Though most of the conversation revolves around improvements in the student experience, there are also significant administrative benefits of mobile credentials. However, the benefits extend far beyond student convenience, significantly impacting campus card offices and administrative operations.

In a recent discussion with Mark McKenna, Director of the CatCard Service Center at the University of Vermont, and Jeff Koziol, Business Development Manager for Mobile Credential at Allegion, key insights emerged about how mobile credentials are reshaping the administrative landscape at UVM.

Streamlining operations and reducing workload

One of the most immediate and impactful benefits of mobile credentials is the reduction of in-person visits to card offices. Traditionally, students and faculty needed to visit the card office for ID issuance, replacements, troubleshooting, or general customer services. At UVM, this created long lines, especially during peak periods like orientation. In 2019, this all began to change when the institution launched its mobile credentials program.

Today, that traffic has reduced to a trickle.

"Our office lights go out sometimes because there aren’t enough people coming in," McKenna joked, emphasizing how much card issuance has shifted to a digital-first model.

With fewer in-person visits and manual card issuance tasks, card office staff have been able to take on new responsibilities. The front desk team, for example, now handles more tech-related support.

Photo uploads for new students and faculty further streamline operations, reducing the time and resources spent at enrollment.

The reduction of in-person visitors has been particularly beneficial for the CatCard office as it has been understaffed since Covid. Mobile credential, says McKenna, has allowed the office to maintain service levels without overburdening the team.

Cost savings and resource optimization

While there are certainly cost increases with mobile credentials, there also cost savings. Traditional card programs require a significant investment in printers, consumables, and maintenance.

At the University of Vermont, the number of card printers has been reduced from six to four, with the potential for further downsizing. McKenna explains that a printer with a laminator can cost $10,000, and by reducing volume of cards printed they’ve been able to cut down on expenses for supplies and maintenance contracts as well.

When cards are only needed for select use cases like contractors, visitors, or special events, the need for the highest quality output is lessened. This can eliminate the expense of pre-printed card stock and allow the use of lower-cost printers.

Expanding administrative roles and responsibilities

With fewer in-person visits and manual card issuance tasks, card office staff have been able to take on new responsibilities.

"We’re reallocating our front desk team to handle more tech-related support," McKenna notes.

Since students sometimes require troubleshooting for device compatibility and NFC functionality, his team now assists with technical issues rather than focusing solely on card printing and general customer support.

Reaping administrative benefits of mobile credentials

The transition to mobile credentials is more than just cool new tech that makes students happy. It also represents a fundamental shift in how campus card offices operate, reducing foot traffic, shifting costs, and ushering in new administrative processes.

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

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, and welcome everybody to this episode of CampusIDNews Chats.

Today with me, I have Jeff Koziol, Allegion Business Development Manager for Mobile Credential, and Mark McKenna, University of Vermont Director of the CatCard Service Center. Mark is familiar to many of us from presentations at conferences and being around the industry for a long, long time.

We're going to talk about the impacts of mobile credential on the card office and the administrative side of the house. Rather than just what does it do for the students, what does it do for Mark's office and for other entities on the campus.

Jeff, you want to give a little more context about that before we get started?

Yeah, absolutely, Chris, and thanks for having us today.

So everyone knows about the topic of mobile credentials, but most of the conversation is around the student benefit, a better way to engage students, the way they want to be engaged.

I think what I would like to see during this time on our call today is kind of a focus on the back of house benefits that card offices see, because this really changes the workflow and does so in a better and efficient manner.

And I know Mark's got a lot of great examples that he's chopping at the bit to talk about.

All right, take it away, Mark. The kids get a lot out of it and convenience, but what do you get out of it?

Yeah, one of the things, you know, it's a great topic to bring up because everybody thinks of the students, but you got to think of the card office on the back end.

We started the program pre-COVID. So COVID really changed the landscape anyways on how card offices were functioning.

But the fact that we had already gone to the mobile credential pre-COVID, the biggest thing was we were able to continue functioning not in person by issuing the digital prudential.

So other things that have changed in our office was the staffing up front. It has directly impacted our staffing and the way we interact with our customers that do come in.

Photo uploads, getting ready for orientation has been a huge benefit to us.

We've been unfortunately running short staffed for a while and without a mobile prudential, we would not have been able to function short staffed as we have done.

You mentioned serving the students that do come in. I know any campus that has gone mobile knows this, but not many students probably come in anymore, do they?

No, not anymore.

We're very energy efficient in Vermont and our lights go out in the office because not enough people come in the office anymore.

So people wonder if we're open, they'll knock on the door and it's like, no, come on in.

The lights will come back on.

Okay, so issuance, yeah, but there's other things that card offices do, sharing data with other systems, visitor management, summer camps, all kinds of things like that where we used to issue a card. You still issue a card for some of those things or how do you manage some of those other areas now?

Yeah, that's a good point. Faculty, staff, students get the digital credential. Our contractors and our vendors and our summer camp programs, most of them still get a plastic card.

So for the faculty, staff, we do the photo uploads, which takes a lot of the lines out of the hallway that use the form for orientation or, you know, faculty, staff orientation.

So that has definitely streamlined that whole process.

With those with those that still do get a card, are they using your photo upload system still? Are they coming back in? Like equipment in the office, do you still have a bank of six printers and all kinds of things? Has that changed?

Good point. Yeah, we did. We used to have six printers. We're down to four.

I was just telling our work study student this morning was if one breaks, we still have a couple to go. So we still we still will print some plastic cards.

Inevitably you'll find a phone that the NFC or something has ceased to work. So our front desk has become, let's say, a semi tech position.

They have to be able to diagnose what kind of phone you have, what the potential problems could be.

