Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

The Secret to Improving College Enrollment: Managing Transfer Students

// May 17th, 2011 // No Comments » // Higher Education // Tom von Gunden

In the days of my youth, May marked the recurrence of a spring rite familiar to those who grew up in the “Rock Era.” Someone would crank up the volume, and out would come the blaring vocals of that maestro of the macabre, Alice Cooper: “School’s out for summer! School’s out forever!”

Forever?! For students at your institution, hopefully not. You want your newly admitted students to actually enroll. You need your current undergraduates to return. And, you need all of them to keep on returning – steadily returning, toward an on-time graduation. If significant numbers of new or existing students choose not to do that, your ability to meet enrollment, retention and graduation goals can quickly erode. When that happens, fiscal stability and institutional viability may soon be in jeopardy.

Of course you can’t possibly identify or control all of the myriad factors that may impact a student’s decision about whether or not to enroll or return. But, there is one aspect of internal operations that may be a highly influential factor in the minds of many in an important segment of your student population: transfers.

If I’m a student considering transferring from another institution to yours, I may very well be evaluating other schools in the area. And, I am likely to have my college transcript – possibly multiple transcripts – sent to several institutions. If your institution makes me wait weeks or months before letting me know which credits it will accept, while your competitor lets me know in less than a week, maybe within a day, guess where I’m likely to enroll?

Or, let’s say I’m a current student, signing up for and taking classes while my transfer transcript sits near the bottom of the to-be-evaluated pile. Months after I complete the required Chemistry 135 course at my new school, the Registrar’s Office informs me that I have just been awarded credit for an equivalent course from my previous institution. Great! Thanks for the degree-delaying redundancy – not to mention the squandering of financial aid dollars I used on this inadvertently repeated course.

Why do these enrollment-threatening, retention-undermining delays continue to occur at many institutions? Typically, it’s because of manual, paper-intensive processes. Staffers are forced to manually enter semester, course and grade data from paper transcripts into the student information system and/or degree audit system. And, even when transcript data and documents are coming in electronically, there can be slowdowns downstream, as a lack of automation prevents course exceptions (i.e., those not already identified for articulation) from being efficiently routed for faculty review and approval.

So, look to bring on ECM (enterprise content management)-driven capabilities for greatly reducing, if not eliminating, the manual grind. If you don’t, your institution will remain vulnerable to the very real fiscal consequences of missed goals for enrollment, retention and graduation. To further encourage you to take that hard, honest appraisal of your current approaches to handling transfer transcripts and credits, I offer a final cautionary scenario – an all too common one:

This time I’m that adult learner who has moved around a lot, experienced career changes and, along the way, attended many different institutions. Even though I’m still juggling a couple of part-time jobs, I’m intending to buckle down and finally complete my degree. Now a term or two into my program at your school, I’m struggling to figure out just how far I am from completing the degree requirements. I keep waiting for you to tell me which courses will be counted from the five transcripts I’ve submitted.

I keep waiting. And waiting. Eventually, no one notices as I drift off and look for a new full-time job. In an ironic yet apt echoing of Alice Cooper’s impulse to abandon the life of the mind, my decision in this case is a “no brainer.”

Escape the Admissions Processing Wasteland: 2 ECM-Driven Steps to Fast, Quality Decisions (Part II)

// April 21st, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Higher Education // Tom von Gunden

In part one of my cautionary take on the Admissions Office “wasteland,” I identified two key steps in implementing and leveraging enterprise content management (ECM) to bring speed and quality to application processing and review:

1. Purge Paper
2. Monitor Metrics

To reiterate, both recommended actions effectively target “waste” in terms of costs (budget) and resources (people). But, the “purge paper” step takes speed and efficiency only so far.

To fully address the even more critical threat – wasted opportunity – you can’t stop there. Yes, your operation is now nearly or completely paperless. And, you may have revved up the application processing engine with some automation – automatically tracking and matching incoming documents, transferring application files from operations, triggering reviews, and so on.

But, once the review process gets underway, starts heading toward decisions and, ultimately, determines a matriculated class, what will ensure that the entire cycle moves quickly, toward a quality result (i.e., your ideal incoming class secured as early as possible, ahead of the competition)?  In a word, metrics.

