Six Applications, One Operating Model: Inside a Large Public 4-Year University
What began as a fix for a paper-based gas cylinder process has become the operational backbone for surplus sales, asset management, self-storage, and sustainability programs across campus.
- Industry
- Education
- Partnership
- 10 years
- Applications
- 6 live applications
- $8.8MTransacted through surplus sales
- 32,801Surplus lots processed since 2020
Paper forms, lost cylinders and revenue that leaked out of the process
The university ran on paper. The campus store tracked gas cylinder orders and deliveries with paper forms. A simple process, but manual, error-prone, and nearly impossible to audit. When a cylinder went missing, there was often no clear record of who had it last, so the store absorbed the $250 replacement charge itself. Checking inventory levels meant walking the floor. Reordering meant guessing.
The same pattern repeated elsewhere on campus. Surplus Sales handled intake on paper and tracked inventory in a separate system from the campus store, which made it difficult to confirm an item’s status or move it efficiently from receipt to resale. Departments that needed the same information were working from different records.
With dozens of workers, hundreds of faculty members, multiple suppliers, and thousands of order forms, the cost showed up as hundreds of hours a month and revenue that quietly leaked out of the process.
Solve one problem, then bring the next department in
The university started with the gas cylinder problem and solved it first.
Digitize the gas cylinder process
TrackVia digitized the paper process and automated the handoffs between steps. Orders arrived and workers fulfilled them against digital pick lists. The platform generated the transportation tags required by law for moving compressed gas. On delivery, customers signed electronically, capturing the exact time and location of every drop. Reordering and inventory verification ran automatically instead of on someone’s memory.
“It’s removed a lot of steps. We leverage TrackVia on mobile, so it closes the loop no matter where our team is on campus, which we’ve appreciated.”
Extend the same approach across five more applications
It worked, and other departments noticed. Over the next six years, the university extended the same approach, configuring the platform around the existing process rather than rebuilding the process around software, across five more applications:
- The campus store and Surplus Sales as a single integrated workflow
- Gas cylinder inventory for research operations
- Self-storage management
- Water-bottle refill program, supporting 600+ active accounts
- Campus logistics and service requests
“TrackVia is a long-time partner of ours. The workflows the team builds out truly connect all the pieces and let us do more with less. That’s been instrumental.”
Connect surplus sales from receipt to auction
The Surplus Sales workflow is the clearest example of what integration buys. Intake, inventory, validation, and listing to Rainworx and GovDeals now run in one process. An item is received, catalogued, priced, approved, and posted to a public auction platform without leaving TrackVia, and without anyone rekeying it into a second system.
Reuse, resell, auction or recycle
That workflow feeds a genuine circular economy on campus. Usable property is reused by other departments, resold to the campus community, sent to public auction to reach buyers beyond the university, or recycled through established channels for metals, electronics, monitors, and refrigeration equipment.
We didn’t set out to build six applications on one platform. We solved one problem, it worked, and then found another workflow to improve in the next department. Ten years later that’s still how it grows.
A program that runs at scale, year after year
- 32,801Surplus lots processed since 2020 through a connected digital workflow
- $8.8MValue transacted through surplus sales
- 5.9MRecords tracked across all applications
- $1.7BSupported in research operations
Surplus Sales runs at sustained scale
The university has sold 32,801 lots through TrackVia since 2020, averaging just over 5,000 lots a year, every year from 2021 through 2025. That consistency matters more than any single year’s total: it’s a program operating at scale, not a spike. Those sales have transacted more than $8.8 million for the university.
Manual data entry is gone
Asset and inventory levels are centralized and current, which ended the one-off emergency orders that used to follow every stockout.
Losses dropped
Chain of custody is documented end to end, so missing items are traceable and the store is no longer absorbing charges it didn’t cause.
Delivery is faster and more accurate
That is what customer satisfaction actually comes down to for the departments and researchers on the other end.
Delivery velocity holds up under pressure
In 2026, the campus store and Surplus Sales shipped 42 tasks in 3.5 months, 100% on time, completed ahead of a key team member’s planned leave.
What other institutions can take from it
Why it scaled
The partnership didn’t start with a campus-wide mandate. It started with one department, one manual process, and a platform flexible enough to fit the way that department already worked.
That’s the part other institutions tend to underestimate. Configurability isn’t a feature checkbox, it’s what determines whether the second department adopts the system, and the third. The university’s six applications exist because each one could be shaped around an existing workflow instead of requiring the workflow to be rebuilt around the software.
What’s next
The university continues to identify new processes to bring onto the platform. With integrations to 6,000+ systems and a configuration model that adapts to institutional requirements rather than overriding them, the same approach extends to facilities operations, compliance, inspections, and any other process still running on spreadsheets and paper.
After vetting out several other solutions, TrackVia quickly seemed like a perfect solution for us… Our needs change almost weekly as regulations and the industry evolve, and we needed the flexibility to constantly tweak our platform in real time.
Projects that used to sit delayed for weeks now finish in days or even hours.
With Excel, we couldn’t see what employees were doing. With TrackVia it’s easy to track work and view what exactly has been completed. This resulted in an 80% time savings.
I wound up being able to do the same amount of work with only eight people versus 13 and that became the driving factor for them to accept TrackVia.
We are very pleased with the ease of use of the mobile application. We are thrilled to have instant visibility of the sterilization process and to be able to see immediately where issues are occurring. This enables us to focus on our number one priority, which is our patients and their loved ones.
TrackVia has truly changed the game on software development and deployment. We created and rolled out a mobile workflow app with limited resources in a very short period of time.
Their solution provided the flexibility we needed to meet unique project requirements while affording visibility and control.
TrackVia has improved the accuracy of our data. In the past it was a chore for our coordinators to document issues in real time. Now, they can just open the mobile app or website, check a few boxes and they are done.
The first application I built—it was simple—I think it took 10 minutes.
Become a success story
Increased productivity
Do more work with the same people.
Reduced cost
Less manual work, rework, duplicate entry, and administrative overhead.
Reduced risk
Better compliance, evidence, accountability, and auditability.
Improved performance
Faster cycle times, fewer delays, earlier intervention, and higher service levels.
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