Client Success Story - Hiram College
The Hiram College ID card is used at all dining facilities on campus, as well as the bookstore, gift shop, and library. The card's varied services are divided into three accounts: Miscellaneous, Book Voucher, and Dining. A barcode on the back of the card is used to check out books from Hiram College Library and from OhioLINK (the Ohio Library and Information Network).
CBORD and Sodexo
Hiram College converted its campus card system to Odyssey PCS™ after thirteen years of using a competitor's system. When the contract was up, the school decided to task its food service contractor, Sodexo, with purchasing a new system.
"CBORD® is Sodexo's preferred supplier for campus card systems," says Jack Cahill, General Manager, Sodexo Campus Dining Services at Hiram College. "When the contract with the previous card supplier was up, we looked at CBORD right away."
User-Friendly Technology
According to Cahill, one of the biggest advantages of Odyssey PCS is its ease of use. "The biggest difference between CBORD and our previous system is how much more user friendly the CBORD system is. It is Microsoft® Windows®-based, which makes it easy to pull up whatever kind of information we may need, whether it is reports, patron histories, or other things of that nature."
Sam Adams, Computer System Analyst at Hiram College, agrees. "Our previous system was on a Unix® platform, which was getting pretty outdated," says Adams. "The technology from CBORD is much more modern."
Benefits of Conversion
Hiram College switched to Odyssey PCS without distributing new campus cards. "We were able to keep our current campus cards in place, which helped out tremendously," says Cahill. "We could export a UDF file out of the previous system, and import it into Odyssey PCS, so all the information did not have to be manually entered."
Odyssey PCS's user interface is beneficial to many departments across campus. "The user interface makes it easy for different areas of the school to interact with the system efficiently," says Cahill. "This includes the business office, where people can make deposits to their accounts, as well as the safety office. If a card is lost or stolen, the user interface helps us issue a new card immediately, complete with a new card number."
"On top of all this, CBORD's cost of maintenance is better than what we were paying before," adds Adams.
Handheld Functionality
"We are using a Troubadour™ handheld card reader at Hiram, and it has become pretty essential to our dining operations," says Cahill. "We do a lot of special meals, ranging from on-campus catered events to barbecues at off-site athletics fields. The Troubadour lets us swipe cards at the site, and track not only how many people are there, but also how many of them are on meal plans. It gives us greater flexibility to track the details of these events."
