Card, mobile credential, payment and security
To support higher education leaders in creating safe plans for reopening and maintaining healthy, secure campuses, Transact Campus has launched a self-service capacity management app. The app enables institutions to help control the number of individuals that enter a building at one time, as well as reduce physical touchpoints and manage social distancing requirements.
Transact Capacity Management is a self-service app that's part of a larger effort to help higher education institutions adhere to social distancing requirements and keep their students and staff safe on campus.
“Our client campuses need new ways to control the flow of their students in dining halls, bookstores, libraries, and more,” said Erica Bass, vice president of product management at Transact. "Transact is delivering new capabilities with our mobile solutions to best serve students, faculty, and staff, and overcome unique challenges presented by social distancing and contactless interaction requirements."
Capacity management is just the latest service in Transact Campus mobile app portfolio.
“Contactless payments and authorized access? Check. Mobile Ordering? Check," says Bass. "And now, our capacity management solution is helping campuses manage reservations for dining halls, book pickup times, and set limits for crowds to help institutions plan for managing their on-campus students.”
With Transact Capacity Management, institutions can manage windows of time for arrivals and max capacity at dining halls, residence halls, and other locations. In addition, students can schedule reservations for dining halls, campus move-in, course material pickups, and appointments with healthcare providers, advisors, and student help desk assistants. Universities also benefit by having control over capacity limits at campus events, requiring registration to estimate attendance, and staggering arrival time slots.
Transact’s COVID-19 Response Information provides additional resources such as the Five Strategies to Support a Safe Return to Campus eBook and solutions for higher education leaders to support the safe reopening of campuses. To learn more, visit Transact's COVID-19 resource page.
Trusted identities, payments and data protection provider, Entrust, has announced its new cloud-based, direct-to-card solution for physical and remote ID card issuance. The next generation Entrust Sigma series card printer has been built with today’s cloud environments in mind, leveraging encryption, trusted HSM technology and secure boot to issue highly secure credentials.
The new Sigma series card printer looks to deliver a seamless user experience across the issuance process for both desktop and remote printing. It eliminates frustrations associated with printer set-up by employing a modular design and an out-of-the-box implementation that takes less than 30 minutes for users to begin issuing credentials.
Equipped with cloud-based APIs, Sigma series card printers bring issuance to the cloud without additional hardware, enabling instant printing for physical IDs, badges and payment cards. Sigma series printers are also trusted Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices that can help ensure organizations and data are safe behind an intelligent network and enterprise-level protection.
On the printing side, the Sigma series offers capabilities like tactile impressions, as well as holographic and luster panel printing, that make it highly difficult for counterfeiters to alter or recreate cards. Additionally, features like an inline magnetic stripe and smart card encoding secure your cards during the printing process.
“Entrust has been a pioneer in direct to card identity issuance technology for decades, and our Sigma system takes it to a whole new level," says Tony Ball, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Instant Issuance at Entrust. "With our Sigma platform, we’re proud to deliver a best-in-class desktop credential issuance solution that’s designed to work completely and securely within a cloud environment, allowing higher education institutions to meet high-volume issuance demands without sacrificing security or ease of use."
Sigma systems offer the most advanced security architecture that keeps data protected at each step of the issuance process:
With an increasing number of employees working remotely, Sigma systems has also been built as both a physical and digital issuance platform. The Sigma system’s “Printer Dashboard” is available on mobile devices, allowing organizations to manage the card printer from anywhere, without being tied to a desktop.
“Whether your requirements demand an integrated, secure on-premises solution or a system that can grow with a distributed workforce via a secure cloud-hosted Identity Management offering, the Entrust Sigma solutions can meet your needs,” says Joe Franco, Director of Sales at Capture Technologies, an Entrust channel partner.
“Sigma is browser based and mobile ready and able to be deployed without the need for a heavy client to be installed," adds Franco. "The certificate based integrated security features should put to rest any concerns about using the cloud for identity issuance, or your printing solution being vulnerable to network attack.”
Sigma systems enable card issuers to pivot to a contactless ID issuance experience by supporting online photo submission and photo validation, card production, and card delivery to the user. Furthermore, the on-premise instant ID solution features a mobile enrollment functionality for added flexibility to issue IDs at various locations across a campus.
In this episode of CR80News Chats, we catch up with ColorID's David Stallsmith to talk about how ColorID has been helping universities tackle contact tracing and other COVID-19 related challenges. Contact tracing, in particular, is an emerging conversation for universities of all sizes, so we talk through some of the options available to campuses as they try to implement a contact tracing system that best suits their needs.
Following the arrival of COVID and its impact on the campus space, ColorID went back to its product portfolio to try and identify existing solutions that might have utility in this new normal. Among the products that stood out was JRNY, a cloud and mobile app-based identity platform. JRNY can be configured to function as a comprehensive COVID-19 campus management solution and support contact tracing efforts.
In addition to the information in this Chat, ColorID is hosting a FREE webinar with more details on the JRNY solution on Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 1:00 PM EST, and again on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at 1:00 PM EST.
Attendees will learn how JRNY employs real-time location services and analytics, as well as how JRNY ties in with existing campus infrastructure -- physical access control systems, transaction management and OneCard systems, Wi-Fi, dining, rec center, and housing -- to enable a university to build out an effective contact-tracing system.
