also sent over the documentation on the technology lift. And, again, depending on your institution who in your institution is doing that, it might vary on how much time they can give to a a a given project at any given time. I know all of our IT departments are are taxed beyond the hours they have available in a day and a wish list a mile long, but I'm sure you could probably make the case that this is this is needed for your students and their success.
Maybe that might bump it up a little bit higher in the queue to get done. But, overall, when I sent that documentation to my IT people, based on some of the other projects they were working on at the time, they were like, oh, no. This is not a problem. It's, like, eight hours of work. This is not a problem.
We can knock this out. You know, just tell us when you need us, and we'll hop in and and do what we need to do. So in that regard, the actual technology lift was not was not difficult. Yeah. I appreciate that candid perspective.
Right? You have to be realistic about, you know, how many favors you're gonna call in, you know, with certain. . . But compared to an SIS, you know, this is Oh, absolutely. I mean, on one hand.
. . On, you know, on one side of the spectrum, you have a a full SIS implementation. Then on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you have a Parchment implementation. There could not be further from each other in terms of the lift involved.
So, Nicole, give us an idea of what. . . Like, operationally, you know, what were you doing. .
. What was your office having to do before that you don't have to do with parchment? Like, where are the time savings? Like, what are the differences in terms of your your operations and processes? Absolutely. So my team who, you know, initially were a little hesitant, right, the people that were were running the transcripts daily because they were very comfortable with the current process. You know, they were like, it's fine. You know, everything works.
And I was like, yeah. It works, but is it working to the best way it could be? And could we get some efficiency in here to free us up to do some other stuff? And the answer to that was was yes. And so after we demoed for them Parchment, you know, and the Parchment Exchange and the behind the scenes and how all that worked, they were they were like, oh my gosh. Yes. Because our.
. . You know, with our previous provider, we've legitimately had an 80 page document on how we ran transcripts every day, which is incredible. In the year 2020. .
. You know, well, at the time, it was, like, 2021. We have an 80 page document that is our procedure document for how to run transcripts on the daily, and we were doing our own in house mailing, you know, for the ones that were getting mailed out. If we had old work cards, you know, those were not eligible to be sent electronically. We would have to only be able to send those as, like, a printed PDF on our transcript paper.
So there were just a lot of things that we were kinda working around that we had Band Aids on that meant we were still providing service, but maybe not the level of service that I wanted to be able to offer. And so, you know, having that conversation with my team and then also the demos and, you know, explaining that this process is going to be moved to be so much easier on your end, and you won't have to do mail outs anymore. Parchment will do that for us. They were onboard with that. So that was that was the.
. . That was probably the easiest part of the sell is, you know, it's like, oh, you're gonna make my job easier? You're gonna. . .
I mean, I don't have to fold and stuff envelopes anymore. This is great. No. Mind you, we were doing a ton of mail outs, and we were 80. .
. About eighty twenty in our split between etranscripts and print. But still, 20% of over is a lot of mailing out. What were the downstream effects of doing that mailing? I'm just kinda thinking about, like, in your world, customer services to the students. Right? Like, you want customer service from a vendor like Parchment, but you also are trying to serve the students.
Like, I'm. . . I guess my bigger question is, like, how much of your considerations of this was, like, service to students And making. .
. Giving them a platform and a service that was easier for them to manage and transparent? Yeah. It was about fifty fifty. You know? If I could get a win for everybody. .
. You know? So in going into decisions like this, I think about a couple of things. One, is it gonna make things it. . .
Is the level of service gonna stay the same at the very minimum? Is it gonna get better on the student side or on the or on the staff side? If I'm changing this, is it making it easier for staff? And. . . Or is it staying the same? So one of them has to get better, and one of them has to stay the same at a minimum in order to move forward. Because why go through the pain of changing if nothing is gonna get better on either side? And so in this regard, it actually ended up being both, where the service the students were gonna get was gonna be better or at least more enhanced.
And on the staff side, it was definitely gonna get better. You know? So on the students, thinking about the student consideration, you know, we close at TCU. We close for two full weeks in the winter. And that means that there's two full weeks right after grades post that we're not able to mail out transcripts or at least not in a timely fashion. Parchment is open for a large portion of those two weeks.
And so knowing that that process absent. . . You know, a student a student hold that would prevent a transcript from being released, although there's there's fewer of those now, that that means that they can get their transcript that much quicker over institutional closings or or things like that. So that that has been a bonus for the students and also to provide more.
. . Faster, you know, rush shipping or FedEx or or all of that, that gets taken care of on that side. And then, also, I'd mentioned the PDF work cards. So now we're able to just drag and drop the PDF file into Parchment from our old work cards, our old, you know, our old student records to be able.
. . Our permanent records to be able to send them a transcript electronically now as opposed to having to wait for the mail. Now. .
. Look. Obviously, they'll do it through mail if they, you know, want to. But now that it's available to us, we're able to do that electronically as well. So our students, no matter when they attended, have.
. . They all have the same level of service capability in Parchment to get their transcript, which has just made it better for everybody. And I've got a number of questions Sure. For Nicole, but please put your questions in the q and a.
I will send a gift card to the first person that asks a question as an insight. I feel like. . . I used to be a teacher, so it's like, you know, who will.
. . Who wants to be first? But put your questions in the q and a. Would love to see those, and I'm sure you have questions for Nicole. And don't hesitate to.
. . Like, we try not to make this, like, a curated version. Like, we want Nicole's actual experience. Like, this is your opportunity to ask questions, and so we we only want kind of the real story here.
So ask away. So you also do digital diplomas Through through Parchment. Yes. Like, why did you jump on board with that? You know, what what made you take that leap? Yeah. We.
. . So we had. . .
We've been so pleased with the transcripts. Right? Fast, efficient service, great customer service from Parchment, great partner. I'll tell a little. . .
A quick little story about that after. We. . . You know, so we've had students ask for a while now about electronic diplomas.
Our students are very active on LinkedIn, particularly our business students and our grad students. They're very active on LinkedIn. They like to post all of their, you know, their credentials and their awards and their honors and and all of that. And so. .
. And also our international students. We had a lot of questions over the years about an electronic diploma and knowing the the product capabilities on the transcript side and how great the service was there, it was really a no brainer to to add on the the Parchment, the e diploma as well. And we had to do a little bit of configuring with Parchment, not on the tech side, more on the contract side, but they were very amenable to work with us. And so far as we don't we don't send out paper diplomas through the mail like a lot of other institutions do, we we currently hand out our diplomas on stage during the ceremony.
And so we really were only looking at the ediploma option at this time because we we don't have the other option available to us right now. So they were very happy to work with us on that in the contract process, and so we were able to add ediplomas to our storefront with Parchment and soon to also add replacement mail out diplomas to our storefront in in Parchment. We're working on the finalization of the contract for that as we speak. And so our students who need a duplicate diploma will now also be able to order that through the parchment storefront as well. And the e diplomas have been well received.
Very happy. Our students like their print diplomas, but they also love the e diplomas as well. It's interesting hearing your experience because, obviously, like, you acknowledge, we do things a little differently. We're handing out the physical diploma at graduation, which is probably stressful, a lot of work. But I do remember as a student wishing I had gotten my real diploma that day.
I mean Yeah. It's great. It's. . .
I mean, it's great, but it's also nuts. Yeah. Because a lot of what we hear from on the diploma services side is a lot of people are like, yeah, our students, you know, maybe want the digital, but a lot of times what they're solving for is better efficiency because they feel like they're a mailroom during that point of the year, and they're getting. . .
How do we verify addresses? Like, we're getting so many of these returned back to us, making sure they're not damaged and all that stuff. So it is interesting to hear, like, that the students were asking for this on the digital side and that it's being well received. Yeah. So I'm curious. Like, you've talked about, like, customer service was great, but, like, I'm always.
. . How important is that to you? Like, the technology has to work. Right? But Right. What are you looking for in a partner generally? Like, this is kind of an open question and maybe a little bit off topic, but, like, what do you need to see from a a partner like Parchment? That's a great question.