Action #2: Monitor Metrics

Regardless of your practices regarding admissions decisions (e.g., open versus selective, rolling versus calendar-based), you’re concerned about one key processing metric: throughput. Your fundamental goal in securing an incoming student or entire class of incoming students is (to badly misquote a Stevie Wonder lyric) to sing out confidently, “Here they are, baby! Signed, sealed, delivered, they’re ours!” (Yes, I know that was terrible. All the more reason for you to stop humming or singing along NOW!)

So, what kinds of metrics do you need to ensure that you’re on pace and “in tune”? (Couldn’t resist.) For measuring throughput, you need quick, comprehensive and, most importantly, real-time views of bottlenecks and potential bottlenecks.

You’ll want to pull back the curtain on these indicators of potential process derailers: 

1. Incomplete applications
2. Applications by processing/review stage
3. Applications by processor/reviewer (including distinctions between seasoned and new staff)
4. Elapsed time per stage or inbox (based on parameters and timers you’ve set)
5. Applications by decision status

Preferably, ECM-enabled views into these areas should be available from dashboard-oriented reporting interfaces. You’ll want the results to appear on the surface clearly and instantaneously. And, the more visually appealing the reports are (e.g., presented as bar or pie charts), the more likely they’ll be quickly digested and acted upon.

And, while you’re at it, dive into the demographics. If you’re looking to target a particular region or student population (perhaps in alignment with recruitment efforts), you’ll gain actionable insight. Leverage ECM-enabled views to track and, if so desired, adjust and shape the applicant pool – again in real-time.

Granted, much of this demographic data is stored in a SIS and/or in a front-of-process recruitment application and can be reported on there. But, that’s often a before-the-fact (i.e., at the time of initial application) and after-the-fact (i.e., after the decision has been made) view. What’s often missing and what ECM-based reporting provides is the “in-the-midst-of” view.

This perspective is critical to monitoring and modifying the potential outcome of the process – the ultimate makeup of those new students delivered to your door…signed, sealed, etc.

You know the tune.

Escape the Admissions Processing Wasteland: 2 ECM-Driven Steps to Fast, Quality Decisions (Part I)

// April 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Higher Education // Tom von Gunden

“April is the cruelest month.” Or, at least it is to T.S. Eliot, who said so in the oft-quoted opening line of his very famous poem The Waste Land.

But, based on the ebb-and-flow of application volumes and processing spikes, folks in Admissions offices would likely disagree. In highly selective institutions, April means coming up for air and relaxing a bit after the intensity of the review/decision season. And, in any type of higher education institution, it’s the time of the midterm lull before the next seasonal or semester-approaching upswing in applications.

As Eliot points out in the poem, April may seem to offer hope for better days to come, but it also reminds us that there are still improvements to be made. That’s a fitting perspective to adopt in most Admissions offices. While April might bring some relief in terms of workload, it’s also an opportunity to improve admissions operations for the more difficult months.  

I’ll even say that if you let things stay the same, your Admissions office will continue to resemble a “wasteland.”

Where exactly is the waste in the Land of Admissions? Generally, you can look at these three areas: costs, resources and opportunities.

To help you get rid of waste, I’m suggesting two actions you can take:

1. Purge Paper

2. Monitor Metrics

Action #1: Purge Paper

Hopefully, this suggestion will be so obvious that you’ll wonder why I’m bothering to say it. Well, let’s just be honest here: I say it because, while most/all admissions offices know they need to clear out the filing cabinets and clear off the desks and floors, many haven’t. And, even if they have, often the changes stop at the level of simply bringing on an electronic filing cabinet for storing and retrieving document images.

If your institution has taken at least this step, I applaud your efforts. You are no doubt enjoying some of the cost savings and improvements to student service that come with having admissions files much closer at hand, retrievable from an electronic interface.

But, that’s not true operational transformation. True transformation is when you start noticing – and eventually stop noticing (because they’ll be so commonplace) – scenarios such as these:

• Answering student inquiries on a first-call becomes so typical that staff no longer jot down call-back numbers. 
• Review work just “shows up” in reviewers’ and committee members’ electronic inboxes, appropriately assigned and ordered according to your parameters for assignment, action, escalation, collaboration and so on. Even remote reviewers simply log in to their electronic inboxes to access the files specifically assigned to them.  
• Efficiency goes well beyond merely (though importantly) shaving a few hours or a day or two from front-end application processing and file completion. Efficiency now means that the entire cycle, from front-end processing through review and decision, occurs several weeks – perhaps a month or more – earlier than before.

