Client Success Story: Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority

Educational Fund Management System

The Company

The Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority (UHEAA), a subsidiary of the Utah State Board of Regents, administers Utah's student financial aid programs, including the student loan guarantee program and secondary market, state need based financial aid, the Utah Educational Savings Plan Trust, and the Utah Engineering and Computer Sciences Loan Forgiveness Program. UHEAA's mission includes comprehensive outreach and information program to assist citizens in planning for and financing postsecondary education, and special programs to keep student loans affordable and help borrowers avoid delinquencies and defaults. UHEAA's student loan default rate is among the very lowest nationally.

The Challenge

In order to reduce costs, UHEAA wanted to replace a legacy educational fund investment system with a more efficient, lower cost alternative while improving on core functionality. In short, the goal was to get more, but spend less.

The existing system had deficiencies in the areas of transaction processing, transaction logging/audit trail, and funds transfer. The system tracked accounts in dollars as opposed to shares for mutual fund-type plan options.

As the investor base grew, it became necessary to improve business processes to more accurately track complex financial data and to improve customer satisfaction through better investment tracking.

The Solution

Spring2 Technologies began the process by evaluating the legacy technology. They developed a solution designed to preserve key functionality while upgrading the system to take full advantage of efficiencies brought by an updated architecture.

Spring2 utilized it's SpringBoardTM components to develop an n-tier system that isolated the complex business logic from both the database and the interface components. This allows easy manipulation of the fund management business logic without making database or interface changes. Conversely the system can now easily migrate to different back-end database technologies. Spring2 simplified the data entry process by utilized a use-based design methodology vs. an ad-hoc transaction based approach.

A single interface was developed and designed to utilize the mid-tier fund management layer to better meet business objectives. Specifically, the business logic layer shares information from a central data store, through a single interface, with both internal and external users. Maintenance of this data sharing is highly flexible allowing as much or as little information to be exposed to external users as needed. The solution included other enhancements such as:

• Re-engineered the business processes to decrease month-end reporting time
• Improved communication and integration with accounting, automating accounting interfaces for fund disbursements and for fund transfers and investment options
• Remove functionality that was not used or not needed for a more efficient system
• Improved system security and audit trail capabilities

The Technologies

• C#, .NET framework
• N-Tier architecture
• Spring2 SpringBoard - DataTier generator
• Spring2 SpringBoard .Net component
• SQL Server 2003
• Data Transformation Services DTS
• IIS version 6.0
• Crystal reports

The Results

• Easy database migration - transferring application from Oracle to SQL server happens only at data access layer due to SpringBoard components
• Maintain internal data entry speed and improved efficiency
• More efficient data entry - more accounts can be set up and more business can be transacted with fewer people
• More satisfied customer base through improved interfaces and better reporting
• More accurate fund accounting and expense tracking
• More accurate transaction tracking and logging
• Automated internal fund transfers