ABOUT ICODE
iCode Academy is a virtual 24-week training and exam preparation course. Their courses are designed to prepare students to pass the national certification exam to become certified professional coders in the medical billing and coding industry. In 2013, Daryl Pickett and his wife and Vice President, Jasmine Williams-Pickett, founded iCode Academy fueled by the desire to create a family-oriented environment that promotes character building, creates career opportunities, and cultivates young, strong talent. Although the academy is built in a virtual environment, the goal is to create a seamless learning experience where students actively participate and are questioned by their instructors and peers.
THE CHALLENGE
While developing their academy, iCode used PayPal to generate invoices and collect pay-as-you-go obligations. PayPal was used to set reminders on invoices and payments that were past due, but the iCode team still had to act as a customer service and collections team. Students were missing their payments, and it was solely up to the iCode team to catch students up. Student outreach and collections were taking iCode team time away from higher value day-to-day activities, most importantly, teaching. Mr. Pickett started looking for a way to streamline the payment process without breaking the bank. As a scaling business, they wanted to move away from PayPal to find a solution geared to their and their students’ needs.
THE SOLUTION
After reviewing several payment processors, credit companies, and lenders, they decided that Mia Share was the best fit for their needs. They found that Mia Share not only took originations, customer service, and collections off their plate but also came with added perks like full-time partnership management support, customized dashboards, forecasting, and data analytics. Now being able to offer a menu of payment options, including Income Share Agreements, their students are able to receive their education and pay back their tuition once they were employed, giving students peace of mind while going through their training. Before Mia Share, students had to deal with the hassles of weekly tuition payments, on top of rent, car notes, children, food, etc. Mia Share enabled iCode to lift some of those burdens.
iCode students can now connect their payment method and make easy and secure payments with one click or even set up auto pay. Mia Share’s student portal not only simplifies the payment process but also creates student transparency. They can easily report their income, view historical and future payments, change payment methods, catch up on past payments made, contact support, and view all documentation and contracts. If there are any discrepancies, it’s no longer on iCode to take the call, it now falls on Mia Share’s support team to answer the call.
“It allows us not to have to hire financial professionals. Now we have a company that can handle that for us and they just send us reports and ask for our decisions on certain accounts, but we don't have to make the phone calls. We don't have to send the reminders.”
THE RESULTS
iCode Academy’s main goal was to scale. To reach more people and grow their academy, they would need to build the proper foundation to service the new students. Instead of having 30 new students jumbled up in the PayPal system, they now have the Mia Share software and team managing their menu of payment options, originations, collections, and servicing. Mia Share worked with the iCode team to design their perfect system, now handling billing, invoices, tracking, analytics, and servicing. With all of their information and analytics in one central location, the iCode team can easily track and review their progress. They know that their students are confident in the payment process and their payment information is secure. With that trust in the Mia Share software and service, the iCode team can now focus on their ultimate goal of school growth and educating students towards a better future.
“I would say the customer service to the team, the salespeople, and the IT department. Having a team that can understand what we’re doing here, it almost feels like they work at iCode. The customer service team, the salespeople, and even the IT department are part of the team. It was something that we needed and we love.”