Meet Laura Faurot, Product Manager, at Nelnet Campus Commerce

I was a business analyst and tester for Nelnet Refunds and Nelnet Storefront products for four years. For the last three years, I was the product owner for our Storefront, Refunds, and Admin Dashboard products. Through both of these roles, I participated in different ways in the launch and maturation of the various products, worked with clients to help them successfully use these products, and worked with teams across Nelnet to help them best serve our clients’ needs with these products.

I really identify with Nelnet’s mission of making educational dreams possible. It is so inspiring to see all the different kinds of institutions Nelnet Campus Commerce serves and the different and innovative ways they provide their students with life-changing education. I love being able to be a small part in making it easier for schools to do some of the critical tasks they need to do.

One of the things I love about my job is that there are a variety of things I get to do and so many different people I get to meet. On any given day, I might be meeting with clients or prospective clients about how our products can best meet their needs, meeting with internal teams to make sure they can best support their clients, road mapping and collecting data to drive decisions, and planning out the future of the products I support.

My education and early career background is on the tech side. In college, I minored in Computer Science. Early on, I found I loved translating between technical and business, whether putting business needs in terms the development teams understand or relaying technological information in ways that make sense to other areas of Nelnet and our customers. I think this will help me balance the various viewpoints to make the best decisions possible in this role.

I think the best process is an iterative one. I like to meet with clients and dive in to understand their needs and what they are trying to accomplish. I ask a lot of questions and always want to be sure that at the end of a meeting I can confidently restate back to the client what they are trying to accomplish and the pain points they have. I then take that information back and work internally with various Nelnet resources to propose a solution. After that, I think the key part is circling back with clients, getting their feedback on the proposed solution, and iterating until there is consensus on the best path forward.

I’m really excited about Checkout. We have several certified third parties and more in the pipeline and we are continually seeking more third parties to certify. I get excited to see more and more third parties that can take payments through Nelnet’s Checkout product. With Storefront, I’m excited about all the new clients and stores we’re onboarding. The Nelnet implementation team has been working on training videos and other content to help our clients get the most out of Storefront and expand their usage of the product.

Pendo is a powerful tool within our products which allows us to create customizable and targeted in-app content. We use it at Nelnet within our applications to communicate to our clients, highlight or train on new features, or answer FAQs. In addition, we use it to provide clients who need it with targeted messaging to their students or consumers.

If there are specific instructions you need to provide to your students, you can absolutely ask your account manager if that could be in Pendo. Some examples: holiday closure pop-ups informing students or customers that service may be delayed, specific service instructions that a school has, tool tips to answer an FAQ that they are seeing a lot of, and so much more. In addition, we are working hard internally to utilize Pendo in our products so you can get answers to more of your questions instantaneously in the product.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Basically, if you want something you have to plot the steps to get what you want.

I’ve been a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) volunteer for over a year now, and I love getting to advocate for the best interests of children in the child welfare system and push to ensure they don’t fall through the cracks. In addition, I love following and blogging about royals from around the world. I’ve learned so much about different causes and different countries because of that. Finally, most nights you can find me watching an NHL hockey game.