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Ann Roberts
Business Affairs is proud to recognize Ms. Ann Roberts, Student
Information System Financial Accounting Manager, Financial
Affairs,
as the 2nd quarter recipient of the Celebrating Excellence Award.
During her twenty years of service to UTSA, Ann has had one very
important goal that drives all she does: what improvements
can I make
to better serve our students!
Recently, Ann initiated
projects to make major improvements in how the Banner system
is used for student financial processing. Working with
Information Technology (IT), Ann implemented an automated
process using the Banner Student system known as "eBill" to
send e-mails to students with account balances as opposed to
paper bills -- reminding them to pay before they get
'zapped' and lose their registered classes by payment
deadlines. Email versus "snail mail" to contact students is
not only cost-effective, but commonly used and students
actually prefer this method. In 2006, UTSA mailed out
approximately 30,000 bills. Postage exceeded $11,000 plus the cost of a
contracted service to process the mailing. Paper, envelopes
and
staff time from computer operations, fiscal services, etc.,
totaled about $20,000. After programming eBill, one person
can control the job and the effort is minimal in comparison.
Other tangible benefits include no returns for bad
addresses or the inability to send bills to international
students who did not establish a US address in Banner. Ann's
efforts virtually eliminated the "I didn't get my bill"
excuse. More importantly, for those students who didn't
get their bills, they will have advance notice before losing
their classes.
In addition, Ann
implemented a new refund process to suppress printing of
paper checks for students who would not be eligible to
receive these funds due to monetary holds.
Thank you, Ann, for promoting the
Business Affairs brand "Your Partner for Successful Solutions"
exemplifying the Celebrating
Excellence goals of demonstrating creativity, promoting change
and communication. Great job!
Janet Parker, Ann
Roberts and Kerry Kennedy
Left to Right:
Candy Schlueter, Janet Callison, Gary Lott,
Ann Roberts, Janet Parker and Lenora Chapman |
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