But, you know, hey, I dropped it in the in the toilet and that's probably why it doesn't work anymore.

And since you brought it up, how often would that happen? Not dropping it in the toilet. How often would that happen that someone comes in for tech support on on things like that?

Very seldom.

Usually we see it around Christmas time, Thanksgiving time when they go home and they come back with a brand new phone. And that's when they were like, hey, I can't get it to work on my new phone.

I said, well, did you take it off your old phone?

No.

We can help. We can assist them.

We've got knowledge based articles that nobody reads, but at least they're a reference for our own staff so we can tell them how to get from their phone and re add impact.

You mentioned there were impacts to staffing when you were short staffed. Is that is that something that will you ultimately staff back up to pre mobile credential days or do you need as many staff in the in the current model?

We will most likely ramp back up to where we work. But the responsibilities will have changed.

Our front desk will be reallocated to do different types of tech work, let's say.

Our office is small. There's only six of us total if we were all here. Currently, there's four of us.

But we will ramp back up and we've grown exponentially, CCTV wise, access control wise, but our staff has not.

So we need to at least get back to our pre COVID staffing levels. And I think that will hold us for years to come.

Okay, so that's not necessarily because of mobile credential. That's because of adding in more in the PACS kind of infrastructure and needing someone to help manage more of that kind of thing.

Yeah, we picked up more responsibilities from the lock shop because they were they were shorthanded also. And so we picked up some of their responsibilities for access control, which we did not get extra bodies to do.

We were able to automate and try to do a few things with the system to accommodate but we've grown to the point where we need some extra fingers, extra hours on the clock.

All right, since you brought up the lock shop, Jeff, one for you as there, you know, in terms of costs and things was there was there something with the reader migration there when they went to mobile that was not just rip and replace was it was it take everything and replace it with brand new stuff or how did that how did that process go?

Most of what the University of Vermont had they were able to keep we we were able to do firmware updates and load the Apple Wallet and Google Wallet keys into those locks into those readers.

So they maintained a good portion, maybe everything that they they had.

I think what it also did is it ferreted it out some areas of campus where perhaps they didn't have the full Desfire experience or mobile wallet experience.

So we we kind of use that that push to mobile to make sure at all access point.

Mark, I know you've probably got other use cases too that you ferreted it out that would only support mag but now support mobile that involves non Allegiant devices as well.

Yes, definitely. We've managed to find departments utilizing and I think other schools I've talked to same thing that we didn't realize that the Yachting Club used it to rent a kayaks.

We definitely found unique cases.

Okay, well, that was that was the same with the migration from MAG Strobe to Prox you learned all that stuff then Prox to contact us we learned all that stuff. So it's just another growing pain, I guess.

Now I think from talking to you before Mark, you told me that your facility did not change that you're still in the same footprint of where you are. But I know that's been another kind of admin benefit or University benefit of mobile credential in some of these cases. So maybe Jeff, maybe you've seen that at other campuses you've worked with. Is there anything you can add to that?

Yeah, Mark kind of alluded to it that your foot traffic in and out of the card office is going to go down significantly.

So you may not need to be in a prime spot on campus for students to go, whether it be when they first come to campus as freshmen during orientation, or, you know, when they're transferring in from other schools, you don't need to be in that prime spot anymore.

So they've been able to move to another part of campus to kind of let that prime spot be used to something else that's a little bit more student facing and relevant.

But that's one of the other benefits as well. It's really created win that this is not just for the students.

This has been a tremendous benefit for the card office staff and leadership as well.

One quick thing that I just want to throw on there is that they had already moved us out of the Student Center before COVID, which created quite the stir on campus because we were student facing, obviously, office at the time, they already moved us and rebuilt a brand new office across campus for us.

That's why we're still where we are, because we got a great location now, brand new offices. I love it.

Good, and don't let them make you move, right? Okay, so anybody have anything else to add? Because I think that was great, otherwise, I learned what I needed to learn today, I think. So, Mark?

The front desk, the traffic, just reallocating some of the staff time has been huge, dealing with incoming, we used to have 90% photo compliance, well in advance when we had on campus orientations.

Our first year going into the mobiles, of course, was COVID related also.

We wound up like two weeks away from the start of semester and I was still almost 2000 photos short and I was panicking, but they were taking their selfies in the res halls and submitting them and so now we expect to not have everybody going into the semester and everything's been fine.

Great, and Chris, the only other thing I would add in is if you were a campus that perhaps had four or six card printers to kind of service the production card production of your students, faculty and staff, you'll never get out of needing to produce cards to some level.

But maybe you, going forward, you can live with two of those printers, which means you've eliminated the future purchase of four printers, those consumables and the maintenance service contracts of those.

So you're not getting away from it, but you're going to certainly see it reduce somewhat.

So there is a lot of cost savings on that front as well. I mean, a printer with a laminator is 10 grand.

And you know, if I went from three CR805s to one, and you know, a couple of DS3s, they're a lot cheaper, and I don't have to worry about card stock printers like you had mentioned earlier, Chris, that, you know, keep track of the supplies as a pain in the butt.

Well, and also, I think I would imagine if you're not having to issue, sorry, if you're not having to issue cards to the student population, you can go backwards on the quality of that visual quality of that card and buy a cheaper printer and get away with it because, or, you know, not pre-print maybe and print the whole card in-house.

So there would be opportunities to even save more on that once you're, you know, once all of your printers die and you've got to go out and buy a new one or something too. And frustrations too with staff trying to fix a jammed printer or card that didn't print right.

Staff turnover where you've got to retrain everybody on how to do, you know, how the printer works.

Well, guys, thank you very much.

I appreciate the time and thank you all out there for listening in and hopefully you learned something about the admin benefit side of mobile credentials on campuses.