Tertiary Institutions

ETX-NG, a Global Electronic Transcript Delivery Network, supplements traditional paper transcripts by providing universities, tertiary institutions and third party recipients with a network through which official transcripts are delivered in a secure and trusted environment. Delivery is instantaneous, fully trackable, and most importantly, easy to use. Business processes need not change and joining the network is simple.

Benefits to Higher Institutions

ETX-NG supports both online and secure electronic transcript exchange as well as paper based transcript orders securely delivered by tradition channels. Key benefits include:

• An opportunity for higher institutions to generate additional income through providing degree verification services and earning a share of our processing fees.
• No charge to participate and no maintenance fees.
• Instant “Institution to Institution” transcript delivery.
• Secure transcript request and delivery platform.
• Decreases fraud.
• Creates audit trail.
• Saves registrar staff resources.
• Improves service to your students and alumni.
• Ability to accept card payments.
• Easy to use for senders and receivers.
• No programming required.
• Paperless consent available.
• Ability to track transcript delivery status and receipt.

Benefits to Students and Alumni

Our online transcript ordering service offers your students and alumni a fast, simple way to order copies of their official transcript. Instead of going to your school’s registration office, they can go to the Web!

Here’s how we’ve planned to make transcript ordering and degree verification easy for your students and Alumni:

• Convenient 24/7 access
• Secure transactions
• Ability to order transcripts for multiple recipients in one order session

Requirements for Participating Institutions

Though not compulsory, the following describes our core institution participation requirements:

Computerized students results

Obtaining a transcript will be much easier where the institution’s student results exist in digital format. It will be more effective and efficient as well as prone to fewer errors to extract required information for transcript processing electronically.

An existing computer room or data centre:

Considering that the plan is to maintain an ETX-NG exchange transcript database in every institution, there will be a need to keep the database server within the university server room or data centre under proper computing conditions.

Staff

Institution will be required to provide dedicated staff to support the transcript fulfilment process. ETX-NG will require the assistance of an institution staff to support the transcript fulfilment process particularly in the areas of providing access and identifying key persons.

Our critical success factors include:

Security of students’ data

The security of transcripts is paramount to our strategy and ETX-NG does not take data security lightly. Our strategy to data security is to encrypt transcripts at every point of the process to ensure the integrity of the contents and to ensure that the transcript does not fall into the wrong hands. Data will be encrypted in transit and at rest, digital security signatures will be used by transcript receiving institutions to verify its source and also be used by sending institutions to ensure that it arrives without tampering.

Transcripts will be sent in trusted and digitally signed PDF format that will require a public and private key to encrypt and decrypt. Every institution will be issued an applicable key to ensure complete trust within the exchange platform.

Quick turn around of transcript

The turn around time from transcript order to delivery on the ETX-NG exchange platform is quicker than what it is today. The average time it takes for first transcript order at the moment in a sample of universities surveyed is about 30 working days. This time does not reduce for subsequent transcript requests.

EXT-NG aims to deliver first transcript requests within 10 days and subsequent transcript requests within 24 hours of ordering.

Swift Institution Implementation

The institutions within ETX-NG’s target market need swift implementation of the transcript exchange platform and integration to their existing local transcript processes without significant impact on their normal routine and business as usual. Considering that the set up and installation of the ETX-NG platform and integration of institution specific processes may require systems set-up and training, these institutions may experience minimal disruptions to their business as usual activities along the transcript order fulfilment value chain.

ETX-NG deals with this by performing an exhaustive assessment of hardware and connection requirements, setting up a test environment, making all required customizations and going live on a phased approach. Higher institutions’ order portal will normally go live over the weekend where bursary and student record operations are quite low or non-existent.

Transparent Accounting

In addition to ensuring minimal disruptions, higher institutions also want good accounting to the transcript order services that will ensure accurate calculations of all transcript fees due to them. Total sales and amount due to higher institutions should be accurate and transparently monitored.

ETX-NG’s approach includes deploying a transcript order portal demand management system that will carry out all authentications and accounting functions for specific higher institutions. The software is web based and view-only access will be extended to participating higher institutions to monitor transcript and degree verification orders hence their income in real time. More importantly, records kept by ETX-NG management system will form a basis our financial accounting.

Reliable Customer Support

In respect to customer support, the service level agreement offered to participating higher institutions will see a recovery time objective of 4 Hours for all ETX platform related faults. This means that the maximum downtime target allowable within our business is 4 hours. This will ensure minimal loss of income to both the university and ETX-NG.