Digital Transformation in Campus Accommodation: University of Tasmania's Success with StarRez

Long-standing Partnership with StarRez

The University of Tasmania has been using StarRez for many years – decades, in fact. Over time, they have leveraged numerous modules and integrations to enhance their processes, improve resident satisfaction, optimise occupancy, and even play a small part in achieving their climate action goals.

The StarRez team recently met with Dan Elvin, Manager of Campus Accommodation, and Ali Alsalah, StarRez Power User and Senior Systems and Data Analyst, to discuss the various benefits they have realised from using StarRez. They highlighted tangible success metrics achieved through integrations like DocuSign and BPOINT, and emphasised the configurability of StarRez to meet their needs.

DocuSign is a Game Changer

The introduction of DocuSign has revolutionised the University of Tasmania's management of residential leases, saving the team approximately 410 hours' worth of work annually.

Their 770 apartments, funded under the Commonwealth scheme called NRAS, required the university’s leases to comply with the Residential Tenancy Act. This meant that they could no longer have residents simply click a button online to accept the terms and conditions. They needed a signature.

Starting in 2017, the team had to print the lease, obtain the resident's signature, scan it, and re-upload it to StarRez for record-keeping. This manual method took about 50 minutes per lease, totalling 642 hours of processing time annually. Recognising this inefficiency, they decided to implement the DocuSign integration with StarRez.

“UsingDocuSign to send the residents their leases, have them signed electronically, and stored in StarRez was a game changer for us. We are always looking for process improvements, and this significantly reduced the hours the team spent managing those leases.”

-     Dan Elvin, Manager of Campus Accommodation at University of Tasmania

With this new, efficient method, the average processing time per lease reduced from 50 minutes to 18 minutes. Total processing time dropped from 642 hours to 231 hours per year, saving the team 410 hours annually.

Dan proudly displays the comparison of the time savings on his office wall, as it was a significant success for the team.

Additional benefits include:

• Reducing complexity for residents, who no longer need to deal with paper and can simply click through a familiar portal.
• Cost savings on paper, printing, and document storage materials.
• A better student experience, allowing them to complete the process before move- in. This gives them ample time to read the lease before arriving on campus, rather than rushing to read and sign it on their first day.

A Focus on Sustainability

Besides time savings, the first year after implementation they saved a massive amount of paper.

The University of Tasmania is officially the tertiary sector’s world-leader in taking climate action, with the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings rating them number one in climate action globally for 2024 - for the third year in a row.

Dan says initiatives like the DocuSign integration saving them 50,000 pieces of paper allowed the Campus Accommodation team to feel like they were actively contributing to the University's sustainability measures.

Read more about their ranking.

Improved Resident Payment & Refund Experience

The University of Tasmania has enhanced their payment and refund processes by integrating payments into StarRez, ensuring greater PCI compliance and reducing the time residents wait to receive refunds.

BPOINT Integration for Easy Application Payments

Previously, handling direct debits was a cumbersome process involving paper forms. Every student on direct debit needed to submit a form upon check-in, providing their bank details, which a team member then had to enter into StarRez. Requesting, chasing down, manually entering information, securely saving, and storing these forms was a logistical nightmare.

Now, with the StarRez BPOINT integration, this process is streamlined. StarRez developed this integration so that every resident, during the application process, can enter their payment details—whether bank account or credit card information—through a gateway to the BPOINT system within the StarRez portal. All sensitive information is tokenised, so the university never sees the residents' credit card or bank account details.

The University of Tasmania set up the system to require residents to complete this step before progressing through the application process, eliminating the need to chase them down for their direct debit details as in the past.

This integration significantly improves staff efficiency by automating the process and enhances resident satisfaction by eliminating the need to collect, complete, and return paper forms upon arrival.

As much as this has saved time for staff, it has equally benefited residents. Move-in is a crucial time for them, with every moment being valuable. When they first arrive, they need to learn a lot of new things. It's more important for them to have time to learn about their new city and connect with other residents, rather than filling out a direct debit form.

Faster Refunds and Protected Payment Data

Like the direct debit process, the refund process was previously highly manual. Students had to obtain and fill out a form to request their refund, sometimes including their credit card details, which posed security risks.

By integrating refunds into StarRez, the university has improved PCI compliance, eliminated single-point dependencies, and provided the team with a better audit trail of refund activities.