A fleet of 20 Starship delivery robots began processing student orders at Oregon State University this week. The popular autonomous delivery robots are now serving OSU students, faculty and staff with contactless delivery across the university’s sprawling 500-acre campus.
According to an official university release, the arrival of Starship to Oregon State's Corvallis campus marks the first campus in the state to deploy autonomous delivery robots.
The decision to bring Starship to OSU long preceded the arrival of COVID-19, and was a service that Oregon State Housing & Dining Services and Memorial Union Retail Services was excited to add to its portfolio. The coronavirus did delay initial launch, but has also provided an added benefit to the service now as it helps to reduce contact between people during the ordering process.
“This was a long time coming,” says Kerry Paterson, director of residential dining and University Catering with UHDS. “We’d been considering contactless delivery for a while. This service is yet another way we can facilitate COVID protocols regulating restaurants.”
OSU is currently housing roughly 2,200 students in residence halls on the Corvallis campus, and the Starship robots are expected to slot in with OSU's other COVID guidelines in dining services. Other dining-specific safety measures at OSU include:
To help navigate new food service protocols as a result of COVID-19, Oregon State has expanded express and pick-up options, but the addition of robot delivery allows for even less density across OSU dining locations while still providing service to the campus community.
Starship robots have quickly become a recognizable presence on college campuses, with the roster of partnering institutions continuing to grow across the country. The robots have mapped the Corvallis campus using GPS and can deliver virtually anywhere on campus. Each robot can carry up to 20 pounds of food and use a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence and on-board sensors to navigate on sidewalks and around obstacles.
When a customer places an order using the delivery app, they can select a location to meet their delivery robot. The customer will then receive a code in the app to unlock the robot when it arrives.
“You unlock it, get your food and then off it goes to get sanitized and prepare for another delivery,” says Paterson.
There is no cost to the university for the robots. Instead, a nominal delivery fee is added to each order.
“Delivery robots are an innovative way to help students with social distancing and they also make sense for a forward-thinking school like OSU,” says Ryan Tuohy, senior vice president of business development at Starship Technologies. “Our robots deliver day and night to get students what they need. We’re looking forward to becoming a part of campus life and helping to make daily life more convenient for everyone at OSU.”
The University of Georgia is now providing its online students with their own UGA OneCard complete with ID photo. The move will provide online students with the same credential as their on-campus peers, as well as provide digital learners with all of the benefits of the UGA OneCard.
According to an official university release, the UGA OneCard is the official identification card for students, faculty, staff, official campus visitors, and their dependents. In addition to featuring an ID photo, online students that apply for a UGA OneCard will have access to its accompanying student benefits, including access to professional conferences, discounts on shopping, events and programs. Many businesses also offer students discounts for services with a valid UGA student ID card.
"This is great news for our online students; the good part is that our students can now have a photo ID card instead of a non-photo ID Card. And, the process to obtain a card is the same,” says Sharon Shannon, Student Support Services & State Authorization Coordinator said.
Online students can order a UGA OneCard online at a cost of $30 for the first card. Students then navigate the online photo submission process by uploading a photo of a government-issued photo ID and capturing a passport-style headshot photo. Once approved, online students will receive an email with a payment link. After submitting payment, online students must provide a mailing address so that the university can ship the UGA OneCard.
"Having a photo ID card is important to our online students and makes them feel a part of the UGA community," says Shannon. "They’ve always had the same benefits, but it’s nice to have their photo on their UGA Card."
Maryville University has launched Transact Mobile Credential for its campus community, moving the Saints ID onto student mobile devices. Students, faculty, and staff can now add their Saints ID card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay to use their iPhone, Apple Watch, or Android device to access buildings on campus, purchase meals, and more.
According to an official university release, members of the Maryville community can now leave their physical wallets behind and access campus with just their mobile devices. The mobile Saints ID can now be used anywhere on the Maryville campus that the plastic ID card was previously accepted.
Students simply hold their smartphone or Apple Watch near a reader where physical student ID cards are accepted to access residence halls, libraries, and fitness center, as well as buy meals at campus dining locations, make purchases at the university store, and print documents.
“The Saints ID is part of our comprehensive digital transformation plan that will enhance the Maryville student experience,” says Mark Lombardi, Maryville University President. “Our students have grown up in a digital age, and the level of convenience and security the Saints ID brings is in line with what they expect.”
In addition increased convenience and a contactless transaction process, the mobile Saints ID is also more secure. Students don’t have to worry about losing a plastic ID card and all Mobile Credentials are protected by two-factor authentication.
The Transact Mobile Credential at Maryville University works with iPhone 6 models and later, Android version 6.0 or later and Apple Watch Series 1 and later.
So, Rich, we're just looking to understand more about the experience of working with Grover at Holy Cross as we shared.
So, if you, I know you stepped into working at Holy Cross when mobile ordering kind of was already up and running at most of the units.
So, do you want to share a little bit of history as to how things have gone and what things look like today?
Absolutely.
So, when I got here, I'd say about 80% of our transactions, if you want to call them that, were out of the residential dining location.
