IncludED meeting follow up from Follett

Dr. Greg Morris, Senior Vice Provost, Academic Services, shared the following message with the DCFA Council to let us know that our feedback at the November 15, 2021 meeting with Follett helped them ensure Follett implemented the following changes to their ordering processes. See the message he shared from Stacy Zapko, Group Vice President at Follett. Please note, before sharing this we confirmed that “estimated enrollment” in the paragraph below refers to the course cap optimum, not to their own internal estimations.

“Good Afternoon Dr. Floyd and Dr. Morris - I wanted to thank you again for our IncludEd meeting and discussion.  As I committed to in the meeting, Ryan [Livengood] and I collaborated with our store team and corporate team to increase the “buffer amount” (ordered quantity) of physical course materials to be 10% above estimated enrollment and handled it systematically rather than store by store. This should greatly improve the slowdown we experienced in some courses where there may have been significant add and drop movement and will help ensure students recently added have their materials more timely rather than waiting on students who dropped to return them.

Ryan and I also had a follow up discussion with our Publisher Relations Team to discuss the issue with some publishers offering multiple listings/ISBNs/options for the same items. Ryan has drafted an email that will go out to the largest publishers to seek their assistance in removing possible duplicate listings or streamlining the process to reduce confusion. He will keep us posted.”

 

The message above was originally sent in December, so should have been applied to the purchases for this spring semester. 

 

As of January 28, we’ve been told that chairs and deans were given access to the back-order lists and should be communicating with any faculty whose adoptions have been affected by any delays. If your students are reporting delays in getting their physical materials, please check with your chair to confirm Follett is reporting the same delay.

 

If your course has physical materials and you are experiencing unreasonable delays this spring, please reach out to the IncludED faculty champion for your School for follow-up assistance this semester, and also send the information to your DCFA campus president so we can compile a list of the continuing issues. Make sure to include the full course ID, section number, and if possible, forward any messages from the bookstore or from students regarding the problem or delay in their receiving materials so we can continue to follow up with Follett on your behalf.