Centennial College in Toronto, Canada serves a population of 30,000 students and staff. They implemented their contactless MyCard program in 2016 with partner TouchNet.

Sarah Van Osch, Director of Ancillary Services, has the MyCard program within her portfolio of responsibilities. She spoke to CampusIDNews about the launch of the program, the change management required, and way the data and heatmaps generated helps her make decisions for other campus services.

Some of our revenues are now flipping, so we have to really dive into the program and ask what is next and how can we find those use cases to really bring in new dollars.

“When we pull our data and our reports from our sales transactions, our access and that sort of thing, we can see the mapping of where students are going at certain days, certain times,” says Van Osch. “And helps across all of ancillary services as well as other student services, because we can tell what do we need to have open.”

“Working with the TouchNet team, I've never felt that there wasn't a problem that we couldn't solve,” she says. “MyCard for Centennial and for my portfolio is my license to have fun.”

To watch the interview, click the image at the top of this page.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there, my name is Sarah Van Osch. I am the Director of Ancillary Services for Centennial College. We're located in Toronto, Canada, and we have five different campuses, about 25,000 students and 4,000 staff.

We undertook One Card in 2015, and we worked on a super-fast rollout which was a lot to do in a short amount of time when you are starting from scratch.

We really pulled together a dynamic team from across the entire institution when it came to the finance piece, the IT piece, which was huge, and the people piece, and the change management piece that we weren't quite sure how this was going to go because it was a big change and a very big lift.

I would say that we became a very tight-knit team, and we decided that we were going to be one of the first institutions to do this, do it big, and be contactless.

We were able to do that, and along the way, different things would come up, and we would have to change our plans, and we always found that there would be a workaround, and we worked really great with our partners at TouchNet to make sure that that happened.

If we stumbled upon a bit of a roadblock or a challenge, there was always a way to get around it, and so we did.

Our one-card program we refer to as MyCard at Centennial, and when we launched in 2016, we brought on our food services for our major partnership across all five campuses, as well as our hospitality school that also sold food and our student union.

We knew that if we were going to launch a program, we had to include food across all campuses.

We brought in access for our parking, we brought in access for our residents, we used it in our bookstores, our vending, and I'm probably forgetting a few other things because there are so many use cases that we stumbled upon along the way that we couldn't even have imagined at that time, but then we knew that the future was going to be bright.

So once we had that established and we launched in 2016, we found that we were able to really start to bring in revenue around that, but really it was truly changing the student experience and offering a service.

We would find new ways to bring MyCard into the Centennial world.

We also, as everyone, we went through the pandemic. There was a ton of change with that. And not only from the pandemic, we also had change in the transformation that we were going through throughout the college.

That changed how we did things in organizations, and it brought in a ton of new talent to the institution. And the best part was, is when we first brought in MyCard in 2016, we really had to work through the change management side of things.

Now, when we almost were reopening the college, MyCard was already there. It was integrated. There was no question.

It was more like, what's this great thing? I can do what with this? I can load money to the student cards.

My heart was so warm when I would hear the VP of Students solving problems with MyCard at an event because a student didn't get the right meal based on dietary needs.

Oh, don't worry.

We can just put money on your MyCard and problem solved. And the student was thrilled. A way she went, had her own lunch and whatever she wanted. So it's really just changed the landscape for us.

The other thing with that is that we did so much upfront first.

And then every semester, every startup, we would have, you know, a new challenge.

Something would change and we'd have to rise to that occasion.

But I think along the way, we really don't want to say we became stagnant because we found other ways to use the card in so many different lights.

But we know that we need to continue to rise above and do what the students are expecting that are already on campus and the new ones that are coming in.

So we know and what we're working towards is to move into mobile credentials.

We're not fully ready to do that.

But what we have done is we've put a number of things in place ahead of that.

We've moved our we've moved our software into the cloud with TouchNet.

We are working on all of our data points and we're basically doing that technically working with all of our partners and seeing where do we go from here and how can we best set ourselves up.

So hopefully, as we kind of move that train a little bit forward, it'll be a smaller lift to actually go fully mobile.

With MyCard, what we found is not only are we offering a service, but we are there to bring revenue into the institution. So what we're trying to do is keep all the dollars on campus wherever we can.

What has happened is the landscape has definitely changed through the pandemic.

What we may have been able to do as revenue generating has kind of flipped where we do work with our providers, and we do bring in a commission on a number of different services that we offer when it makes sense.

But at the same time, we also will have revenue come in from replacement cards.

But some of those revenues are now flipping, so we almost have to really dive into the program and say, OK, well, what is next and how can we find those use cases to really bring in new dollars or as a colleague always says, a penny saved is also something that will bring our program forward.

At Centennial, we are very much about the student experience and what we want to do and what we found that we can use MyCard for very effectively is finding all of the touch points that a normal student would have.

We've had to really sort of shift and change with coming back to campus when students and staff don't have to be on campus as much.

They can do so much more from home.

But the best part is, is that when we pull our data and our reports from all over our sales transactions, our access and that sort of thing, we can really see the pattern and the mapping of where the students and the staff are going at certain days, certain times.

And then that kind of helps across all of ancillary services as well as other student services, because we can tell what do we need to have open?

What campus is doing what?

Not only can we use the heat maps that we've developed, but we can also use the data that we can pull from our MyCard program.

And being the director of ancillary services, I work with a lot of outside providers and we build great partnerships and relationships.

The one thing I can say is working with the TouchNet team, I've never felt that there wasn't a problem that we couldn't solve.

We would typically, you know, get where we wanted to go.

But again, like I said, there's all these different workarounds that come up.

So the one thing I've always felt really great about is that we can put in that ticket, we can get the tech team and then if we need to go even further, they're always a phone call away and they will be on campus right away.

And so we've always found a way to solve that problem and they're just a great group to work with because we have fun.

I always say that MyCard for Centennial and for my portfolio is my license to have fun.