And it's actually really one of the reasons why switching to Parchment at my current institution was a was a no brainer. Having worked with Parchment at other institutions, have seen the customer service and the the true partnership that Parchment strives to achieve with their with their constituents. You know, I was previously an institution, and we were on a similar webinar like this, or it was, like, a forum. And someone. .
. It might have been a Kevin Martin, you know, like, group talk or whatever. And one of the questions was, you know, what. . .
As a registrar, what's one of your pain points? And I was like, if someone could wave a magic wand and fix transcript articulation, that would be phenomenal. And he reached out to me after, and he said, I want you to. . . Can you talk to my research and development people about your comment? Because, you know, we're always looking at ways we can help our partners.
I'd love for you to just have, like, a one hour conversation with somebody about it. And I loved that outreach, and the the conversation happened. And now, what, three years down the road, there's a partnership with other companies, and we can do the, you know, the read of the o c r. . .
You know, the recognition of the transcripts as they come in and and the data feed and all of that. It's been phenomenal. And so knowing that they really listen to their customers on what their pain points are and how they can make things better, you know, I'm sure that the whole drag and drop thing was someone saying, hey. Look. I've got these old records that I would love to be able to send electronically to people who are not local or they need them quickly, and mail just takes too long, and they don't wanna pay rush fee to get it.
And it'd be great if I could turn these old image transcripts into an etranscript, and you all provide that. So, you know, listening to your your customers and then also just being very responsive. I mean. . .
So having now worked with Parchment for for many, many years, I'm familiar with several people in the company. And there was a point last year where we had just implemented in the spring, and I was out, like, a week and a half later with emergency eye surgery. So, like, I can't read any. . .
I'm, like, on the couch. I covered. I had retinal detachment surgery. I'm like, I can't, like, type much. I can't really.
. . I'm not supposed to be reading emails. I'm supposed to be looking at anything, really. And I get, like, a frantic message from my team.
I'm like, there's a hiccup with the parchment thing. I was like, hold, please. And so I text my. . .
The person I know at the company. I'm like, Melissa, can you get with Leah? I'm like, I'm at home on the couch. I just had eye surgery. And she was like, say no more. We'll get this fixed.
I hope you, yeah, I hope you're doing fine. And so she fixed it. And then she came back, and she was like, how are you? What happened? Why did you have surgery? You know, like, all the follow-up after. And so just that the level of care was there, you know, to be like, we're gonna fix this. Don't you worry about it.
We're gonna make sure your service is fine. And she did. And, like, in an hour and a half, everything was the way it was supposed to be. But in that moment, the first person I could think of, I was like, Melissa can fix this somehow. I I can't do anything from where I'm at, but Parchment will make it better, and they did.
So, you know, just that level of service is what I what I strive for at any event, and that is now the gold standard. So now anytime I'm looking for a new vendor for a different kind of product, that is the level that I'm looking for in in a in a partner in the services that we provide and that we onboard here at TCU. I. . .
The part I like about that story is, like, we're not a perfect company. Like, something can happen. Right? But we try our best to fix it. That's the part that I like. Like, we're.
. . We aren't perfect. You know? Yeah. But, hopefully, we're doing our best.
We do have a few questions that I wanna address. I think I'll tackle the first one. So Teresa asks, and Teresa gets the gift card. Can you walk us through the process of how it works? Practically, like, I'm a five year old. Is it file based? I I wanted to read that because I think it's hilarious.
Thank you, Teresa. So, really, it depends on kind of the size of your school. You know, if you haven't. . .
There's plenty of SIS integration. So, you know, all the big SISs and even some of the small ones, there's ways that we can integrate with that so it's more automated. So request comes in from a from a student, and you can set up some of these rules and permissions. Like, is it automatically gonna be sent? You know, we can look at whether there's a hold on the account, all this other other stuff. So that is certainly possible.
You know, the majority of our higher ed institutions are automated to to a certain degree. There are exceptions to that automation, or maybe you have. . . You're a very small institution, you know, with maybe a homegrown SIS or something like that, you can, as Nicole kinda highlighted, there are times where you would do what we call web upload.
So you might have just a PDF copy of the transcript, and you can upload that to each request. So you can also kinda do it as requests come in. They're in your queue. So you log in. You see Matt Sternberg wants his transcript to go to Northwestern University, and you would just kinda drag and drop the PDF that you have wherever that's stored on your end, and you would process, and it would be on its way.
So mostly automation in higher ed and then some what we would call web upload. And, you know, even if you have automations or could be instances, you know, you got a really old request or something like that where you only have paper records, you know, you would scan it, save it as a PDF, and upload it that way. Alright. Holly from Wake Tech. Hello, Holly.
She says we are interested in in changing providers, basically. We are new parchment customers for diplomas, and it's going very well. Yes. We had a webinar or a coffee talk with Paula in your office not too long ago. We're interested in our curriculum transcripts as well as the opportunity to provide co curricular student life transcripts.
So can you or Matt talk about any downtime for transcript sales during the transition or whether or not Parchment has capacity to provide co curricular transcripts? Also, any opportunities for electronic transcripts data exchange like XML? So I can answer some of that, but, Nicole, I wanna see if you have any thoughts on answer the downtime part. We'd. . . Because we don't we don't do a co curricular transcript here.
Parchment might have something with the the CLR. You touched base on that. But in terms of the downtime, we didn't have any downtime. So when we decided to change from our prior provider, we really figured out. .
. We worked backwards from when the implementation was going to go live with with Parchment because there's an implementation queue. And so we worked backwards from that point to when. . .
What our our anticipated go live date was, and we had to give our prior provider ninety days notice that we were gonna sever the service with them. And so we just worked backwards and came to, you know, ninety days before. And I gave them a a few more days than that, and I said, hey. You know, we're gonna be transitioning to a new provider. We're gonna end our service as of this date, you know, per our contract.
Here's your ninety days notice. You know? And they were fine. And so after the ninety days, we just did some upkeep with the prior provider to make sure everything was out of the queue. But we knew the change was coming, so we were able to. .
. There's. . . The students saw no downtime really in being able to order a transcript.
It might have been, like, twelve hours at at the point where, you know, we were doing the changeover, but we did it during a time when we knew we didn't get a lot of heavy traffic. It's like, for us, it was, the middle of spring break, basically. And students weren't really in and active in requesting transcripts, so it was a perfect time to say, we're gonna cut over today. And that was really the the most. .
. The best way to do it. And we really didn't have any downtime for students in that regard. And related to the co curricular or, you know, some people call it an experiential transcript or a comprehensive learner record, We work with a number of institutions that do that through us. So we will work with the institution.
It's also. . . We have partners with Acro Consulting that will help, and it's amazing in terms of, like, getting the holistic experience of a student on a record that just isn't reflected in the traditional academic transcript. academic transcript.
Can't really give a holistic view of the student experience at your institution. Right? Study abroad, you know, your internships, your clubs and organizations, the group work that you're doing. So we we partner with a lot of institutions. So I just. .
. I happen to be the host of our podcast, which are thought leadership podcast, Credentials Unscripted. Shameless plug for it. But the last episode we did was with Rodney Parks, who's the university registrar at Elon University. And it's all about comprehensive learner records and their experience, why they did it, what the impact has been.
And we're seeing a lot of people interested in this. I think now that we're out of COVID, it's kind of like we were just trying to survive during COVID and make sure we could provide all the basic services. And I think there's a there's a challenge in higher ed now, which is we have to prove that, you know, our students can enumerate what they've learned here and that we have an artifact that fully describes their experience here. What does labor sometimes say? You're not giving us the students we need. Sometimes that's not the case.
They just don't know how to describe what they've learned in their college experience. It's hard for them to remember everything that impacted them. So, like, for Rodney, he takes students on a trip to Kilimanjaro. That's not reflected in any record I could have gotten from Elon University, but it's in their comprehensive learner record. And so for students to be able to describe what that trip meant.
. . And those are what. . .
That's what employers are looking for. Right? Like, you went to Kilimanjaro. You climbed Kilimanjaro. What did that teach you? Oh my gosh. Like, the fact that you would even sign up for that, I wanna have a conversation with you.
