Tips for Giving a Presentation about Your Department
Tips for Giving a Presentation about Your Department
Having key facts and data about your campus card department can help you play a powerful role in its development and success. We hear from campus card departments who were able to add personnel or upgrade their physical space because they knew their key facts and data. Here are some suggestions to begin building a compelling presentation. It will take time to collect the data for some of these slides.
Building a powerful presentation starts with asking a series of foundational questions. The cornerstone question should be who is your audience? Is it another department on campus, your senior administration or a NACCU audience?
Title Slide
Create a title slide with your university / college branding. There’s likely a template that your strategic marketing team has created. Add a photo of your campus card.
Campus Facts
If you’re presenting to a NACCU or off-campus audience, provide information about your campus. Let it shine! Include facts like where you’re located, undergraduate and graduate student populations, number of on campus students, and faculty and staff, along with some fun facts like famous alumni or what your campus may be known for.
Organization Chart
Where does your department reside within the university? If you’re presenting on campus, it may be helpful to include names. Search for org chart-making apps if you need one or try CoPilot or another AI tool.
Financial Information
Think about using percentages for your NACCU audience and actual values for your senior administration. Pie charts work well for a yearly snapshot while a clustered column chart shows year-to-year comparisons.
Create one chart for funding sources (commissions, maintenance, monthly reader fees, university funding, student fees, equipment recovery costs).
Create another chart for expenses – card stock, reader repair/replacement, licenses and maintenance fees, professional development, travel, salaries, rent and marketing. How are they combined in your budget? It will be easiest to use those broad categories.
Systems Map
What does a bird’s eye view of the card system look like? Where does the data come from and go to? How does the money move around? Include any server on premise or in the cloud that processes information for the campus card system.
Campus Credential Facts
Again, Excel or AI charts are a terrific way to tell your story. If you’ve attended a NACCU Data Summit you know what to do!
How many credentials were issued or provisioned in the past year? What percentage of those were for students? Faculty / Staff? Affiliates? Hospital? How many active cardholders are there? How many transactions were processed? If you manage a flex accounts, how many deposits were made? Average deposit amount? How much was spent? At what merchants? What are the peak spending times? Show the same data for meal plans, access control, transportation, ticket sales, vending, printing, campus rec - everywhere the campus card is used.
What card technology is deployed? (mobile, digital, mag stripe, chip, barcode)
Include a photo of the front and back of the campus card / credential.
Social media stats – if you have a robust marketing strategy, add another slide.
Provider Partnerships
While you’re speaking the same language to your NACCU peers who are keenly interested, it also helps to inform senior administration of all your partnerships.
Who do you have contracts with and what products do you utilize? Check your NACCU Campus Profile for vendors you use for your transaction system, pay-for-print, access control readers, hardware and software; card printers and consumables including card stock and ribbons; lockers, point-of-sale, delivery robots, etc.
List the TIAs (Transaction interface agents) and MOUs (memorandum of understanding).
Responsibilities
Who works in the campus card department and what do they do? Use short descriptors like budgeting, sys admin, contracts, marketing, card production, server maintenance, hardware installation, training, supervising students and program management. Is it helpful to include a dotted line to IT or your campus electrician? While they may not report to the campus card department, they are integral to its operation.
Future Plans
What’s in your strategic plan for Year 1, Year 3 and Year 5? What projects are your working on? What should be on the radar screen for your administration?
Do you need data to support your plans? Use the NACCU Campus Profile and NACCU Benchmarking Study to show what peer institutions have implemented.
Trends and Insights
Keep your slides updated annually to quickly share key facts and data. Over time, you'll build a powerful visual story that highlights the progress and trends of your campus card department.