Your institution won’t experience these things without ECM capabilities beyond capture and store. Sure, becoming less paper-reliant, a necessary first step, will help in cutting waste from processing costs and resources. But, in an increasingly competitive landscape for attracting students and securing their enrollment, you’ll need to tackle that third, even more critical area of waste: wasted opportunity.

To do that, you’ll need more than greater speed and efficiency: you’ll need broader and deeper visibility into processes and into your prospective student population. We’ll talk about how in Part Two, focusing on recommended action #2: Monitor Metrics.

Avoid Student Information System Madness: 4 Chores ECM Can Eliminate

// March 25th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Higher Education // Tom von Gunden

Contrary to popular belief, the real madness of March, as it relates to higher education, is not NCAA basketball. Yes, many of you are no doubt suffering the frustration of watching your carefully conceived brackets crumble in the face of bad calls and buzzer beaters. But, let’s face it: you never really expected any ROI from that investment, did you?

No, the real March madness – heck, the year-long madness, more likely – is going on far from the court. It’s happening on the desks and screens of the users of your core business app, your student information system, familiarly referred to as SIS. That’s where the madness of inefficiency may well be undermining staff performance, office morale, student service and general institutional effectiveness. The likely culprit? That’s easy. It’s the disconnect between the structured data stored in SIS and the unstructured data and documents that currently live outside of SIS. These items are critically related to the activities and transactions being driven through SIS.

Coincidentally, while the basketball season is winding down, the activities of the user groups for the three commonly used student information systems are ramping up: Datatel, Banner and PeopleSoft. In fact, I’m writing this commentary in between stops on the road.

Next up for me is Alliance in Denver for the annual meeting of HEUG, the PeopleSoft Higher Education Users Group. (By the way, I’m not forgetting those of you whose institutions run SIS applications from other vendors or use a homegrown legacy system. My comments below have your environments in mind, not just those riding on one of the Big 3.)

So, how do you know if your SIS users are operating in a state we might characterize as “madness”? Well, there are some tell-tale signs. All can be addressed with the implementation of SIS-integrated ECM (enterprise content management) capabilities.

4 Chores ECM Can Eliminate:

1. Fat-Finger Data Entry
   Make no mistake: despite whatever I say about its limitations, your SIS is a powerful, fundamental system of record. For that reason, you’ve got to get all necessary data into that system as accurately and efficiently as possible. So, when it comes to feeding SIS with data coming from external sources, particularly from documents, work to reduce/avoid manual keying of that information into the system. If staff members are spending inordinate amounts of time punching data into entry fields in your SIS interface, look to add or expand capabilities for automating these tasks.
2. Playing the “Go Fetch Game”
   Does it seem as though staff members are getting up from their desks and heading across the room or down the hall an awful lot? Coffee refresh? Donut run? Bathroom break? Well, that might explain one or two of those trips. But, the rest?  Nope, those are no doubt the result of the need to fetch paper documents from a filing cabinet, box or pile. You can stop this particular madness by making those documents electronically available for retrieval directly from SIS screens.
3. Playing the “Match Game”
   For those of you who enjoy tests of logic, you may miss this game, otherwise known as the “Which of these doesn’t belong with the others?” game. In this case, it’s not an onion sitting amidst three pieces of fruit or a bicycle grouped with three motorized vehicles. Most often, it’s an application-related document that (perhaps because no SIS record yet exists for that prospective student) cannot be identified and associated with any other information on hand in the Admissions Office. What happens to that document? It gets filed away in a drawer crammed with other “orphaned” documents, through which staffers have to search in an often futile attempt to match the stray with other incoming documents. Again, look to automate time-devouring tasks such as this.
4. Dual-System Toggle Mania
   Even at institutions that have implemented some kind of basic scan/retrieve document management system – an “electronic filing cabinet” if you will – the madness continues.
   Without an integrated ECM platform in place (the kind that can do way more than merely store and display documents), staff members are forced into the electronic version of getting up and walking across the room. Already logged into SIS, they have to log in to a separate system and toggle between the two. Is this better than what happens in a paper-reliant operation? Sure. But, is it optimally efficient? Absolutely not. Optimization comes when ECM is feeding the SIS interface with documents and other information – directly.

To eliminate these chores and others, my suggestion is clear: Arrange a handshake between your SIS and a tightly integrated ECM platform. Get them talking. Otherwise, your chances of avoiding madness – in March or at any other time of the year – are, at best, about as good as basing your NCAA tournament predictions on the implied toughness of the teams’ mascots. Good luck with that.

