Much attention has been paid to the arrival of eBooks and other paperless ways of learning in schools. Yet another paperless revolution is also occurring quietly at colleges and universities, this one in the administration. It’s improving the efficiency of education with a transition to paperless business practices using document management software.
Schools and universities, much like any other company or government agency, generate a lot of paper in the office. They have many historically paper-based business procedures including everything from AP approval processes, to workforce records, to contracts and policy administration. The challenge is that paper, with its demands on storage, retrieval, searching, and sharing, makes every process less efficient.
Schools and universities also have their own specialized business processes that also built around paper. In schools, for example, the admissions process is one where large numbers of documents are received. Everything must be reviewed by multiple decision-makers, and records need to be maintained for set periods of time and available for routine retrieval.
Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington is an example of an innovate school that is moving forward with a paperless approach covering not one, but multiple business procedures. Tackling their biggest challenge first in the admissions process, they now have a platform for any number of improvements behind the scenes.
You can read further about the Whitman experience in a case study on the subject: https://www.documentlocator.com/downloads/docs/casestudies/cs-whitman.pdf