So I'll I'll I'll put a a link to the podcast or if someone from the parchment team can put it in the chat just because I think it's a great episode, and we do not sell anything on that podcast, just FYI. Because if we did, I would be bored. So I'll. . .
Someone can put it in the chat, and you can check that out because I think it. . . It's a really good overview. And then related to the XML front, Nicole mentioned this.
I think kind of the big conversation in the registrar community is, like, you know, how do we send and receive data? And for a while, everyone wanted to receive data, but it was difficult getting every institution to send it. And we have a product called data automation or also known as Raptor that basically takes any PDF and can transform it into data so that you can get a data. . . Piece of data without having to be sent a data file.
So I don't know, Nicole, if you wanna talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So we don't have we don't have that product yet. We. .
. We're looking at it. We're. . .
We don't do nearly probably the volume of transfer work that Holly does at some some place like Wake Tech. We bring in maybe 500 transfer students a year. So the volume we get. . .
Our our admissions team is more likely to get more more transcripts than that, and they're exploring options in that regard. But I know that with this particular product, it will read the transcript as it's come in and and extract the data and then import that into your your system for then a a transcript evaluator to be able to review and mark for for transfer evaluation and and awarding of credit. I'm not a tech person. I can't tell you how that magic works, but I do know some institutions that have utilized it, and it's a it's it's a slick product, and it does increase their efficiency time and their ability to turn around, you know, transfer credit evaluation. So definitely worth a peek.
And, Holly, if you're just thinking about we send XML today, for instance, and we wanna continue to be, like, a good partner in our state. Like, our state does a really good job of exchanging transcript as data. Certainly could continue that practice with Parchment. We we support the exchange of data with many institutions. Gary asked a great question.
It's the golden question. What is the financial aspect? So I don't think we're gonna give, like, specific numbers. Certainly don't wanna put you on the spot there. But, Nicole, if you just wanna touch on. .
. Yeah. I mean, the actual implementation. . .
The reason I was able to make the switch is because it wasn't really cost. So no one really batted an eye at it because, like, other other etranscript service providers, there's just that that fee on the actual sent. So almost like. . .
I I call it, like, your Ticketmaster fee. Right? The fee that the that the vendor takes, and then everything else is is yours. So to switch really wasn't anything on our end. The price was a little bit different between the two vendors, but nothing that we we couldn't cover. But I also took the opportunity at the time to increase our transcript prices.
Our transcript fees fund my office, and we've gotten bigger. And so there's more professional development I wanted to do. And, again, this is where being a private institution versus state institution comes into play. You know, you have to go through whatever approvals you need to change your your transcript fee amount. I did not have to do that here.
So for us, it was just an opportunity, and we didn't raise it a lot. It's not like I went from, you know, $10. 50 to $20. We we increased the price by 50¢. So we just went to a flat $11.
And then even recently with the up. . . The the change in price for, like, postage because the fee to send mail has gone up. We didn't adjust anything on our side in terms of transcript fees.
We just eat that cost because it wasn't really a a. . . That much of a change when we switched to Parchment. Yeah.
And just to, you know, make sure it's it's on the request. Right? So it's not a per student fee, Gary. So it's it's on a per request basis. Keep the questions coming. There are some phenomenal questions.
And so, Nicole, is there anything before. . . Like, we'll. .
. Obviously, if people have questions, we can come back. I've got a few slides to share. Anything that I should have asked you or anything that you wanna share that we didn't cover? I'm trying to think. It was just.
. . Now I will say that it's a very popular product. And this. .
. If you want to do this, it's not gonna happen tomorrow. So you have to build out your time and plan for it in advance. So if you're doing a sys implementation, this is a great time. If you know when that's gonna wrap up, this is a great time to start having conversation about when you could switch over to Parchment from whatever provider you're doing now or if you're not using a provider.
Although, I think most people during COVID found a provider. So, you know, just thinking about your timeline. So, really, the switch is not difficult. I would say just keep in mind of a few things. One, again, your timeline.
Work. . . Then figure out when you want to go live. Work with your implementation specialist through Parchment.
You know, they've got a great team of people across the country in terms of of getting that started and kicking off. Have a good team on your campus, and make sure people are aware. Make sure you're messaging to your students, especially if you're changing anything about where they access. So for us, a student current student can log in to my my TCU, which is our PeopleSoft student portal. We had to, you update the link there.
So from the. . . For current students, it really didn't feel all that different. Just the link brought them to a new a new website.
And then for former students, you know, the link changed on our end a little bit. We used to have kind of this middle staging ground that they would link to, and then they linked from there to the other provider. We were just able to provide a direct link now. And then just giving that information out to them in a timely fashion. Like, please know as of this date, we're we're switching to a new transcript provider.
And then just bring on board the people that you need to bring on board, your IT group. If you have people internal, make sure you're doing the demos of people who need to to see it and, you know, especially your transcript processing people. If you don't have Parchment doing your mail outs, really consider that. It it eliminated. .
. Even if it's a few minutes here and there every day, it's just become so much easier for us. It's really set it and forget it because we have the full automation. And so, really, what we're getting is in the morning, we're checking to see if we have any requests placed for on demand pickup. Like, so a student will come in the office and pick up the paper transcript, and we run those.
And then just throughout the day, you know, the two people on my staff are just monitoring their inboxes for any alerts from Parchment that there might be a student in there that has a hold or there's an issue with the request. Like, it can't match. They need additional information. And so they might get a couple of those a week that they're they're reviewing. And so it's really, really.
. . Like I say, set it and forget it in terms of the bulk of the transcripts that are that are going through the system. So we couldn't be more pleased and are, you know, always happy to entertain questions about about how the process went for us. Well, thank you so much for being with us.
And if you have questions, Nicole's gonna stick around, and we just got a few more slides I wanna share. So ask your questions in the q and a, and Nicole's more than happy to to share her experience. So just kind of a review to a degree. Like, what do we think are the differentiators of Parchment's transcript services? So supporting any requester going to any destination. Right? So you don't have those exception processes where you're like, well, these alums are handled this way, and current students are handled this way.
Or if it goes to this destination, here's how we handle it. Or if it goes via print mail, we have to do it this way. All of your requests can come through to any destination. Right? That's kind of the set it and forget it type of system that Nicole highlighted. And then, obviously, like, we've been around for a long time.
Like, the value is our network. Right? Sending electronic transcripts and digital documents and digital credentials. Think about, you know, twenty years ago, we would go to colleges and we'd say, do you wanna receive electronic transcripts? And they said, sure. But who's gonna send them to us? And we said, good point. And then we'd go to the people sending.
Like, do you wanna send electronic transcripts? And they would say, sure. But who's willing to receive them electronically? So this only works because we've built out the network from both sides, a network of senders and receivers. And, right, it's that trust of the network that allows us to send digital credentials. And then, obviously, just spending less time fulfilling transcript requests. Right? You can take your vacations because of the automation and because we'll handle the print mail for you.
And then, obviously, you know, you get data and insights because you're. . . You've got that history and parchment, and we try to surface up some of the data to you so you can actually start to understand, like, where are students going, right, for employment or for transfer? That's valuable information for your institution. And then, obviously, the print and mail component.
So we handle all of that for you. Right? So there are instances where a student, you know, wants it to be mailed somewhere. Maybe it's to an employer that doesn't receive transcripts electronically. It needs to be printed and mailed. We handle all of that for you.
So every request is processed in the same fashion. If it's digital, we deliver it immediately. If it's print and mail, we'll mail it for you through our secure print and mail facility. And so orders orders received by 2PM Pacific time go out the same day, and there's some tracking associated with that as well. And there's transparency.
The student can actually see in their Parchment account. Like, when was this mailed out? Right? Because I'm sure for many of you, you've mailed it out. You know you mailed it, but the student doesn't know that you mailed it, and they call you up. Hey. Did this transcript get mailed? There's more transparency, and, obviously, we take the burden off of you to.
. . You don't feel like you're working for the USPS at that point. And then touch free automation. So, again, you know, the set it and forget it.