So, this has nothing to do with mobile ordering.
But it was too many people frequenting that one space.
There wasn't enough seating.
There was congestion.
Parents were complaining.
Students were complaining.
So, how do we get some of these folks, how do we get a better balance on campus?
How do we push them to some of the retail locations?
So, after a lot of thought, we decided we were going to change some menus around.
We were going to take a look at how we were doing mobile ordering.
We were going to make sure that we marketed that better for all the freshman students that were coming in.
And then we immediately realized that, wow, mobile ordering is starting to go up.
These students are starting to frequent the other spaces more.
We're making it easier for them to be able to get the products.
A conversation I recently had with a student was, we were talking about mobile ordering and the student's comment was funny.
He said, you've made it way too easy for us.
It's just so easy to get food and beverage any time now that you don't have to wait for it anymore.
That you can just be in a class or you can be in a locker room, you can be at your workout, you can place your order and you can just come and pick it up.
So, then what was happening was, as you know, the campus our POS system was just horrible here.
So, the campus wanted to change out the POS system and then part of that POS system they were talking to us about unlimited.
And then that's when I thought, okay, we're going to go unlimited, we're paying all this money for GrubHub.
The campus wanted to include the unlimited.
So, I gave Christy a heads up and thanks to GrubHub came back and said, well, we can do unlimited too.
So, that was great because now we didn't have to switch our students from GrubHub to another platform.
But then, you know, Christy just helped us so much with maximizing.
I really, Christy, you have so much to do with us.
Just helping us maximize the opportunities to just utilize the platform more.
So, we ended up switching one of our locations to mobile only.
We still had a cashier station off to the side just in case some of our older folks would come in.
We can still bring them up.
But a little bit more hidden.
No complaints.
We doubled the volume in that one location and the staff loves it.
So, there's no more of that.
Unfortunately, there's no more of that interaction.
I was just showing this to my wife recently that we go into Starbucks, which I always use the Starbucks app, but this time we didn't.
We go into Starbucks and I ask my wife to time it.
She's like, what are you doing?
I said, just time this whole thing.
She's like, what are you doing?
Just time.
So, we place the order, exchange our pleasantries.
They write on the cop.
They go through the whole process.
We bring the thing up on our car.
They scan it.
Two minutes.
Okay, two minutes.
So, that's two minutes of production that was lost.
So, our students are the cashiers.
Let those students actually go on their phone.
They're the cashier.
They do the whole transaction.
It comes out of their dining dollars, comes out of their credit card, meal plan, whatever it is.
Now we have a printer.
It prints a little sticker.
You put it to the cup.
How many drinks can you make in two minutes?
Four.
So, you think about how you're tying up that cashier.
Then we completely change the flow of one of our locations where we now have those, correct me if I'm wrong here, we have two TV screens.
The orders populate.
I think our staff just kind of swipe some as they're coming in.
But looking at the footsteps that they were taking, the steps that they were taking before compared to what they're doing now, everyone is virtually staying still now.
Our staff is staying still.
They got the order.
It comes up on the screen.
They work in their space.
They put it up on the counter.
There's a receipt.
There's a sticker.
So, Christie really helped us work through that whole thing.
Go to Dunkin' Donuts.
They're brilliant.
They have that totally figured out.
They're dialed in.
We have that dialed in now.
Starbucks is the same way.
So, it has maximized our efficiencies.
Our staff does not complain that they're doing double the amount of volume.
They're actually saying this is so much better because they're not running around anymore within the space where the cashier would have to hand off the receipt.
They would have to go and make the order as you can imagine.
So, it's just far more efficient.
So, then mid-semester, and I hate doing things mid-semester, our grill, one of our grills in retail actually, Christie, it was you.
We were talking.
You're like, why don't you just go with mobile order only at this location.
I was kind of sweating a little bit.
I'm like, you know what?
Yeah, we're going to do it.
So, I told the team.
I said, you know what?
We need a week.
Let's get our marketing to roll this out.
Let the students know.
You've got to give people a heads up.
They actually didn't listen to me, and they rolled it out the very next day.
And I walked into the location.
It's mobile only.
I'm like, what are you guys doing?
They said, what?
I said, for a week.
They're like, you did?
I'm like, yeah, I did.
And it was so smooth.
No student complained.
No customer complained.
There was no prior communication.
These students today, this is what they want to do.
They want to order from their phone.
They don't want to order in person.
And that location is now doing double the volume at that location.
Starbucks we proudly brew.
I was scared to death of putting it there all day long.
So, we're doing like two o'clock in the afternoon until five when we were the slowest.
And we doubled the volume in the afternoon.
Now we're doing it from the morning all the way to the night.
And the supervisor there, someone actually much older.
And sometimes our older folks have a hard time with technology.
She's like, I love this.
This is just so amazing.
So, being able to take that time away from the pleasantries, the ordering, typing everything in, grabbing someone's credit card or their card and swiping it, handing it back, and then making the orders.
Just so much more efficient.
So, I don't know if I'm answering your question.
I'm kind of all over the place.
Now you're doing great.
This is gold.
I feel like we got a whole article right there just from what you were saying.
It's amazing.
