Nelnet, Inc.

The Challenge 

During the start of the pandemic, 6,500 Nelnet employees went from working in an office to fully remote work within the span of one week. This prompted the company to start looking for a solution that would help them not only bring employees back to the office safely, but also more effectively manage their space and occupancy. 

According to Paul Carmack, Director of Corporate Facilities at Nelnet, space and occupancy management was a time consuming, manual process prior to using Maptician. 

“It was just spreadsheets. Trying to keep track of folks moving…it was virtually impossible to have anything 100% accurate,” Carmack said. 

The Solution 

With Maptician, the company now accurately tracks which employees are in the office at any given time. Employees can quickly and easily make a seat reservation from their desktop or mobile app. Additionally, Maptician has integrated with Nelnet’s access control provider so that when an employee badges into the office, this data displays in Maptician. 

“With Maptician, it’s real time. The value of that for facilities…you can’t put a dollar amount on it,” Carmack said. “Having access to that information at your fingertips is huge.” 

This data has also been useful in helping Nelnet determine how much total space they need. With the use of Maptician’s scenario planning tools, the company is exploring different seating strategies to determine which ones help them best consolidate space. 

Maptician has also been a useful tool in planning out their employees’ return to office. According to Colleen Huber, Business Continuity Manager, Nelnet’s leadership team is effectively tracking who wants to return to office and where they will sit with Maptician. 

“We’re using it for planning. We won’t have a scheduled return date for all (employees), but at least we know when they come back, this is where they will be sitting,” Huber said. “We love our Maptician daily return to office reports,” she added. 

A Trusted Partnership 

While Nelnet agrees that Maptician’s software has been invaluable in helping them plan and accomplish their long-term space and occupancy goals, they feel that the partnership they’ve formed with the Maptician team was integral in helping them meet these goals as well. 

“It was a partnership right from the beginning,” Mark Kistler, IT Manager, said. “We’ve really felt like we’re doing this together.” Huber agrees. “It was teamwork and a partnership,” she added, “It went so smoothly.” 

Nelnet was founded over 40 years ago on one simple idea: To serve customers and make their educational dreams possible. Since then, we have grown to become the nation’s largest and most well-respected student loan servicer, managing nearly $487 billion in student loans for 15.1 million borrowers. Today, Nelnet is synonymous with student loan servicing – but we do more than that. Lots more. 

Over the past four decades Nelnet has diversified, starting new businesses and acquiring existing brands in a variety of industries and markets throughout the United States and across the globe. Today, Nelnet is comprised of 20+ businesses, all dedicated to Nelnet’s mission to serve our customers, associates, and communities. For more information, please visit: https://nelnetinc.com/