“Now with StarRez, we can ensure the safety and security of credit card numbers. Instead of storing a credit number, they're all tokenised throughout our financial institution.”

-     Dan Elvin, Manager of Campus Accommodation at University of Tasmania

In addition to enhancing the security of resident payment information, the new process has significantly reduced the time it takes for residents to receive refunds, cutting the total wait time from 456 hours to only 48 hours per year.

Furthermore, the efficiency of the integrated process has reduced the average work time for staff from 24 hours and 24 minutes to just 8 minutes annually.

Automation Enhances Email Quality and Efficiency

The University of Tasmania uses StarRez to automate the sending of emails, such as offer emails.

Previously, staff had to manually select the correct email template and send it each time they made an offer. Now, as soon as they click to offer someone a place within StarRez, the offer email is automatically generated and sent to that resident.

The old process took staff about 1-2 minutes per email. With 2,000 to 2,500 offers sent annually, this automation saves roughly 56 hours of work each year.

Beyond time savings, this automated process also eliminates human error. Staff no longer risk sending the wrong email template or forgetting to send an email altogether.

“It's not just the time saving, it's also the quality of the work, too. You don't have to review what you have done or wonder if you sent the email.”

-     Ali Alsalah, Senior Systems and Data Analyst at University of Tasmania

Leveraging StarRez and Power BI for Occupancy Optimisation

The University of Tasmania utilises StarRez for occupancy optimisation, integrating data intoPower BI to track applications, offers, acceptances, and conversions to in-room.

By merging their StarRez data with PowerBI, they can easily monitor the entire application process—from initial application to in-room conversion. This integration allows them to see how many students applied, were offered a space, accepted, were booked, and ultimately moved in.

With a single click, they can compare data across different years and analyse various demographic information, all sourced directly from StarRez.

“This is definitely something that helps us in our occupancy optimisation, looking at our demand and where we have more applications. Now we can easily look at a number and know exactly what the number means.”

-     Ali Alsalah, Senior Systems and Data Analyst at University of Tasmania

Data from StarRez is imported into Power BI daily, enabling the university to use both tools together for comprehensive data analysis. This integration significantly improves forecasting and supports data-driven decision-making.

Boosting Resident Engagement through Programs and Events

With all the time saved through optimised processes, staff have been able to focus on resident engagement and satisfaction. One method they lean heavily into is hosting numerous resident events. From January to June 2024, the university has already managed and hosted 285 resident events.

By managing all events through the portal, the university has noticed several benefits. Residents can easily register through the portal, allowing the team to accurately plan for the number of attendees. They can also set a limit on the number of registrations to control attendance. If the event requires a cost, residents can conveniently make the payment online through the portal.

The team appreciates that they can manage all events through StarRez, enabling residents to easily see event details, such as date, location, and information, and register with a click. They also value the ability to control which residents can see certain events, ensuring that some events are exclusive to residents of a particular location rather than the entire campus.

StarRez helps them target specific audiences, enhancing resident engagement by making residents feel special with events tailored specifically for certain groups.

Final Thoughts and Advice from Dan and Ali

The University of Tasmania has significantly improved staff efficiency and resident satisfaction by automating processes such as direct debits, refunds, emails, and event management through StarRez. They also value StarRez's customisation capabilities, which allow them to tailor the system to their institution's specific needs.

“It's a system that encompasses everything in the student's residential journey. From that first application right through to when they check out, everything is held within that system.”

-     Dan Elvin, Manager of Campus Accommodation at University of Tasmania

Dan offers advice to other institutions using StarRez: bring your team together and let them voice and prioritise their pain points to identify which processes to tackle first. He also emphasises that StarRez is not an off-the-shelf product and encourages institutions to explore unique ways to leverage it to meet their needs. “I reckon every individual university has a completely different setup. There's no one manual for the way you're supposed to use it,” says Dan. “You can get as much as you want out ofStarRez... you can actually make it work for you.”

Ali advises leveraging StarRez and necessary integrations to eliminate paper and enhance efficiency. “We hardly use paper now. I can't remember using paper for anything anymore because all of our processes are through the portal now or DocuSign if we need a signature.”

Learn more about how StarRez can help you go paperless and manage the entire student residential journey, from application to check-out and beyond.