I mean, feel free to use me if you want to.
If you want to anything that I'm saying here, you can utilize it.
Thanks, Rich.
Yeah, we've got, I'm sure Rachel's mind is spinning with the thousand questions she wants to ask.
One question I have, I know you're talking about some of the locations like doubling in volume, that sort of thing.
Is that something you'd be able to pull some hard data on and we'd be able to use that in this article or case study or whatever it becomes?
Yeah, sure.
That's easy.
Okay, great.
Rachel, I'll let you go next because I've got a few too, but I'm sure you're spinning with questions.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like the first thing on my mind is you mentioned some upticks, doubling orders.
If you had to just really kind of simplify the biggest challenge and the biggest benefit, how would you just kind of frame that so I can use that as a lens while I process all the information you shared?
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is talking people off the ledge, right, that we're going to do this and there's just this fear factor.
And myself included when you read this, when you read my article, I was really leery about mobile ordering 10 years ago when it all first got started.
How is this going to affect the staff?
Because I think people's head go, okay, we're not a restaurant.
We have this dupe machine, if that's what you want to call it, like in a restaurant.
If that thing just keeps going off and off and off and off, how are we going to keep up between the customers that are coming up in this dupe machine that is constantly going?
But it works.
You just have to trust it.
You have to trust the GrubHub partners, right, that we have.
You guys have seen it, seen this successful everywhere.
And the fact that we can take an entire location and switch it in one day with a completely different staff that has never experienced this before and see the sales double just within a few days, it just started to double.
It's just right there alone.
It's just you've got to trust the process.
You've got to trust the system.
The system works.
But I do like mobile order only even better.
I never thought that I would say that because it just takes those people out of the equation completely from walking up and ordering.
And our students love it.
Our community is completely fine with it.
I would say we probably have 100% of our students using it on a daily basis at least minimally once a day, sometimes twice a day.
And even our faculty and staff are fine with it.
So in the fall we'll have three locations, three entire locations that will be mobile only.
And that is just going to make us more efficient at those three locations.
Wow, that's awesome.
And in terms of obviously there may be some labor savings there or would you say you reallocated that labor because you were getting so many more orders that now you just were able to have more people fulfilling the orders instead of spending the time taking the orders?
Yeah, I never want to cut labor.
Everybody's different with that.
We're a non-profit institution.
We're not a for-profit like Sodexo or anything.
So what we did is we just took that same labor and just reallocated it.
And you were going to need it anyway with the uptick.
You're making it easier now so therefore you're going to get more orders.
You're going to need those people to now be kind of on that line preparing that food.
I wouldn't call it a labor savings.
It would be a labor savings I suppose if there was no increase in sales.
There's no increase at all in sales.
And you were doing the same exact volume.
But I don't think anybody that implements this and does it right would do the same level of sales.
I would say you're not doing it right or you're not doing a good job if you're actually doing the same level of sales.
I don't see how the sales couldn't go up no matter where you put this.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So really just focused on the increase in sales and then that creates a more efficient operation.
Yeah, and ultimately it's bringing down your labor percentage.
I would say that.
If I'm doing $400,000 at this location with $200,000 worth of labor but now I'm doing $800,000 in sales with the same $200,000 in labor, my labor percentage just went way down.
That's always from a financial standpoint.
That's always how I've been trained.
Everything is really percentages.
Yeah, definitely.
And then I know you mentioned a little bit about student satisfaction but just to drill into the student experience more.
Is there anything you want to add in terms of, like, I guess the fact that there's more sales means more students are using it and likely happy with it.
But just want to kind of talk about that angle a little bit.
Yeah, definitely.
And this is where I'm going to tell you a little bit about where you might get pushback from some people out there.
So this might even help with your writing, right?
Some folks are going to say, especially in the for-profit sector, which I did for 16 years with Compass Group, right?
They're going to say, well, they're on a meal plan and if they're utilizing that meal plan more, like here at Holy Cross, it's an unlimited meal plan in the residential dining, then they get eight meal swipes a week in the retail, and they're able to use GrubHub with those meal swipes, essentially not costing the students any additional money.
So, our participation rate is something that we really focus on and it has a huge impact on our financials.
Our participation rate is probably somewhere around 62%, roughly.
If I look at it right now and I do the numbers, I bet you we're closer to 85%.
Now, people who are in the business, especially in the for-profit world, are going to say, oh my God, that's costing you way more money.
Well, yeah, it is costing us more money, but what's happening is our satisfaction has gone up tremendously and I would say a great deal of that is because of GrubHub, but our credit card sales are now much higher also.
That's new money, that's new found money, that's real money.
So now that credit card sales and those additional transactions that are above and beyond the meal plan, that's new found money.
So now you have a lot more faculty, staff, and guests that are actually eating with us that were not doing that once before.
So, we drove, like our sales year on year have increased by, don't write an article on this and quote me on this, okay, please, but our sales have increased by $2 million, right?
Year on year.
So, a great part of that $2 million is we're able to get people through these locations quicker.
And a lot of that has to do with GrubHub, right?
So, but also it's costing us a lot more money because we're spending a lot more money on the meal plan food because the business participation is a lot higher.