So with your SIS, we can automate it so that the vast majority of your of your requests are going out automatically. You can set up some rules around this, but just know that we work with all the major players, and there's ways for us to integrate with your system. And so I just will read a quote very briefly from Kansas State. With the integration of Parchment with our SIS, electronic transcripts for current students are processed twenty four seven without staff intervention. This is a huge efficiency to our office.
And just think about what your office could be doing rather than, you know, handling exception processes or mailing out transcripts. And then we wanna just quickly highlight the diploma piece of it because I think, you know, from our perspective and hopefully from institutions as well, like, there's value in having one platform for your credentialing. Right? So our students only have to log in to one place. Or when they receive their diploma, they're used to using Parchment. They're familiar with it because they.
. . They've requested their transcript. You can manage your digital and your print diplomas all in one place. For TCU, they just do digital through us.
You could could do both. So the digital diploma gets sent immediately. Your students can share it and claim it. It's. .
. You know, you have something in their hands right away if you're. . . If they don't get it during their graduation.
We also will mail all of the diplomas for you. It's fast and reliable, similar to the transcript service. Like, there's actually tracking information. We also do address verification. And if the diploma gets damaged in any way, they can request a new one through a QR code, and we'll send them a free one.
So if it. . . You know, it's nobody's fault. It gets damaged in the mail.
We will send them a free one. And then, obviously, you get the access to insights and data. Like, who's actually claiming this digital diploma? Who's sharing it on LinkedIn? Like, how much do our students actually engage with this digital credential? Credentials are currency, and they open up doors, and making something digital gives you more insight there. Right? And it's also just really cool to see on LinkedIn. Like, so proud to get my TCU diploma after so many years of hard work, people commenting and liking it.
It's such a great culmination of their experience at your institution. And then, you know, overall, like, the whole idea is one credentialing platform. Right? You can do your badges and your certificates, your verifications to make it easier for your students to log on and see everything that they've accomplished to be able to claim, share, request all of their credentials in one place. So if badges is on your mind, you know, we. .
. We'd love to talk to you about that as well. And then we do wanna highlight the platform pricing. So some of you are. .
. You know, Holly highlighted we use Parchment for diplomas in Likeit. We're thinking about transcripts. A lot of people, not everybody, they pay for their diplomas through their parchment transcript services. So for instance, they they make sure that the transcript services cost, you know, the per request fee will cover the cost of diplomas, and it reduces the amount of money that you're spending.
It also reduces the line items. Right? So it makes your diplomas, like, a $0 line item because you're paying for it through kind of the transcript services piece. So a lot of people like that option because it's just kind of a symbiotic relationship between your credentialing services. And then lastly, this is the shameless plug for subscribing to the podcast. I am the host of it.
And like I said, it's thought leadership. It's just talking about topics that are hopefully interesting to all of you. So skills based credentialing, stackable credentials, comprehensive learner records, AI in data automation. We talk about dual enrollment. So I've had a ton of fun talking with, you know, really smart people, and we're proud of it.
So if you are driving to work and you're like, what should I listen to today? Check out the Credentials Unscripted podcast. And then we'd love to start the conversation with you. So if you have a question that you didn't ask today, like, does this integrate with my SIS? How does platform pricing really work? Tell me about this data automation product. Or you just wanna see it you just wanna see it in action, we'd love to have a conversation with you. And I'm gonna actually put that link into the chat if I have time to do that here so that people can click on it very easily.
Let me do that. And are there any other questions? I'm not seeing any, but Holly had one. She wants to know, is there any address verification happening during the student ordering process to help ensure they've entered the correct destination app? So do you, like, verify addresses when they enter something? Yeah. So if a student's ordering a transcript and. .
. So in my case, I'll type in seven thirty Coville, Grand Rapids, Michigan. We will suggest, do you mean 730 Coville Avenue Northwest? Right? Because we've got all the USPS official codes in there, and it'll add the last four digits of the ZIP as well. Like, so 49504 dash whatever mine is. So we will suggest it.
They can ignore it if they'd like, but we basically give them the option like, hey. This is the official one we think that you're talking about. They can select it, and that allows us to have better deliverability of the the printed transcripts. Any other questions? Nicole, really appreciate you joining us and sharing your experience. Like I said, in education, referrals, references, and just your experience is way more valuable than anything we can share.
So very much appreciate it, and I appreciate your partnership. You're welcome. Anytime. And if anyone wants to reach out specifically to me directly and ask any more about our experience, I'm always happy I'm always happy to talk. Well, thank thank you to everybody for joining, and, hopefully, we'll talk to you all very soon.
Have a great week, And, yeah, we'll see you later. Goodbye. Bye.
Your phone lines, computer audio, everything like that is muted. So the way that you can interact with us today is one of two ways. So go ahead and use that chat feature to introduce yourself. If you have a question throughout the webinar. .
. And we hope that you have questions and we welcome your questions. That's kind of the beauty of a webinar like this. You can ask questions directly to us or to Nicole. And so ask your questions.
If you do that, use the q and a feature. So a little bit different than using the chat, but that'll allow us to manage what questions have we answered, which ones are outstanding, that type of thing. At this point, everyone is a Zoom veteran for better or worse. So there's the chat. Go ahead.
Tell us who you are. Then And if you have a specific question you want us to address, use that q and a. And, again, please ask your questions. We want your questions. We wanna know what you're curious about, and that's obviously the beauty of a webinar like this where we can kinda bring everybody together.
And I always say this. If you have a question and you're like, should I ask this question? Someone else on the webinar will be glad that you asked it. Someone else is wondering the same thing that you are, so ask your questions. And this meeting is being recorded. So if you have to jump off a few minutes early or maybe you have a colleague that you wanna share this with at some point, we'll send out the recording to everybody that registered for the webinar.
So quick agenda, pretty simple agenda. We'll do some introductions, then it's a q and a with Nicole, and that's gonna be the bulk of our conversation. Then I'll highlight some of the differentiators, you know, what we think Parchment does differently on the transcript services side as well as kind of the comprehensive platform for credentialing. And then we'll talk next steps as well if you. .
. If anything piqued your interest today. So brief introduction of myself. My name is Matt Sternberg. I'm the director of customer advocacy at Parchment.
I've had the joy of meeting many of you. Really, my role is to just connect with our customers and tell the stories of how Parchment has impacted their business and their operations. And, really, when you think about it, it's. . .
If we say it, it's it's. . . You know, you you kinda don't trust it. Like, well, of course, Parch.
. . Of course, Parchment's gonna say how great they are. But when institutions say that we've created value for them or we. .
. We've made their lives easier or we've reduced the stress on their office, that means so much more. And that's candidly why we're doing a webinar like this. Right? Like, let's hear from institutions directly. I've been with Parchment for eleven years in a variety of different roles, and I'm in the wonderful state of Michigan in Grand Rapids.
But with that, Nicole would love for you to introduce yourself. Sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Nicole Mancombe Fisher. I am the university registrar at Texas Christian University, TCU, in Fort Worth, Texas.
I will be here as of three years in November, but I've worked at a variety of institutions across The United States from Boston to North Carolina, to Louisiana to Texas, and have worked with Parchment at several of them across the years. So I'm really happy to be on the call today with all of you and talk about our our switch to Parchment here at TCU. And, Nicole, do you have any interesting facts about yourself? Let's get to know you a little bit. Anything interesting? Interesting fact. I.
. . And, you know, I I would be remiss, Matthew, if I didn't say this, but I am a Jeopardy champion. I was on Jeopardy about twelve years ago. I was on for two days.
I won one day, so I will forever be able to say I'm a Jeopardy champion. It was a fantastic experience. If people have questions about, like, how to get on or how I did it, please shoot me an email. I'm always happy to chat about the Jeopardy experience. It was phenomenal.
And if they would let me, I would do it again. So absolutely phenomenal experience. And I've already grilled her with a number of questions because I've told Nicole that being on Jeopardy is one of my dreams. I've tried out a few times. So I think it's.
. . Jeopardy champion is a big deal. Like, not just on Jeopardy. Jeopardy champion is huge.
So you win the interesting fact contest, Nicole. Mine is usually I've been to every state but North Dakota. I can't even, you know, say I've been to everyone. But, anyways We gotta get you to North Dakota. We gotta get to North Dakota.
