Meet Our Hall of Fame: Ryan Scelza of Dartmouth College

by Ashley Poynter

Content Manager

Meet Our Hall of Fame: Ryan Scelza of Dartmouth College

In December 2023, we celebrated the inaugural Vendor Management Appreciation Day to honor the unsung heroes of vendor management. We also recognized some of our standout customers as part of the festivities by welcoming them into our newly minted Hall of Fame.

PaymentWorks inducted Ryan Scelza, Executive Director, Finance and Administration at Dartmouth College, into the Hall of Fame for how he spearheaded the effort for Dartmouth to implement Paymentworks as the key to the College’s shift to ACH for vendor payments.

We were interested in learning more about Ryan’s experience with PaymentWorks and his motivation in launching the PaymentWorks Higher Education User Group – a community that has connected procurement and finance folks from colleges and universities across the country. We had a great conversation with Ryan, learning more about the challenges that Dartmouth was looking to solve and getting the lowdown on how collaboration can help everyone.

Here’s what we learned!

Common Challenges in Higher Education Vendor Management

Community Building for Better Vendor Onboarding and Management

— Leaning into collaboration

— Structure, casual conversations about higher education vendor management

The Big Focus for 2024

The Ideal State of Higher Education Vendor Management

To End on a Personal Note

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Common Challenges in Higher Education Vendor Management

We asked Ryan about Dartmouth’s reasoning for seeking out a vendor onboarding and management platform, and his answer was threefold.

Firstly, he noted that higher education is especially prone to fraudulent activity, particularly with vendors, and they wanted to protect against that.

Secondly, the college was in the midst of a checkless initiative and was looking for a way to supercharge migration to electronic payments. The ability to incentivize the move off of paper-based payments by restructuring payment terms was essential.

More recently, Dartmouth has ramped up efforts in supplier diversity. The ability to identify diverse suppliers and conflicts of interest has been very helpful to that end.

In addition to those main goals, the college recognized the importance of consistency and security in how vendor data is collected. The ability to leverage continuous sanctions checks as part of a standardized vendor data collection process has also been huge in meeting their compliance requirements.

Finally, centralizing vendor onboarding and management has added stability, security, and peace of mind that nothing is falling through the cracks, thanks to the inherent checks and balances within the PaymentWorks platform. Hear Ryan talk about some of these “huge wins” in his own words:

Community Building for Better Vendor Onboarding and Management

Leaning into collaboration

Ryan is a standout example of someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty. He was inspired to create a collaborative environment for other higher education institutions to bounce ideas off of each other and troubleshoot vendor management challenges together.

Around February 2021, Ryan said the school had successfully tested ACH payments, sent invitations to onboard via PaymentWorks to vendors, and was generally feeling pretty good about their progress. . That said, change management always comes with a few bumps along the way.

Ryan, noting that higher education is an inherently collaborative environment, decided to reach out to some connections to see if other folks might have the same experiences. It started with a few people bouncing ideas off of each other. It was so helpful that Ryan gauged interest in formalizing the collaboration.

He received enough positive feedback to formalize the group, known today as the PaymentWorks Higher Education User Group, to discuss challenges, questions, and proposed enhancements to our product team. Fostering this shared awareness about what was happening in the higher education space allowed for learning from each school’s efforts to standardize best practices by utilizing the platform.

It started with just a couple of schools and snowballed from there. You can hear his experience in starting the group below:

Structure, casual conversations about higher education vendor management

The first official meeting was in April 2021, and the group still meets every four to five months. Ryan led the effort for the first year and watched as the group grew, starting with about a dozen schools and increasing by four or five more schools each meeting.

In fact, the group ballooned so much that Ryan suggested forming a leadership and planning committee. This five-person committee liaises regularly with the PaymentWorks product team, sharing updates and points of interest with the larger group at meetings.

It also brought questions from the group to the product team, creating a mutually beneficial touchpoint that helped PaymentWorks better understand common questions and challenges.

As of October 2023, the group has roughly 30 schools and 110 members.

Ryan points out that he never fathomed the group would get so big.

But it makes sense, considering it offered a structured yet casual way for institutions to converse. It was a comfortable space for people to share questions and concerns about higher education vendor management – and to learn from other people’s experiences. Listen to Ryan describe how it works below:

The group continues to share best practices that can benefit colleges and universities across different levels of vendor onboarding and management – and at different stages of implementation.

The ability for participants to get real-time feedback proved very beneficial. The group also makes a point of celebrating successes. It’s a healthy balance of addressing challenges while also acknowledging wins.

The group also offers a place where schools can present how they use different features and functionality, like PaymentWorks EarlyPay. Sessions always end with a Q&A session to promote open discussion and allow people the space to ask questions.

The Big Focus for 2024

Ryan noted that Dartmouth’s focus for 2024 is to get all vendors on board via PaymentWorks. They’ve set aggressive goals and are proving to continue to be a leader in higher education vendor management.

It’s a big task considering the number of vendors the school is working with. Ryan says they’re about halfway there, but there’s a lot of work still to be done. The overarching goal is to keep one foot on the gas and continue to onboard vendors as quickly as possible.

Dartmouth is also developing a robust supplier diversity program that Ryan helped pitch, lead, and develop. In addition to hiring for a new role in this area, they want to maximize how PaymentWorks can be used to this end. With the option to collect HUB and other diverse supplier credentials, the platform will be a helpful tool for quantifying success metrics related to managing the diverse supplier program and a huge win for Dartmouth.

The Ideal State of Higher Education Vendor Management

We also asked Ryan how he envisions the ideal state of vendor management. His answer was short, sweet, and to the point:

“Transparent and consistent. [We are] making sure that our vendors know what is expected of them and providing a clear, direct path forward so they know how to do everything they need to, and they can get it done with minimal touch points. And I think we’re moving in that direction if we’re not already there.”

We’re glad to hear it!

To End on a Personal Note

Ryan has been a major contributor and community builder, providing a forum for higher education vendor management discussions that allow institutions to troubleshoot and come together with common goals. It’s no surprise he was part of our inaugural class of inductees to the PaymentWorks Hall of Fame.

Besides bringing people together to get the most out of PaymentWorks, Ryan is an avid runner and hiker. He also enjoys spending time with his wife and two dogs, a pit bull and a Chihuahua.

Congratulations, Ryan! And thank you for being such amazing partners and friends!

Get Ready For Vendor Management Appreciation 2024

If you liked learning three things you didn’t know about vendor onboarding platforms, stick around. We’ll be covering much more than that on the journey to Vendor Management Appreciation Day (VMAD) 2024.

It’s time for everyone to unite in honor of one of the most critical, under-recognized roles across industries: vendor management.

VMAD is a brand-new holiday geared toward unifying vendor management professionals and celebrating innovation in the field.

We’ve released gifts each month to help you supercharge your vendor management efforts. We’re also planning some awesome events so everyone can connect and celebrate the important, strategic role of vendor management.

Learn more here, and grab some free vendor management goodies.