So, the net net is yeah, we're still in a positive place and again, being that non-profit, we're beating our budget, we're making our budget, but we're feeding a lot more people.
And it's really, it's a win-win.
So, I've always believed even if you put GrubHub mobile ordering aside, that if you go for the quality and you go for the consistency and you drive the program to satisfaction, you're always going to get additional organic sales that are outside of that meal plan.
That's always worked out really well for me.
And now doing it the way we're doing it, having the kiosks available for those non-GrubHub app users, watching parents all the time, watching groups come in, they're using those kiosks, where maybe before they would not have ordered with us because it was just long student lines.
But now they can actually place the order and they can get a text message saying when it's ready.
So, it's just a total game changer.
Amazing.
Super, super helpful insights there.
Christy, are there any questions you want to ask?
Yeah, I do have a few.
I think you touched on this one already, Rich, but you talked about at the beginning of the call how your all-you-can-eat dining hall was really overloaded and that you're kind of trying to focus on this push towards retail.
You know, in your you mentioned like you've had a big increase in sales and everything.
Do you think you've just spread volume away from the all-you-can-eat to retail?
Or do you think, is it a true net increase?
Oh, it's a true net increase for sure.
So, yes it's 50% are at Kimball Hall versus that 80% of those meals, but it's not the same number, not even close.
I mean, it's $2 million of additional revenue in those transactions.
I think, I have the number, I don't have it in front of me, but it was a ridiculous number.
I want to say we served like 250,000 more meals year on year.
So, and we would not be able to do that without a mobile ordering platform.
We might have been able to push it by 50,000 meals or something like that, but certainly not. $250,000, 250,000 more meals.
And again, a lot of that's being driven by meal plan, but still, it just shows you how much more efficient and the capabilities by utilizing the platform.
And Rich, I know something we've talked about before.
Can you touch on a little bit how GrubHub helps you at peak meal period?
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So, what happened before, students break out of the class and they run to these locations, right?
Some, I would even say it's a bit of a safety issue, the way they go to these locations because they want to get there and they want to be able to order.
But what they're doing, of course teachers don't want to hear this, is they're ordering ahead of time in class.
So, our staff, instead of preparing the food in front of you when you get there, we're now spreading it out through a much larger duration.
And this is where the double of volume comes in, right?
If I've got 1,000 people coming at me, it's going to be a very slow process.
I have that same 1,000 people sending in those mobile orders 15 minutes, 20 minutes before they actually get there, then we're able to accomplish that.
They all come in, nobody's waiting in line, nobody's going to the cashier station, they're grabbing their food, they're walking away.
Some are staying, some are going.
Thanks, Rich.
I have two more questions for you.
Have you found on campus that any of the students or staff miss the daily interactions or anything or is everyone happier with things in this setup?
I would say happier, absolutely happier.
They still have that opportunity to break bread, if you will, in the residential dining location.
They can come in there, they can talk to the professional staff, they can place their orders there in that residential dining experience.
But really for that, and honestly, that is the busiest meal period now for Kimball, is dinner.
That's where our mobile ordering goes way down, is that dinner experience, where the students are sitting together, they are having that interaction, that conversation.
But let's face it, our students, especially 25% of our college is athletes, D1 division athletes, they are busy, they are super, super busy.
So every minute counts, and we're able to actually give them back.
I'd say we probably give every student back at least 15, 20 minutes a day by not waiting in line now, and that is very valuable. 15, 20 minutes a day really adds up.
I'm just making up numbers, but just kind of an idea.
Now they can go to the library, now they can work out a little bit longer, they can do other things.
So even this fall coming up, we're taking our concessions over, it was outsourced before, now we're doing an internal, and we're going to be doing these post, we're going to be doing a post-workout breakfast out of the athletic center.
So once you're done lifting weights, you're done with your cardio, whatever, swimming, whatever it is you're doing, you can now use Grubhub, you can order it ahead, and you're going to pick up your protein shake, your energy bites, whatever it is that you're looking for, and you grab it, and you go.
So again, trying to save the students even more time where they were working out, they had a walk from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill, and Rachel, I'm sure you haven't been here before, call it a half a mile, right?
You're using a lot of time, and when I'm talking to the athletes, time is of the essence.
They're in there at 5, 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning, they want to be able to finish their workout at 7.30.
If they can place that order, and they can grab it and run, and go back to their room, shower, change, go to their class, it's huge.
So our athletes are just beyond over the moon that we're able to give them this platform, and do this out of the athletic center come the fall.
And we're doing it, we're going to be doing it at night too, so all of the sporting games that are going to happen, the biggest complaint from our guests, because the college surveys them, I don't, is the long lines.
It's the long lines at the concession stations, now they're going to be able to order via the two kiosks that we ordered for that location.
They can use it from Grubhub Mobile, and we'll have some QR codes in the stands so they can be able to scan it.
We are eventually going to create a section within the luth, which is where the basketball is, and the ice hockey is, where we are going to deliver it to certain sections.
So let's call it a premium section.
Someone can scan that QR code, they can place the order, and we are going to have weight staff that is actually going to bring it to you.
Then we're going to do the same thing down at the football stadium at some point too.
So that's more of the future.