Well, it's great to get to know you a little bit, Nicole. And, you know, now is the q and a portion. And so we're talking today about why make the switch, why you made the switch to Parchment's transcript services. And kind of the elephant in the room is like, man, it's hard to make a switch for any technology when when you're working at an institution. Right? You've.
. . You gotta get people bought in. You know, you've gotta identify what we're trying to solve for. You gotta trust that the solution that you're moving to is gonna be better than than what you have currently.
So just walk us through your experience. Why did you switch over to Parchment for transcript services? Sure. So let me start by saying I. . .
I've implemented an an etranscript solution several times at institutions that previously weren't on an etranscript solution. So we're going back some years. And so I I have had familiarity with a bunch of different vendors, most of whom across the years have been acquired by Parchment. The first one I acquired was eScrips. .
. I purchased with eScrips Safe. So it's a Parchment product now. So familiar with all of the players over the years and, you know, truly coming back to the hallmark that Parchment is, like, the standard bearer in terms of the service and the quality. And so having worked with Parchment and others at other institutions, when I got to TCU and looking at the service that we had and the experience that we were having, you know, my immediate thought was, well, let's.
. . We're not getting any traction with our current service provider. Let's look at Parchment. Now I will preface this by saying, I work at a private school.
And so I do recognize that for those of you on here that are public institutions, there are probably a few more layers of decision making in that process. But having also done this at public schools, I I can speak to kind of both sides of that equation. But, really, you know, looked at what we were currently getting and what I knew we could get from another provider, that was really the jumping off point for starting the conversation with Parchment about switching over to them at my current institution. So you make the switch. Give us the idea of how much heartburn was it.
You know, implementation. . . Like, this, I could just put myself in people's shoes where they're like, yeah. Maybe I want to, but how big of a lift is this gonna be? You know, there's someone on the webinar today that's like, yeah.
I'd like to do this, but we're switching over to Workday coming up. You know, we've got all these things going on. Like, give us the idea of how big of a burden it is to actually make the jump. Sure. I will say a lot of it probably depends on the current stability of your other processes.
So at the time we made the switch to Parchment, we were. . . We're on PeopleSoft, and we knew in the foreseeable future, we weren't we weren't changing student information systems. If you're in the middle of a student information system, I would say finish that first, and then maybe.
. . Then then do your your switch over to Parchment from wherever you're at just because. . .
While the lift is not hard, I would really just hate. . . For me, like, to put my IT people just through additional hours of work when we're just repeating the same thing. Again, they were.
. . They looked at the document and were like, oh, this is easy. We can knock this out. No problem.
But I would just feel bad making them do that twice when I also. . . When I know they have a huge list of other projects and priorities that they wanna get to. So I would just keep in mind where where are you at with some other projects that you might have going on.
But, overall, the lift the lift was not hard. You know, we sat down with our customer service people from Parchment, you know, our rep, and had the conversation about here's what here's what we're looking for. Here's what we're needing. Tell them about the. .
. You know, and they sent over the documentation about here's what the implementation timeline looks like. Here's what we'll need on your side in terms of. . .
You know, we'll look at the transcript, and we'll do the the imaging for that. And, you know, we go went back and forth to figure out and make sure everything looked the way we wanted it to. But then they also sent over the documentation on the technology lift. And, again, depending on your institution who in your institution is doing that, it might vary on how much time they can give to a a a given project at any given time. I know all of our IT departments are are taxed beyond the hours they have available in a day and a wish list a mile long, but I'm sure you could probably make the case that this is this is needed for your students and their success.
Maybe that might bump it up a little bit higher in the queue to get done. But, overall, when I sent that documentation to my IT people, based on some of the other projects they were working on at the time, they were like, oh, no. This is not a problem. It's, like, eight hours of work. This is not a problem.
We can knock this out. You know, just tell us when you need us, and we'll hop in and and do what we need to do. So in that regard, the actual technology lift was not was not difficult. Yeah. I appreciate that candid perspective.
Right? You have to be realistic about, you know, how many favors you're gonna call in, you know, with certain. . . But compared to an SIS, you know, this is Oh, absolutely. I mean, on one hand.
. . On, you know, on one side of the spectrum, you have a a full SIS implementation. Then on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you have a Parchment implementation. There could not be further from each other in terms of the lift involved.
So, Nicole, give us an idea of what. . . Like, operationally, you know, what were you doing. .
. What was your office having to do before that you don't have to do with parchment? Like, where are the time savings? Like, what are the differences in terms of your your operations and processes? Absolutely. So my team who, you know, initially were a little hesitant, right, the people that were were running the transcripts daily because they were very comfortable with the current process. You know, they were like, it's fine. You know, everything works.
And I was like, yeah. It works, but is it working to the best way it could be? And could we get some efficiency in here to free us up to do some other stuff? And the answer to that was was yes. And so after we demoed for them Parchment, you know, and the Parchment Exchange and the behind the scenes and how all that worked, they were they were like, oh my gosh. Yes. Because our.
. . You know, with our previous provider, we've legitimately had an 80 page document on how we ran transcripts every day, which is incredible. In the year 2020. .
. You know, well, at the time, it was, like, 2021. We have an 80 page document that is our procedure document for how to run transcripts on the daily, and we were doing our own in house mailing, you know, for the ones that were getting mailed out. If we had old work cards, you know, those were not eligible to be sent electronically. We would have to only be able to send those as, like, a printed PDF on our transcript paper.
So there were just a lot of things that we were kinda working around that we had Band Aids on that meant we were still providing service, but maybe not the level of service that I wanted to be able to offer. And so, you know, having that conversation with my team and then also the demos and, you know, explaining that this process is going to be moved to be so much easier on your end, and you won't have to do mail outs anymore. Parchment will do that for us. They were onboard with that. So that was that was the.
. . That was probably the easiest part of the sell is, you know, it's like, oh, you're gonna make my job easier? You're gonna. . .
I mean, I don't have to fold and stuff envelopes anymore. This is great. No. Mind you, we were doing a ton of mail outs, and we were 80. .
. About eighty twenty in our split between etranscripts and print. But still, 20% of over is a lot of mailing out. What were the downstream effects of doing that mailing? I'm just kinda thinking about, like, in your world, customer services to the students. Right? Like, you want customer service from a vendor like Parchment, but you also are trying to serve the students.
Like, I'm. . . I guess my bigger question is, like, how much of your considerations of this was, like, service to students And making. .
. Giving them a platform and a service that was easier for them to manage and transparent? Yeah. It was about fifty fifty. You know? If I could get a win for everybody. .
. You know? So in going into decisions like this, I think about a couple of things. One, is it gonna make things it. . .
Is the level of service gonna stay the same at the very minimum? Is it gonna get better on the student side or on the or on the staff side? If I'm changing this, is it making it easier for staff? And. . . Or is it staying the same? So one of them has to get better, and one of them has to stay the same at a minimum in order to move forward. Because why go through the pain of changing if nothing is gonna get better on either side? And so in this regard, it actually ended up being both, where the service the students were gonna get was gonna be better or at least more enhanced.
And on the staff side, it was definitely gonna get better. You know? So on the students, thinking about the student consideration, you know, we close at TCU. We close for two full weeks in the winter. And that means that there's two full weeks right after grades post that we're not able to mail out transcripts or at least not in a timely fashion. Parchment is open for a large portion of those two weeks.
And so knowing that that process absent. . . You know, a student a student hold that would prevent a transcript from being released, although there's there's fewer of those now, that that means that they can get their transcript that much quicker over institutional closings or or things like that. So that that has been a bonus for the students and also to provide more.
. . Faster, you know, rush shipping or FedEx or or all of that, that gets taken care of on that side. And then, also, I'd mentioned the PDF work cards. So now we're able to just drag and drop the PDF file into Parchment from our old work cards, our old, you know, our old student records to be able.
. . Our permanent records to be able to send them a transcript electronically now as opposed to having to wait for the mail. Now. .
. Look. Obviously, they'll do it through mail if they, you know, want to. But now that it's available to us, we're able to do that electronically as well. So our students, no matter when they attended, have.
