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Document Management
Image and Integrate
11/1/2007
Belmont has made extensive use of its system across the Financial Aid, Admissions, and Registrar offices, and more. In Student Affairs, for example, imaged documents are accessed to review disabled students' requests for special accommodations. (Housing applications are scanned in when students register, and then passed on to housing.) The result: greater efficiency in, and integration of, the enrollment and housing processes. And while applications to Belmont have doubled over the past five years, the school hasn't yet needed to increase its staff. Other benefits: a) space that had been used to store documents was freed up, b) student services were able to be located closer to students, and c) staff could be located where office space was available, without the need to be near physical files.
"Imaging has allowed us to take the attention off the process and put it on the individual applicant," says Baugher.
At the University of Minnesota, a paperless student financial aid system is saving the institution 700,000 pieces of paper each year and approximately $250,000 in related costs. Prior to the rollout, the Office of Student Finance employed 25 part-time students; afterward, only two part-timers and one full-time student were required.
Whenever, Wherever Access
At the University of Michigan Medical School, Mary Bernier, programmer/analyst supervisor for information services, wanted reviewers to have access to students' applications even if they were off campus, something that was difficult to manage with paper documents. It wasn't always easy to locate people, particularly when they were continually moving from one class, seminar, or conference to another. Now, Bernier uses an electronic system, Xythos Digital Locker, to help administrators, faculty, and students share and manage files. Virtually anything relating to a particular student is in that student's electronic file: records, applications, evaluations, and letters of recommendation. "It's really nice having all of this information right at your fingertips," Bernier says. The school soon plans to give students access to their own files.
Jim Till, chief marketing officer for Xythos, reinforces the importance of "intelligent imaging," or what happens to documents after they're scanned. Who has access to them? How can they be modified? How can they be shared? "There needs to be a common language and methodology," he maintains.
An imaging challenge on quite a large scale was recently faced by administrators at The City University of New York. The largest urban public university in the US, CUNY comprises 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, an honors college, several graduate schools, and a university center, together serving almost half a million students. Understandably, the challenge for CUNY was to locate policy documents quickly and accurately. Using ISYS:web from
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