So every decision we have now, everything that we do, it's all about the mobile ordering.
I'm not blowing smoke, I'm telling you.
When I frequent all of these, I'm just so energized by it.
I can't believe I've been in this business my entire life, pushing 36 years now.
I know I don't look that old, but 36 years in this business, and this is like the biggest thing that I've ever seen in the business that is just a total game changer.
I walk in, I was down the cave, and you see these ice cream shops.
There's one called Sunday School, and it's insane to see the lines at Sunday School.
They had Grubhub, this would fly, they would probably quadruple their volume.
It took me 45 minutes, 45 minutes to place an order for ice cream at Sunday School and down the cave.
It is, once you have seen the light, isn't it hard to just not out in public, be like, there's a better way.
Have you seen the mobile order only stores for Starbucks now?
Have you seen it?
I couldn't believe it.
I was in New York City, and this is going back quite a few months, maybe six months ago.
And I'm like, oh my god, that's just the mobile order only.
You can't, there's no store.
But it was the coolest thing.
And then I saw one actually in Boston recently too.
Yeah, it just makes so much sense.
Of all brands, Chick-fil-A is actually trying it out in New York City right now too.
They're a brand that's totally known for the warm greeting, interactions, but I think even they as a brand are starting to see that a way to warmly greet your customers to allow them to order in the way that they want to order as well.
That is another way of warmth and kindness to your customer.
Right, right.
Well, a lot of my friends, colleagues in the business who work at other institutions, I'm like, you're an idiot.
You need to use, you've got to use this platform.
It's just amazing.
Hopefully they jump on board.
But it's amazing how people are just reluctant to change.
You know, I don't know how to do business that way, but you just got to do it.
And it works.
And you start slow.
So that would be my biggest recommendation to anybody.
Start slow.
Start at one location.
Don't go, maybe don't go all in right away, but you test the water.
Then you try a mobile order only.
Or maybe you do a pop-up event in the middle of campus somewhere and you just do mobile order only to see how it goes.
And then you kind of start there and then once you start to see it and you start to trust it, that's probably the biggest thing is trusting the process.
Because you don't want angry customers.
For sure.
Yeah.
What we see is like one of the biggest battles, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is getting students to download the app.
Right?
Like, that's something that, you know, on your campus it's so critical that they download it.
It's like you're not going to be able to eat in several locations if you don't download it.
So because you all have gone so all in, so to speak, it almost makes it easy for you to talk to your freshman and say, hey, you've got to do this.
Right?
Like it's necessary to eat on campus.
And we work with several other campuses who work that same way too.
I'd say at the campuses that are more so dabbling in it, trying it at one venue, students don't really see the value in downloading an app when it's just one venue.
Right?
They might say, I'll just go to the one next door rather than sit here and download an app and mess around with that.
Good point.
Good point.
So it's interesting, it's kind of like those campuses that really dive in head first, students really understand the value of it because it brings so much value across the whole campus.
So that's kind of what we see.
How does that piece go with your freshman?
Like how do you share to incoming students the importance of downloading the app and getting set up?
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, so much stuff is sent to them.
Actually, my son will be here very soon.
I already told him, I said, download the app.
And he's like, I need to download the app.
So these students, what's going to end up happening is we're going to message them, they're not going to read it, we'll have signs up, they're probably not going to read it, they're going to go to a location and they're going to go, oh, the only way I can get food here is to download it.
That's when they're going to do it.
So we need to make sure that we have some ambassadors out there, we will have the signage, but we know the first week or so, the retail locations are actually going to be slow because the students are going to be slow in getting that downloaded.
We know that residential dining, as I actually just talked about today with my team, we're going to be very busy in residential dining and then they'll slowly start to drift to those retail locations once they get that rub up figured out.
But we'll communicate with them, but everybody's communicating with them.
So they're overwhelmed when they first move in.
For sure.
And I feel like the overwhelm also leads to just go to the dining hall because that's easy and I don't need to start learning where the other locations are or how they work.
Exactly.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And something now that you have the kiosks too, and this is going to be your first back to school with the kiosks, I'd say other campuses that have a very similar setup to you where you lean into mobile ordering as the heavy way to do things and there's a couple kiosks around, you're going to see really long lines at the kiosks during peak lunch periods.
So the other campuses we work with with similar setups, they truly block out the first two weeks of the school year during lunch period to have a lot of their managers just go stand at the kiosk with the QR code and go download the app, download the app, download the app, just down the line just talking to the students because it's one of the most effective ways.
You don't have to get them to read an email, you can just talk to them and solve their problem while they're standing in it.
Absolutely.
That's our exact plan.
Yep.
Love it.
Absolutely.
Yep.
And the other thing too, I don't think you have on campus right now is we do have some of these signs that Melissa could order for you.
For your three mobile only venues just so you could have this kind of up near where the register would be.
Just to help students see the messaging.
I'd love that.
Boise State Dining Services has been working with card system vendor, CBORD, to implement the GET app and to update health policies surrounding campus food services. The efforts have seen the addition of the GET app to bolster contactless transactions for students and faculty.
According to a report from The Arbiter, the university worked with card system vendor CBORD to implement the GET app at the beginning of August to support contactless transactions for students and faculty, to pre-order food, view account balances, and more.