. . They all have the same level of service capability in Parchment to get their transcript, which has just made it better for everybody. And I've got a number of questions Sure. For Nicole, but please put your questions in the q and a.
I will send a gift card to the first person that asks a question as an insight. I feel like. . . I used to be a teacher, so it's like, you know, who will.
. . Who wants to be first? But put your questions in the q and a. Would love to see those, and I'm sure you have questions for Nicole. And don't hesitate to.
. . Like, we try not to make this, like, a curated version. Like, we want Nicole's actual experience. Like, this is your opportunity to ask questions, and so we we only want kind of the real story here.
So ask away. So you also do digital diplomas Through through Parchment. Yes. Like, why did you jump on board with that? You know, what what made you take that leap? Yeah. We.
. . So we had. . .
We've been so pleased with the transcripts. Right? Fast, efficient service, great customer service from Parchment, great partner. I'll tell a little. . .
A quick little story about that after. We. . . You know, so we've had students ask for a while now about electronic diplomas.
Our students are very active on LinkedIn, particularly our business students and our grad students. They're very active on LinkedIn. They like to post all of their, you know, their credentials and their awards and their honors and and all of that. And so. .
. And also our international students. We had a lot of questions over the years about an electronic diploma and knowing the the product capabilities on the transcript side and how great the service was there, it was really a no brainer to to add on the the Parchment, the e diploma as well. And we had to do a little bit of configuring with Parchment, not on the tech side, more on the contract side, but they were very amenable to work with us. And so far as we don't we don't send out paper diplomas through the mail like a lot of other institutions do, we we currently hand out our diplomas on stage during the ceremony.
And so we really were only looking at the ediploma option at this time because we we don't have the other option available to us right now. So they were very happy to work with us on that in the contract process, and so we were able to add ediplomas to our storefront with Parchment and soon to also add replacement mail out diplomas to our storefront in in Parchment. We're working on the finalization of the contract for that as we speak. And so our students who need a duplicate diploma will now also be able to order that through the parchment storefront as well. And the e diplomas have been well received.
Very happy. Our students like their print diplomas, but they also love the e diplomas as well. It's interesting hearing your experience because, obviously, like, you acknowledge, we do things a little differently. We're handing out the physical diploma at graduation, which is probably stressful, a lot of work. But I do remember as a student wishing I had gotten my real diploma that day.
I mean Yeah. It's great. It's. . .
I mean, it's great, but it's also nuts. Yeah. Because a lot of what we hear from on the diploma services side is a lot of people are like, yeah, our students, you know, maybe want the digital, but a lot of times what they're solving for is better efficiency because they feel like they're a mailroom during that point of the year, and they're getting. . .
How do we verify addresses? Like, we're getting so many of these returned back to us, making sure they're not damaged and all that stuff. So it is interesting to hear, like, that the students were asking for this on the digital side and that it's being well received. Yeah. So I'm curious. Like, you've talked about, like, customer service was great, but, like, I'm always.
. . How important is that to you? Like, the technology has to work. Right? But Right. What are you looking for in a partner generally? Like, this is kind of an open question and maybe a little bit off topic, but, like, what do you need to see from a a partner like Parchment? That's a great question.
And it's actually really one of the reasons why switching to Parchment at my current institution was a was a no brainer. Having worked with Parchment at other institutions, have seen the customer service and the the true partnership that Parchment strives to achieve with their with their constituents. You know, I was previously an institution, and we were on a similar webinar like this, or it was, like, a forum. And someone. .
. It might have been a Kevin Martin, you know, like, group talk or whatever. And one of the questions was, you know, what. . .
As a registrar, what's one of your pain points? And I was like, if someone could wave a magic wand and fix transcript articulation, that would be phenomenal. And he reached out to me after, and he said, I want you to. . . Can you talk to my research and development people about your comment? Because, you know, we're always looking at ways we can help our partners.
I'd love for you to just have, like, a one hour conversation with somebody about it. And I loved that outreach, and the the conversation happened. And now, what, three years down the road, there's a partnership with other companies, and we can do the, you know, the read of the o c r. . .
You know, the recognition of the transcripts as they come in and and the data feed and all of that. It's been phenomenal. And so knowing that they really listen to their customers on what their pain points are and how they can make things better, you know, I'm sure that the whole drag and drop thing was someone saying, hey. Look. I've got these old records that I would love to be able to send electronically to people who are not local or they need them quickly, and mail just takes too long, and they don't wanna pay rush fee to get it.
And it'd be great if I could turn these old image transcripts into an etranscript, and you all provide that. So, you know, listening to your your customers and then also just being very responsive. I mean. . .
So having now worked with Parchment for for many, many years, I'm familiar with several people in the company. And there was a point last year where we had just implemented in the spring, and I was out, like, a week and a half later with emergency eye surgery. So, like, I can't read any. . .
I'm, like, on the couch. I covered. I had retinal detachment surgery. I'm like, I can't, like, type much. I can't really.
. . I'm not supposed to be reading emails. I'm supposed to be looking at anything, really. And I get, like, a frantic message from my team.
I'm like, there's a hiccup with the parchment thing. I was like, hold, please. And so I text my. . .
The person I know at the company. I'm like, Melissa, can you get with Leah? I'm like, I'm at home on the couch. I just had eye surgery. And she was like, say no more. We'll get this fixed.
I hope you, yeah, I hope you're doing fine. And so she fixed it. And then she came back, and she was like, how are you? What happened? Why did you have surgery? You know, like, all the follow-up after. And so just that the level of care was there, you know, to be like, we're gonna fix this. Don't you worry about it.
We're gonna make sure your service is fine. And she did. And, like, in an hour and a half, everything was the way it was supposed to be. But in that moment, the first person I could think of, I was like, Melissa can fix this somehow. I I can't do anything from where I'm at, but Parchment will make it better, and they did.
So, you know, just that level of service is what I what I strive for at any event, and that is now the gold standard. So now anytime I'm looking for a new vendor for a different kind of product, that is the level that I'm looking for in in a in a partner in the services that we provide and that we onboard here at TCU. I. . .
The part I like about that story is, like, we're not a perfect company. Like, something can happen. Right? But we try our best to fix it. That's the part that I like. Like, we're.
. . We aren't perfect. You know? Yeah. But, hopefully, we're doing our best.
We do have a few questions that I wanna address. I think I'll tackle the first one. So Teresa asks, and Teresa gets the gift card. Can you walk us through the process of how it works? Practically, like, I'm a five year old. Is it file based? I I wanted to read that because I think it's hilarious.
Thank you, Teresa. So, really, it depends on kind of the size of your school. You know, if you haven't. . .
There's plenty of SIS integration. So, you know, all the big SISs and even some of the small ones, there's ways that we can integrate with that so it's more automated. So request comes in from a from a student, and you can set up some of these rules and permissions. Like, is it automatically gonna be sent? You know, we can look at whether there's a hold on the account, all this other other stuff. So that is certainly possible.
You know, the majority of our higher ed institutions are automated to to a certain degree. There are exceptions to that automation, or maybe you have. . . You're a very small institution, you know, with maybe a homegrown SIS or something like that, you can, as Nicole kinda highlighted, there are times where you would do what we call web upload.
So you might have just a PDF copy of the transcript, and you can upload that to each request. So you can also kinda do it as requests come in. They're in your queue. So you log in. You see Matt Sternberg wants his transcript to go to Northwestern University, and you would just kinda drag and drop the PDF that you have wherever that's stored on your end, and you would process, and it would be on its way.
So mostly automation in higher ed and then some what we would call web upload. And, you know, even if you have automations or could be instances, you know, you got a really old request or something like that where you only have paper records, you know, you would scan it, save it as a PDF, and upload it that way. Alright. Holly from Wake Tech. Hello, Holly.
She says we are interested in in changing providers, basically. We are new parchment customers for diplomas, and it's going very well. Yes. We had a webinar or a coffee talk with Paula in your office not too long ago. We're interested in our curriculum transcripts as well as the opportunity to provide co curricular student life transcripts.
