FLASHperks - Phase I Complete

FLASHperks is the rewards program for Kent State undergraduate students. Students simply attend FLASHperks designated events, swipe their student ID, and earn points. As their points accumulate, they win great prizes. Each time students swipe at an event, they are entered into the year-end prize drawing, which includes free tuition. Data collected from students' attendance at FLASHperks designated events enables the system to also be utilized as an assessment tool.

The three groups of users for the FLASHperks program include students attending the events, event hosts (university departments and student organizations), and the FLASHperks administration staff. The previous FLASHperks system, provided by a third-party vendor, met only the basic needs of the program's users. Transitioning FLASHperks into the CRM has provided a long list of benefits for each group of users.

The students will now be auto-enrolled in the program. In the old system, each student would need to individually register by completing a paper or online form. Most incoming students were registered during their DKS experience however, many students, especially transfer and international students, never registered. They would attend events, swipe their student ID, accumulate points, but there was no way to email them about their achieved prize levels. How students view their point total has also been improved. Instead of logging in to a separate site, students now can login to FlashLine to view a FLASHperks tile with their point total.

Since FLASHperks is directly connected to the university calendaring system, event hosts are able to submit their event to FLASHperks and the university calendar in a single form. With phase two of the system, event hosts will automatically be sent an event report with the attendee data following an event upload into the system.

Eliminating the use of a third-party vendor has made it cost effective for regional campuses to launch FLASHperks on their campuses. There are three regional campuses planning to pilot the program in fall 2017. The system's automation ability will transform many of the current manual processes, including emails to event hosts, weekly event emails, and prize level achievement emails. Students will also be sent an automated welcome email upon attending their first FLASHperks designated event. Another automation that carries great value is the CRM's ability to manage the prize inventory which was managed manually. Not only will the CRM track the prize levels, it will also send the administrator an automated reorder email notification once a designated quality level is reached.

In addition to all of these benefits, the CRM provides a robust report-writing feature that will be an asset in utilizing FLASHperks as an assessment tool.