“It’s really helpful for students to budget their meal plans and flex dollars in live time,” says Meaghan Compton, assistant director for Campus Services. “Historically, that’s been really cumbersome for students to get access to, so this provides instant transparency on their part and accessibility to their account.”
The GET app also brings mobile food ordering to Boise State, enabling students to skip the line for pickup. Mobile ordering is another way that Boise State is attempting to add more touchless transaction experiences and keep in line with social distancing requirements.
“The app is there to help students understand the scope of their meal plan and know where their meal plans can be used outside of the traditional dining hall," says Compton. "It provides a safer alternative, especially when it comes to eating at all the retail locations."
Students don't need a meal plan to use the GET app. The university wanted to ensure GET was available to all students on campus, and can log in to GET using their Boise State credentials to link a personal credit or debit card for payments.
Boise State has future plans for the GET app that include meal donations, where students can donate meal swipes to fellow students in need. Boise State is also looking to include the ability to purchase meal plans through the app, instead of through the university website. Future rollouts will also enables students to add and update their meal plan funds, and implement a rewards program for students.
According to Compton, dining services have implemented contactless credit and debit card transactions through Apple Pay and Google Pay, and Boise State dining services is encouraging students to use digital currency as much as possible.
Other safety precautions taken by Boise State dining, beyond the GET app, include social distancing in lines with floor markers six feet apart. Dining Services has also limited the number of guests inside certain locations, limited the amount of seating available and has been offering more pre-packaged food. And introduced cleaning protocols for disinfecting high-touch areas like cash registers, door handles, and counter tops.
As for personnel, all Boise State dining employees are required to wear face masks, take part in COVID-19 safety training before working, and have their temperatures taken prior to each shift.
The University of New Mexico has launched a new initiative that will, in part, use LoboCard student ID scanning to keep track of individuals, including vendors, contractors and visitors, that enter the most highly trafficked buildings on campus.
According to an official university release, the "Shared Location Entry Tracking" program will capture the identification of all individuals and employees entering select buildings and will eliminate, in most instances, the need for the manual collection of contact information to share with the New Mexico Department of Health's contact tracing team.
The official roll out of the program began Friday, October 16, at the first of the buildings to be included in the program: UNM's Student Union Building, and two campus libraries. The Shared Location Entry Tracking program is intended to act as a safety protocol that helps improve screening and contact tracing processes -- both of which the university deems essential in mitigating the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
For those individuals without a LoboCard or scannable driver's license, an attendant at the building entrance will fill out a manual entry form on "Lobo Check-in" to collect relevant contact information. Data will not be permanently retained.
“The impetus behind Shared Location Entry Tracking is to strengthen our ability to do contact tracing should an individual in our community test positive for COVID-19,” says Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Teresa Costantinidis. “We have a good sense of where individuals might be on campus based on our daily 'Lobo Check-In' data and what we know about student enrollment for in-person courses. But we do not know if someone had been in a shared space like Zimmerman Library or the student union building, and if someone who was in those spaces tests positive, we want to be able to reach out to others who were there.”
Other benefits and objectives include simplifying the entry process, minimizing clusters of people at entrances, and protecting the safety of staff at entrances. Additional high-traffic areas on the UNM campus, as well as other buildings across campus are being considered for future expansions of the system.
Wake Forest University is leveraging ASSA ABLOY Aperio locks and a software-based scheduling solution to help coordinate busy day-to-day life on campus. Scheduling solutions have quickly jumped to the forefront as a vital campus service – not just for normal times, but even more so now in response to new regulations surrounding COVID-19.
The typical college campus houses a labyrinth of classrooms, workspaces, study rooms, and special use spaces all made available to students. But the trick for many institutions is how best to utilize these spaces so that students get the most out of the facilities available to them, and the campus doesn’t have underutilized square footage on its hands.
“Four years ago, Wake’s provost wanted to purchase software that would allow faculty and students to schedule and reserve classroom spaces to provide more efficient use of the facilities we have,” says James Byrd, Director, Physical Security Technology and Deacon OneCard, Wake Forest University. “As a part of that we wanted to install card readers on those classroom doors. That was the driver; how do we get people into classrooms in an organized fashion,” Byrd adds.
So Wake began the process of identifying a scheduling solution in December 2016, followed by a beta test in a limited number of rooms in spring 2017. They went fully live in 2018 with a third-party event management system called EMS.
"We wanted to purchase software that would allow faculty and students to schedule and reserve classroom spaces to provide more efficient use of our facilities."
Things progressed well, but it became clear that without some form of automation, the system wouldn’t reach peak efficiency.
“With our prior use of EMS our office managed schedules manually, which strained us with at least 15 hours per week spent overseeing the scheduling process,” says Byrd.
The solution to the software side of Wake’s challenge came in the form of DAX.
The DAX software, by Detrios, is designed specifically for door unlock and temporary access scheduling challenges in higher education.
On the room scheduling side, DAX talks to a university’s existing event and academic scheduling system – EMS, 25Live, AdAstra, etc. – and uses that data to automate the reader unlock schedules in the campus access control system – Lenel, S2, CCURE, etc. – in an automated and configurable way. DAX's housing module does the same, linking with platforms like StarRez or Adirondack to automate the management of housing-driven access.
