Tilburg University automates payment requests
Industry
Education
Revenue
€291m
Headquarters
Tilburg, Netherlands
Tilburg University is a Netherlands-based higher education institution offering 24 bachelors degree’s and 49 master’s programs to over 20,000 students, with a total revenue of €291m.
Tilburg’s payment challenges
Timely and error-free fee payment is a big concern for any university, and Tilburg is no exception. The institution’s finance team relies on prompt payment to minimize their effort and costs (and to apply revenue to academic work). And students want making payments to be easy too – the faster they can pay, the less time they have to worry about payments and can focus on other things.
And in an environment with thousands of international students from all over the globe, traditional payment requests are slow, cumbersome, and difficult to answer. Creating a PDF invoice and sending it in an email takes long enough. Manually setting up a bank transfer takes even longer. Especially for those from markets where digital banking isn’t a straightforward given.
Key facts:
- Multiple revenue streams
- Large international student body
- Struggling with traditional, manually facilitated payment request methods
Tilburg University’s transformation approach
To simplify fee payments for both students and finance staff, the university decided to find a solution to enable online payments directly from their payment request channels.
Tilburg chose Serrala Alevate BillPay because it met a key requirement that their new platform could easily integrate and share data with their existing SAP ERP system to avoid major IT costs and project timelines, and because of its proven ability to create easily-actioned digital payment requests. Eliminating errors from the process to ensure seamless matching and making it easier for students to request financial help from their parents by simply forwarding an email.
The results – flexible automation, total visibility, and simple payment request processes
By reaching students through email and SMS, the university is now able to offer them the option to pay via interbank online payments. Students can also easily forward requests and reminders to parents or other sponsors. Payments are automatically registered. This has significantly improved collections.
Beyond this, the solution allows for easier integration between systems for the transfer of payment request and fulfilment data – allowing everyone to stay on the same page, and making it simple for individual departments to create and send payment requests themselves without any need to use finance as a central clearing house.
Business Need
Tilburg University is a Netherlands-based higher education institution offering 24 bachelors degree’s and 49 master’s programs to over 20,000 students, with a total revenue of €291m.
Tilburg’s payment challenges
Timely and error-free fee payment is a big concern for any university, and Tilburg is no exception. The institution’s finance team relies on prompt payment to minimize their effort and costs (and to apply revenue to academic work). And students want making payments to be easy too – the faster they can pay, the less time they have to worry about payments and can focus on other things.
And in an environment with thousands of international students from all over the globe, traditional payment requests are slow, cumbersome, and difficult to answer. Creating a PDF invoice and sending it in an email takes long enough. Manually setting up a bank transfer takes even longer. Especially for those from markets where digital banking isn’t a straightforward given.
Key facts:
- Multiple revenue streams
- Large international student body
- Struggling with traditional, manually facilitated payment request methods
Solution Implemented
Tilburg University’s transformation approach
To simplify fee payments for both students and finance staff, the university decided to find a solution to enable online payments directly from their payment request channels.
Tilburg chose Serrala Alevate BillPay because it met a key requirement that their new platform could easily integrate and share data with their existing SAP ERP system to avoid major IT costs and project timelines, and because of its proven ability to create easily-actioned digital payment requests. Eliminating errors from the process to ensure seamless matching and making it easier for students to request financial help from their parents by simply forwarding an email.
Results Achieved
The results – flexible automation, total visibility, and simple payment request processes
By reaching students through email and SMS, the university is now able to offer them the option to pay via interbank online payments. Students can also easily forward requests and reminders to parents or other sponsors. Payments are automatically registered. This has significantly improved collections.
Beyond this, the solution allows for easier integration between systems for the transfer of payment request and fulfilment data – allowing everyone to stay on the same page, and making it simple for individual departments to create and send payment requests themselves without any need to use finance as a central clearing house.
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