So can you or Matt talk about any downtime for transcript sales during the transition or whether or not Parchment has capacity to provide co curricular transcripts? Also, any opportunities for electronic transcripts data exchange like XML? So I can answer some of that, but, Nicole, I wanna see if you have any thoughts on answer the downtime part. We'd. . . Because we don't we don't do a co curricular transcript here.
Parchment might have something with the the CLR. You touched base on that. But in terms of the downtime, we didn't have any downtime. So when we decided to change from our prior provider, we really figured out. .
. We worked backwards from when the implementation was going to go live with with Parchment because there's an implementation queue. And so we worked backwards from that point to when. . .
What our our anticipated go live date was, and we had to give our prior provider ninety days notice that we were gonna sever the service with them. And so we just worked backwards and came to, you know, ninety days before. And I gave them a a few more days than that, and I said, hey. You know, we're gonna be transitioning to a new provider. We're gonna end our service as of this date, you know, per our contract.
Here's your ninety days notice. You know? And they were fine. And so after the ninety days, we just did some upkeep with the prior provider to make sure everything was out of the queue. But we knew the change was coming, so we were able to. .
. There's. . . The students saw no downtime really in being able to order a transcript.
It might have been, like, twelve hours at at the point where, you know, we were doing the changeover, but we did it during a time when we knew we didn't get a lot of heavy traffic. It's like, for us, it was, the middle of spring break, basically. And students weren't really in and active in requesting transcripts, so it was a perfect time to say, we're gonna cut over today. And that was really the the most. .
. The best way to do it. And we really didn't have any downtime for students in that regard. And related to the co curricular or, you know, some people call it an experiential transcript or a comprehensive learner record, We work with a number of institutions that do that through us. So we will work with the institution.
It's also. . . We have partners with Acro Consulting that will help, and it's amazing in terms of, like, getting the holistic experience of a student on a record that just isn't reflected in the traditional academic transcript. academic transcript.
Can't really give a holistic view of the student experience at your institution. Right? Study abroad, you know, your internships, your clubs and organizations, the group work that you're doing. So we we partner with a lot of institutions. So I just. .
. I happen to be the host of our podcast, which are thought leadership podcast, Credentials Unscripted. Shameless plug for it. But the last episode we did was with Rodney Parks, who's the university registrar at Elon University. And it's all about comprehensive learner records and their experience, why they did it, what the impact has been.
And we're seeing a lot of people interested in this. I think now that we're out of COVID, it's kind of like we were just trying to survive during COVID and make sure we could provide all the basic services. And I think there's a there's a challenge in higher ed now, which is we have to prove that, you know, our students can enumerate what they've learned here and that we have an artifact that fully describes their experience here. What does labor sometimes say? You're not giving us the students we need. Sometimes that's not the case.
They just don't know how to describe what they've learned in their college experience. It's hard for them to remember everything that impacted them. So, like, for Rodney, he takes students on a trip to Kilimanjaro. That's not reflected in any record I could have gotten from Elon University, but it's in their comprehensive learner record. And so for students to be able to describe what that trip meant.
. . And those are what. . .
That's what employers are looking for. Right? Like, you went to Kilimanjaro. You climbed Kilimanjaro. What did that teach you? Oh my gosh. Like, the fact that you would even sign up for that, I wanna have a conversation with you.
So I'll I'll I'll put a a link to the podcast or if someone from the parchment team can put it in the chat just because I think it's a great episode, and we do not sell anything on that podcast, just FYI. Because if we did, I would be bored. So I'll. . .
Someone can put it in the chat, and you can check that out because I think it. . . It's a really good overview. And then related to the XML front, Nicole mentioned this.
I think kind of the big conversation in the registrar community is, like, you know, how do we send and receive data? And for a while, everyone wanted to receive data, but it was difficult getting every institution to send it. And we have a product called data automation or also known as Raptor that basically takes any PDF and can transform it into data so that you can get a data. . . Piece of data without having to be sent a data file.
So I don't know, Nicole, if you wanna talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So we don't have we don't have that product yet. We. .
. We're looking at it. We're. . .
We don't do nearly probably the volume of transfer work that Holly does at some some place like Wake Tech. We bring in maybe 500 transfer students a year. So the volume we get. . .
Our our admissions team is more likely to get more more transcripts than that, and they're exploring options in that regard. But I know that with this particular product, it will read the transcript as it's come in and and extract the data and then import that into your your system for then a a transcript evaluator to be able to review and mark for for transfer evaluation and and awarding of credit. I'm not a tech person. I can't tell you how that magic works, but I do know some institutions that have utilized it, and it's a it's it's a slick product, and it does increase their efficiency time and their ability to turn around, you know, transfer credit evaluation. So definitely worth a peek.
And, Holly, if you're just thinking about we send XML today, for instance, and we wanna continue to be, like, a good partner in our state. Like, our state does a really good job of exchanging transcript as data. Certainly could continue that practice with Parchment. We we support the exchange of data with many institutions. Gary asked a great question.
It's the golden question. What is the financial aspect? So I don't think we're gonna give, like, specific numbers. Certainly don't wanna put you on the spot there. But, Nicole, if you just wanna touch on. .
. Yeah. I mean, the actual implementation. . .
The reason I was able to make the switch is because it wasn't really cost. So no one really batted an eye at it because, like, other other etranscript service providers, there's just that that fee on the actual sent. So almost like. . .
I I call it, like, your Ticketmaster fee. Right? The fee that the that the vendor takes, and then everything else is is yours. So to switch really wasn't anything on our end. The price was a little bit different between the two vendors, but nothing that we we couldn't cover. But I also took the opportunity at the time to increase our transcript prices.
Our transcript fees fund my office, and we've gotten bigger. And so there's more professional development I wanted to do. And, again, this is where being a private institution versus state institution comes into play. You know, you have to go through whatever approvals you need to change your your transcript fee amount. I did not have to do that here.
So for us, it was just an opportunity, and we didn't raise it a lot. It's not like I went from, you know, $10. 50 to $20. We we increased the price by 50¢. So we just went to a flat $11.
And then even recently with the up. . . The the change in price for, like, postage because the fee to send mail has gone up. We didn't adjust anything on our side in terms of transcript fees.
We just eat that cost because it wasn't really a a. . . That much of a change when we switched to Parchment. Yeah.
And just to, you know, make sure it's it's on the request. Right? So it's not a per student fee, Gary. So it's it's on a per request basis. Keep the questions coming. There are some phenomenal questions.
And so, Nicole, is there anything before. . . Like, we'll. .
. Obviously, if people have questions, we can come back. I've got a few slides to share. Anything that I should have asked you or anything that you wanna share that we didn't cover? I'm trying to think. It was just.
. . Now I will say that it's a very popular product. And this. .
. If you want to do this, it's not gonna happen tomorrow. So you have to build out your time and plan for it in advance. So if you're doing a sys implementation, this is a great time. If you know when that's gonna wrap up, this is a great time to start having conversation about when you could switch over to Parchment from whatever provider you're doing now or if you're not using a provider.
Although, I think most people during COVID found a provider. So, you know, just thinking about your timeline. So, really, the switch is not difficult. I would say just keep in mind of a few things. One, again, your timeline.
Work. . . Then figure out when you want to go live. Work with your implementation specialist through Parchment.
You know, they've got a great team of people across the country in terms of of getting that started and kicking off. Have a good team on your campus, and make sure people are aware. Make sure you're messaging to your students, especially if you're changing anything about where they access. So for us, a student current student can log in to my my TCU, which is our PeopleSoft student portal. We had to, you update the link there.
So from the. . . For current students, it really didn't feel all that different. Just the link brought them to a new a new website.
And then for former students, you know, the link changed on our end a little bit. We used to have kind of this middle staging ground that they would link to, and then they linked from there to the other provider. We were just able to provide a direct link now. And then just giving that information out to them in a timely fashion. Like, please know as of this date, we're we're switching to a new transcript provider.
And then just bring on board the people that you need to bring on board, your IT group. If you have people internal, make sure you're doing the demos of people who need to to see it and, you know, especially your transcript processing people. If you don't have Parchment doing your mail outs, really consider that. It it eliminated. .