The value of DAX is that it helps eliminate the manual creation of room schedule reports, making special building and room unlock requests, and enabling more secure open hours by managing the readers after hours and on weekends.
“Luckily DAX is easily manageable. Particularly now, the university doesn’t want anything unlocked due to COVID-19,” says David Cowan, Access System Administrator, Wake Forest University. “Within the Event Management System (EMS) program at Wake, we have not only been able to control the event spaces that can be reserved, but we’ve also been able to consolidate the number of space managers – the people who approve requests – down to a single committee of individuals.”
The pathway for a room request starts from Wake’s Event Management System (EMS), where everything related to students, faculty and staff resides. “Once confirmed, DAX pulls the reservation from our EMS,” Cowan explains. “DAX then holds the reservation until about 15 minutes prior to the start time at which point it will assign the access privileges with an appropriate start and stop time.”
Prior to COVID-19, the system was averaging about 100 reservations per day.
To solve for the hardware side of the scheduling challenge, Wake turned to its longtime partner, ASSA ABLOY.
“Just about every one of our 1,600 electronic locks on campus is an ASSA ABLOY lock, and roughly 180 of them are Aperio,” Byrd explains. “As we were looking at the EMS and DAX integration with our access software Lenel OnGuard, it was just the most intuitive choice to go with the Aperio lock.”
"We wanted to maintain structural integrity and historical value while adding wireless locks, and Aperio was really the one brand that enabled us to do that without tearing down walls."
In addition to a strong relationship with ASSA ABLOY, the Aperio lock in particular made sense from a structural standpoint.
“It’s more about the design of the lock than anything else. The Wake campus was built in the 1950s; so lots of concrete in walls, door frames, floors and ceilings. And if it wasn’t concrete, it was 18-inches of plaster,” Byrd explains. “We wanted to maintain structural integrity and historical value while adding wireless locks, and Aperio was really the one brand that enabled us to do that without tearing down walls. It became a way of preserving our space but also to keep our costs down.”
Wake started with older reader models but after solid reader hardware performance is looking to upgrade to the newest Aperio IN100 or IN120 readers soon, Byrd adds.
The arrival of COVID-19 last spring impacted every facet of campus life, and Wake’s scheduling solution was no different. But the system’s versatility has been a valuable asset.
“DAX saves us tremendous amount of headache. We were able to turn off all reservations when COVID-19 hit and do so in just 15 minutes,” says Cowan. “We can also turn off the integration within 30 seconds to not allow any reservations to go thru if we needed to.”
"DAX saves us tremendous amount of headache. We were able to turn off all reservations when COVID-19 hit and do so in just 15 minutes."
Wake’s initial implementation of DAX only unlocked exterior doors during the reservation time window. “Now with new measures in place with COVID we only grant access privileges to two or three people per room request who are then responsible for letting any other members of the group into the room,” says Cowan.
The initial set up also had no real limitations on reservation timeframes, with durations running anywhere from 15 minutes to days at a time. “We do have some limits on hours now so students can’t be in a space 24/7 during COVID-19,” he adds.
Other COVID-19 related changes include a break between reservations to clean the spaces before the next reservation begins. Currently, there is a mandatory 30 minute turnaround time to clean rooms between reservations.
One of the unintended benefits of Wake’s scheduling and card access system has come in the form of energy savings. In fact, it’s been significant.
“Our energy managers reached out and wanted to know how the software was being used so they could get reports to help them see when spaces weren’t being used and set temperatures back and lights turned off,” explains Byrd. “We’re going to pilot with a full building next year that integrates with Lenel access to tell our HVAC and lighting systems which rooms aren’t in use and can be powered down. Then when the scheduling software says a room is to be used, these systems kick back on one-hour prior.”
Then there’s reporting. Wake is benefitting from a robust audit trail from not only its own EMS, but from DAX as well.
“EMS has its own reporting system. We get a nightly report from them to give us the next seven days’ worth of reservations that effect the Lenel system,” says Cowan. “We can audit those and manually do checks and balances in case someone can’t access a room.”
The DAX automated reporting system is also helping Wake’s auditing efforts, looking at which doors have been unlocked or not, who has access, and so on.
The versatility of the system is also leading to new scheduling avenues for the university.
“The initial project that drove this was just classrooms. But right now with the pandemic, there’s been a forced expansion for our graduate schools,” says Byrd. “There’s anticipation that we’ll go back and add card readers to all large meeting room spaces and auditoriums as well.”'
"With the way the system has worked, the goal of the university president to maximize the use of our facilities has been fulfilled."
“From a scheduling aspect the provost and facilities team have said that every room should have a card reader,” says Byrd. “The silver lining is that the pandemic has magnified this need.”
Whether before or after this new normal, however, the scheduling solution at Wake Forest has been an objective success.
“It’s all been governed back a bit as a result of COVID, but prior to that we saw a tremendous uptick in the use of our campus spaces,” says Byrd. “With the way the system has worked, I believe the goal of the president to maximize the use of our facilities has been fulfilled."
