Caps and Gowns Services
CLIENT INFORMATION
Caps and Gowns Services at Iowa State University (ISU) allows individuals to
rent or purchase graduation attire for commencement ceremonies with a convenient, online order form.
Items available include PhD Gown, PhD Hood, Master Gown, Master Hood, Bachelor Gown, Caps and Tassels.
SITUATION
For an educational institution as large as ISU with 2,000 to 3,000 students
graduating each fall and spring semester, managing the ordering as well as rental of graduation gowns,
caps and tassels for a wide variety of programs can be a very daunting task. At the same time, the
possibility of errors increases when all orders are placed using paper forms and aggregated by hand.
SOLUTION
Global Reach developed an e-commerce application for the Caps and Gowns Services
at Iowa State University that enables individuals to place their orders online by selecting the
specifications of the items they want to rent or purchase and entering their credit card and address
information. Once an order has been placed, a designated site administrator will process and fulfill
the order. Because of the exchange of sensitive, private/credit card information between the users
and the site’s database, the ordering placement and order processing areas of the site have been
encrypted using SSL.
BENEFITS
Since the launch of the Caps and Gowns Services web site, an increasing number of
people—close to 80% of the each graduating class--place their order online. As a result, order
processing and fulfillment time as well as errors have been cut substantially, translating into lower
costs for the Caps and Gowns Services at Iowa State University.
