Customer Story: Sam Houston State University frees up time and resources with RemotePhoto

Sam Houston State University relies HEAVILY on their Bearkat OneCard; entering dorms, dining swipes, admittance at athletic events, and more all run through the OneCard.

Daniel Erickson, an employee of SHSU since 2010, and the courageous associate director of the OneCard and Cashiers offices since 2018, had his hands full managing 5-6 different systems at once. The trickiest part? The fact that everything student life related is connected to the OneCard. Daniel became the hub of all things ID card malfunctions, even if the issue wasn’t actually with the card, but connected to an entirely different system. Additionally, if any systems crashed, or updates needed to happen, or people wanted to make changes, the OneCard service was dramatically affected. Needless to say, Daniel was busy and needed all his systems operating without a hitch.

Daniel decided to implement RemotePhoto at the Bearkat OneCard office because they were struggling with traffic flow and huge numbers of students needing ID photos during peak periods. And don’t even get him started on the double whammy of chaos when Cashiers payments were due and ID cards were needed on the same day. At times, Daniel had lines out the door, down the hall, and cascading on the stairs. Their homegrown system for online photo submission was working okay, but there were multiple technical issues that arose which no one really knew how to solve effectively.

RemotePhoto fit the bill! After demoing multiple solutions with different providers, Daniel found that RemotePhoto was the most intuitive option for students and provided an easy transition for staff and university personnel on the back end. Their IT department also felt that RemotePhoto offered the best integration into their existing system. Daniel was especially grateful that he did  not have to allocate a large amount of their limited resources to managing the solution. 

Right off the bat, the SHSU OneCard office approved 4,909 photos with RemotePhoto and sent out ID cards through a separate partner; those were all people who no longer had to come to the office to get their ID photo and card. This made a dent in peak season traffic. Additionally, RemotePhoto helped online students avoid email tag or visiting the university to get their photo on file. Talk about a time saver! Finally, SHSU was one of the universities using RemotePhoto through COVID, allowing them to serve their students safely.

Daniel’s choice to bring RemotePhoto to Sam Houston State created a better card office experience for both students and staff. We’re so glad it was a great fit!

You can check out our full interview with Daniel right here 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