. Even if it's a few minutes here and there every day, it's just become so much easier for us. It's really set it and forget it because we have the full automation. And so, really, what we're getting is in the morning, we're checking to see if we have any requests placed for on demand pickup. Like, so a student will come in the office and pick up the paper transcript, and we run those.
And then just throughout the day, you know, the two people on my staff are just monitoring their inboxes for any alerts from Parchment that there might be a student in there that has a hold or there's an issue with the request. Like, it can't match. They need additional information. And so they might get a couple of those a week that they're they're reviewing. And so it's really, really.
. . Like I say, set it and forget it in terms of the bulk of the transcripts that are that are going through the system. So we couldn't be more pleased and are, you know, always happy to entertain questions about about how the process went for us. Well, thank you so much for being with us.
And if you have questions, Nicole's gonna stick around, and we just got a few more slides I wanna share. So ask your questions in the q and a, and Nicole's more than happy to to share her experience. So just kind of a review to a degree. Like, what do we think are the differentiators of Parchment's transcript services? So supporting any requester going to any destination. Right? So you don't have those exception processes where you're like, well, these alums are handled this way, and current students are handled this way.
Or if it goes to this destination, here's how we handle it. Or if it goes via print mail, we have to do it this way. All of your requests can come through to any destination. Right? That's kind of the set it and forget it type of system that Nicole highlighted. And then, obviously, like, we've been around for a long time.
Like, the value is our network. Right? Sending electronic transcripts and digital documents and digital credentials. Think about, you know, twenty years ago, we would go to colleges and we'd say, do you wanna receive electronic transcripts? And they said, sure. But who's gonna send them to us? And we said, good point. And then we'd go to the people sending.
Like, do you wanna send electronic transcripts? And they would say, sure. But who's willing to receive them electronically? So this only works because we've built out the network from both sides, a network of senders and receivers. And, right, it's that trust of the network that allows us to send digital credentials. And then, obviously, just spending less time fulfilling transcript requests. Right? You can take your vacations because of the automation and because we'll handle the print mail for you.
And then, obviously, you know, you get data and insights because you're. . . You've got that history and parchment, and we try to surface up some of the data to you so you can actually start to understand, like, where are students going, right, for employment or for transfer? That's valuable information for your institution. And then, obviously, the print and mail component.
So we handle all of that for you. Right? So there are instances where a student, you know, wants it to be mailed somewhere. Maybe it's to an employer that doesn't receive transcripts electronically. It needs to be printed and mailed. We handle all of that for you.
So every request is processed in the same fashion. If it's digital, we deliver it immediately. If it's print and mail, we'll mail it for you through our secure print and mail facility. And so orders orders received by 2PM Pacific time go out the same day, and there's some tracking associated with that as well. And there's transparency.
The student can actually see in their Parchment account. Like, when was this mailed out? Right? Because I'm sure for many of you, you've mailed it out. You know you mailed it, but the student doesn't know that you mailed it, and they call you up. Hey. Did this transcript get mailed? There's more transparency, and, obviously, we take the burden off of you to.
. . You don't feel like you're working for the USPS at that point. And then touch free automation. So, again, you know, the set it and forget it.
So with your SIS, we can automate it so that the vast majority of your of your requests are going out automatically. You can set up some rules around this, but just know that we work with all the major players, and there's ways for us to integrate with your system. And so I just will read a quote very briefly from Kansas State. With the integration of Parchment with our SIS, electronic transcripts for current students are processed twenty four seven without staff intervention. This is a huge efficiency to our office.
And just think about what your office could be doing rather than, you know, handling exception processes or mailing out transcripts. And then we wanna just quickly highlight the diploma piece of it because I think, you know, from our perspective and hopefully from institutions as well, like, there's value in having one platform for your credentialing. Right? So our students only have to log in to one place. Or when they receive their diploma, they're used to using Parchment. They're familiar with it because they.
. . They've requested their transcript. You can manage your digital and your print diplomas all in one place. For TCU, they just do digital through us.
You could could do both. So the digital diploma gets sent immediately. Your students can share it and claim it. It's. .
. You know, you have something in their hands right away if you're. . . If they don't get it during their graduation.
We also will mail all of the diplomas for you. It's fast and reliable, similar to the transcript service. Like, there's actually tracking information. We also do address verification. And if the diploma gets damaged in any way, they can request a new one through a QR code, and we'll send them a free one.
So if it. . . You know, it's nobody's fault. It gets damaged in the mail.
We will send them a free one. And then, obviously, you get the access to insights and data. Like, who's actually claiming this digital diploma? Who's sharing it on LinkedIn? Like, how much do our students actually engage with this digital credential? Credentials are currency, and they open up doors, and making something digital gives you more insight there. Right? And it's also just really cool to see on LinkedIn. Like, so proud to get my TCU diploma after so many years of hard work, people commenting and liking it.
It's such a great culmination of their experience at your institution. And then, you know, overall, like, the whole idea is one credentialing platform. Right? You can do your badges and your certificates, your verifications to make it easier for your students to log on and see everything that they've accomplished to be able to claim, share, request all of their credentials in one place. So if badges is on your mind, you know, we. .
. We'd love to talk to you about that as well. And then we do wanna highlight the platform pricing. So some of you are. .
. You know, Holly highlighted we use Parchment for diplomas in Likeit. We're thinking about transcripts. A lot of people, not everybody, they pay for their diplomas through their parchment transcript services. So for instance, they they make sure that the transcript services cost, you know, the per request fee will cover the cost of diplomas, and it reduces the amount of money that you're spending.
It also reduces the line items. Right? So it makes your diplomas, like, a $0 line item because you're paying for it through kind of the transcript services piece. So a lot of people like that option because it's just kind of a symbiotic relationship between your credentialing services. And then lastly, this is the shameless plug for subscribing to the podcast. I am the host of it.
And like I said, it's thought leadership. It's just talking about topics that are hopefully interesting to all of you. So skills based credentialing, stackable credentials, comprehensive learner records, AI in data automation. We talk about dual enrollment. So I've had a ton of fun talking with, you know, really smart people, and we're proud of it.
So if you are driving to work and you're like, what should I listen to today? Check out the Credentials Unscripted podcast. And then we'd love to start the conversation with you. So if you have a question that you didn't ask today, like, does this integrate with my SIS? How does platform pricing really work? Tell me about this data automation product. Or you just wanna see it you just wanna see it in action, we'd love to have a conversation with you. And I'm gonna actually put that link into the chat if I have time to do that here so that people can click on it very easily.
Let me do that. And are there any other questions? I'm not seeing any, but Holly had one. She wants to know, is there any address verification happening during the student ordering process to help ensure they've entered the correct destination app? So do you, like, verify addresses when they enter something? Yeah. So if a student's ordering a transcript and. .
. So in my case, I'll type in seven thirty Coville, Grand Rapids, Michigan. We will suggest, do you mean 730 Coville Avenue Northwest? Right? Because we've got all the USPS official codes in there, and it'll add the last four digits of the ZIP as well. Like, so 49504 dash whatever mine is. So we will suggest it.
They can ignore it if they'd like, but we basically give them the option like, hey. This is the official one we think that you're talking about. They can select it, and that allows us to have better deliverability of the the printed transcripts. Any other questions? Nicole, really appreciate you joining us and sharing your experience. Like I said, in education, referrals, references, and just your experience is way more valuable than anything we can share.
So very much appreciate it, and I appreciate your partnership. You're welcome. Anytime. And if anyone wants to reach out specifically to me directly and ask any more about our experience, I'm always happy I'm always happy to talk. Well, thank thank you to everybody for joining, and, hopefully, we'll talk to you all very soon.
Have a great week, And, yeah, we'll see you later. Goodbye. Bye.
“Why We Made the Switch to Parchment's Transcript Services” with Nichole Mancone Fisher, University Registrar at Texas Christian University.
Nichole describes her experience making the move to Parchment Transcript Services, including:
- The differences in service quality
- The differences in product functionality
- The level of IT/Project Management support required
- The impact on students and staff
- The benefits of having all credentialing under one platform
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