Georgian College of Applied Arts and Technology (Georgian), located in Ontario, Canada has more than 3,600 international students from 85 countries across seven campuses. Georgian’s International Education & Development Business Manager Kelly Watson shared how Cohort Go revolutionized their international education department.

“We are very excited about this new partnership with Cohort Go; we know that this [Agent Management] solution will revolutionize our department and its affiliated processes. It will be a powerful tool for users of the system,” Kelly Watson, Business Manager of International Education & Development.

At a glance:

CHALLENGES

• Time consuming manual agent commission calculations
• Labour intensive data analysis
• Fragmented management of multiple systems to store agent and student data.

BENEFITS

• Automated commission management saves time
• Instantly identify short or missing commission payments
• Ability to view and reward high performing agents, reducing agent turnover.

One of the biggest challenges Georgian faced was the management of agent commissions which expanded over multiple systems, resulting in labour-intensive data analysis and time lost with manual calculations.

Prior to launching Cohort Go’s Agent Management platform, Georgian’s international education department processes were more manual. Working with numerous education agents around the world, the team was required to source data from multiple systems, make payment decisions based on labour-intensive data analysis and manually calculate the education agent commissions each term. The combined effort had a substantial impact on the workload required by Georgian staff during each intake period.

With Cohort Go, all of the team’s data processing is now automated, including the validation of agent contracts. This eliminates human error as the system automatically identifies ineligible payments and processes only sanctioned commissions, significantly reducing manual time spent calculating commissions.

This improvement provides Georgian with the ability to identify and reward high-value agents, in turn reducing costs of acquiring new agents while increasing the quality of referred students. It also reduces the College’s relationship management effort with agents, liberating college staff to dedicate more time to creating better international student experiences. 

Processing agent payments was a very time consuming and manual process. Prior to using Cohort Go, Georgian processed agent payments via wire transfers that required manual remittances for each payment.

Now with Cohort Go, Georgian saves considerable time in the accounting department by completely eliminating the need to prepare wire remittances for the International agents, while Canadian agents are still paid via electronic funds transfers. For the international payments, the accounting department manually combines all payable invoices page by page into one bulk remittance form in Cohort Go, which is then imported to the college’s ERP Finance System for authorization prior to payment.  Once payment to Cohort Go is completed, all agents are instantly paid through the outbound capability.

The Georgian College team had to use manual processes to accurately forecast future agent commission payment volumes. Data had to be drawn from various systems and then undergo a lengthy analysis, leading to extended payment processing timelines.

Cohort Go’s Agent Management streamlines Georgian’s data collection process, allowing the team to access all necessary data in one place.  This includes information on program tuition amounts and accruals made on ineligible commission payments that are likely to become payable in the future, allowing Georgian to accurately forecast future budgets.

“We truly appreciate Cohort Go’s superior proficiency to collaborate and provide immeasurable support, even making changes to the system in real-time while we sat in the room together,” Kelly Watson Business Manager of International Education & Development.

“Cohort Go is truly an adaptive solution.”

Working with Cohort Go, Georgian will expand its agent network in a more strategic direction harnessing the new visibility of the information provided from the Agent Management platform. 

The efficiencies the Georgian team gained by automating their commission payments will help to facilitate new opportunities for both agent and student engagement.