E-commerce: The Grad School's Experience

Financial Manager Ann Bannerman is enthusiastic about the Graduate School's online application and fee payment service.

A record 43 percent of the fourteen thousand graduate study applications received for Autumn Quarter 2000 were submitted to the University of Washington online. The Graduate School's Web-based application system, which provides for online payment of application fees, has grown more popular each quarter since it became available in December 1998.

Applicants first work through a nine-step process on the Web, filling out forms with such information as course of study and degree desired, biographical data, and past education. The last step is to pay the application fee online by using a MasterCard or Visa. (See screen below.)

"Our long-term goal is to have most of the applications submitted and paid for online," says Ann Bannerman, financial manager for the Graduate School. "The online process is generally faster and more convenient for the applicant."

Major benefits of this shift to online applications are a more automated workflow and less paper handling. Students find the online process to be faster and more convenient because much of the work can be done from their computer desktop without waiting for the registration packet to arrive in the mail and having to make trips to the copy center and post office.

Prospective graduate students can work on their application online, log off, and come back later knowing what steps they have completed, and what to do next.

Online Payment

"CyberCash is one of the leaders in that industry," says John Drew, director of Computing and Information Resources at the Graduate School. "We signed up for their service and bought their software package. At first we thought we might need to hire an outside consultant—called a system integrator—to make their software work with ours, but it wasn't that difficult to do."

Security Safeguards

"One of the fundamental rules of e-commerce is not to store credit card information on your server," says Drew. "With this system, we do not store any sensitive information—it passes straight through to CyberCash."

To associate their records with transactions in the CyberCash system, the Graduate School uses transaction identification numbers. Then if a payment question comes up, they use that ID number to request specifics from CyberCash.

Not for the Faint-hearted

Students around the world who wish to attend the Graduate School at the University of Washington now apply and submit their fees online, says John Drew who manages the technical side of this Web-based service.

While the CyberCash online payment system has generally been very reliable, there have been problems. In one case, network disruptions back East prevented certain credit cards from working. Another time, recounts Drew, processing difficulties at CyberCash resulted in all transactions from Brazil failing.

To the customer, all this complexity is hidden. All he or she knows is that the credit card that worked elsewhere has been rejected by your site.

Good customer support helps deal with such problems. The Graduate School's Web site offers help texts and email addresses so applicants can find answers and ask questions. Equally important is careful monitoring of the transactions to catch problems as early as possible.

"We monitor all of the online transactions, and print out a daily report from CyberCash, which we send to Accounting," says Bannerman. "You have to be very methodical. What people see on screen when they use their credit card is just the tip of the iceberg."

Once a glitch at CyberCash resulted in transactions being processed but not fully settled. Because the Graduate School staff monitor everything, they noticed it before CyberCash did. Still, it took weeks to straighten out.

"Setting up a site to accept credit cards and debit cards is not for the faint of heart," warns Drew. "You have a tremendous responsibility. You are certainly at risk and you have to take the necessary steps to protect your customers and yourself."

A Question of Value

"Whether online transactions are for you comes down to a question of value," says Drew. "When you include staff, hardware, software, and fees, costs total up quickly. You want to reduce that to a per transaction cost and compare it with the alternatives."

In the Future

Drew says they have had a pretty positive experience getting everything up and running. In doing so, he talked with C&C, the Controller's office, and others to avoid most of the pitfalls. (See next article "Keeping Control of Your E-commerce.")

"I think that a central Web credit authorization service should be developed," concludes Drew. "When I develop a Web program on our Graduate School server, I would then simply register my server with this service and install a software component on our server. When my Web application needs to verify a credit transaction, it would query this central authorization service, which would handle the communication with the banks and credit card companies. The nice thing about this arrangement is that it lets us develop our applications without forcing C&C to be in the middle of each project, yet at the same time enforces the security and consistency of a central standard."

C&C is currently working on business-to-business e-commerce solutions—such as Web-based purchases for UW Central Stores orders—and actively investigating what it would take to set up a centralized university e-commerce service. In the meantime, those at the UW doing direct sales online are encouraged to follow the secure approaches outlined here and in the next article.