Improving the educational experience and institutional efficiencies are always a top priority for administrators and faculty members alike. Even with the best intentions, the time to actually review, assess, and revise your workflows is limited during the school year. With the summer holidays now in full effect, this is the time to optimize your processes and digital technology footprint for the coming academic year.
There are many areas within the education system’s daily operations where opportunities to optimize present themselves. Technologies exist that can drive down the costs of administration and improve student engagement, also reducing overheads and costs associated with support.
With managed IT services, integrated printing solutions, automated workflow applications, and disaster recovery systems, any institution can benefit by embracing digital transformation. While budgets are strained, infrastructure aging, and experts few and far between, finding a solution partner is the best way to optimize your educational workflows.
Student support services and regulatory compliance are overheads that usually drain budgets. Luckily, with the right technology, this doesn’t have to be the case. Modern productivity solutions can improve efficiencies, automate compliance tasks, and reduce the need for physical processing of documents.
For a student facing departments like registration, record keeping, and document access, admission or financial aid requests, using automated workflows will quickly improve departmental productivity. During the admission season, providing a centralized portal for students to access the support services and initiate administrative processes can free up faculty to plan and focus on the year ahead instead. It also greatly reduces the risk of human error for which corrective actions are costly and time-consuming.
MPS solutions make centralized management of the print fleet possible, gives you better access control and reduces equipment downtime. With built-in security services, you also improve compliance tasks while maintaining detailed audited trails. As part of an integrated solution, that includes document management and workflow automation, the need for physical copies also decreases further saving on costs.
When critical IT infrastructure goes down, the entire facility can come to a standstill. If any data-loss occurred, redoing the same tasks adds pressure to already strained faculty members. With business continuity solutions, you’ll have the peace of mind that backups happen regularly, cybersecurity is up to date and effective, and failovers (if necessary) performed automatically.
No digital transformation process is complete without a sophisticated document management solution. Educational institutions are by nature document-centric. The time it takes to manually process documents impedes productivity and increases the risk associated with information security. Once the workflows are digitized and automated, electronic document management becomes a viable option. An integrated EDMS makes record keeping and archiving (including quick retrieval) easier, ensures security, and centralizes process controls.
With so many solutions and opportunities to optimize the overall educational processes, knowing where to start may seem daunting. The best option (and one that ensures you don’t overload faculty with additional administrative tasks) is choosing a solution partner to assist. With a complete suite of technologies on offer and expert implementation consultants, it is possible to overhaul your processes in time for the new school year.
Determining what is required and the quickest way to achieve better efficiencies will start with a comprehensive assessment of the current processes and existing infrastructure. When familiar with the current environment, the gaps and opportunities for optimization will be apparent. A robust infrastructure landscape and digital transformation roadmap will ensure everyone stays on the same page and the project can proceed at speed. Digital workflows can be tested and reconfigured accordingly before you expose students and faculty to them in the fall.
Once you’ve defined and implemented the optimal solution, you can start training staff and developing guidelines for the new processes and workflows. Continual support during the entire project and expert advice after the implementation will ensure you don’t overlook anything and the new academic year can start smoothly.
Under the E-Rate (Universal Service Fund) rebate system, schools can earn discounts of up to 90% for technology upgrade projects. Meaning adopting a culture of digital transformation in order to improve your efficiencies is still affordable. There is no good reason not to embrace technology to streamline every facet of the educational workflow.
Document Solutions Inc. (DSi) provides digital transformation services including specialized solutions, IT infrastructure, and office productivity tools. As a complete solution partner and an E-Rate compliant service provider, DSi can assist educational institutions to upgrade their technology and processes without busting their budget. With over twenty years of experience in servicing the community, DSi focuses on developing innovative solutions that improve their customer’s efficiencies.
If you need expert advice on revamping your educational operations and optimize the academic processes, contact DSi today to get started. There is no better time than the summer to plan and implement your workflow upgrades.