Document Management Helps Johns Hopkins University Admissions Weather Snowmageddon 2010

// February 1st, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Admissions, Enterprise content management, Higher Education // Tom Tennant

With a winter storm revving up to deliver a second blow this evening (the weather cognoscenti are calling it “mammoth,” “massive” and “colossal”), today and tomorrow feels a little like déjà vu for those of us in the Midwest and Northeast.

Almost exactly one year ago today, on Feb. 5, 2010, much of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states were buried under more than 20 inches of snow. The blizzard – designated “Snowmaggedon” by President Barack Obama – left thousands without power and shut down the government.

It stranded a number of Johns Hopkins University’s admissions staff at home. Bad news for the admissions staff, which was facing a looming admissions deadline and the largest applicant pool in the university’s history: nearly 2,000 more than its previous record.

For those of us not in the know, accepting college applicants earlier in the admissions cycle increases a university’s chances of seeing that student accept the offer. It also gives colleges and universities a competitive advantage by allowing them to admit the best-fit students faster than the competition.  

So, you see, a true dilemma. More so, if the university was still operating under its old procedure.

You know, admissions counselors hauling student files home, bulldozing through them like a city snowplow, dragging them back to the office, handing them off to John Hopkins operations team, who would then shovel through each to determine if the student was accepted, and then manually input that info into the computer before slotting the file into a snow bank of filing cabinets.

Too much metaphor? Maybe. But you get my drift.

Under the old process, chances were slim the staff could hit the deadline. They could get the files read – at least the ones they brought home – but they couldn’t get them into the hands of operations while roads remained unnavigable. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, admissions staff safely and securely logged into the university’s system from home and used document management tools to electronically decision files and have those decisions posted directly to the enterprise database. Instead, admissions staff recorded the most productive reading week ever.

As one Johns Hopkins admissions staff member says, “It made life easier for everyone.”

And that’s “snow” joke.

Graduation rate expectations and budget cuts: The state of ECM in higher education in 2011

// January 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Government, Higher Education // Ian Levine

Ten years ago, the U.S. was considered the most educated nation in the world. Today, it ranks 12^th among 36 developed nations. 

Realizing this, the Oval Office is pushing to improve this measure. Specifically, the goal it’s presenting is to increase the number of college degree-holding U.S. citizens from 40 percent to 60 percent in the next 10 years.

But, of course, here’s the catch – the keepers of the budgets – the states – are almost all cutting education funding, making a spending increase for universities to get more staffing very, very unlikely.

So how in the world are colleges and universities going to graduate an extra eight million people with two-and four-year degrees by 2020 without additional funding or resources? 

Since the down economy hit, the “do more with less” mantra has been quite loud – and the federal push will likely elevate it to a full-blown yell. If colleges and universities are going to even come close to meeting these goals, they’d better learn quickly to put this mantra into practice.

But it’s the question of how to put it into practice that trips them up. Luckily, University Business recently tackled a similar initiative. Throughout the year, they’ve been featuring higher education institutions which have taken steps in the right direction to maximum efficiency, which, most of the time, is led by an enterprise software deployment or two.

While I could go on about enterprise content management (ECM) strategies and workflow tools, I think this one is better told with a story. Here’s how Boston University (BU) had a challenge – one much like what universities will soon encounter in the coming years – and how they dealt with it:

BU’s problem was too many applicants. Most would consider this a good problem to have. But for the enrollment department, it was impossible to keep up.

Once they identified their information strategy and chose the software products to align with it (disclosure, one of these products is OnBase), the office had a brand new process for handling admissions. No longer restricted to a single physical file, multiple staff members could review applications simultaneously. 

This resulted in more thoughtful and well-informed decisions. But as most infomercials go, “but wait – there’s more”: By the time the university’s notification date had rolled around, staff had sent out the largest number of decisions in the school’s history.

By making more informed decisions and getting those decisions in the hands of prospective students faster, BU is at an advantage for admitting the best-fit students for their institution. And, of course, the better the fit, the more likely those students will graduate to become successful BU alumni. 

Sounds like the perfect antidote to an overload of student applications – and a federal mandate to up the graduation rate.

Here’s the entire article about how BU became a Model of Efficiency with ECM.

Document management: the unsung hero in higher education’s disaster recovery toolkit

// June 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Higher Education // Ian Levine

Most college and university IT departments get it. Document management – or enterprise content management (ECM), if you prefer – reduces paper and costs, increases efficiency and offers history and tracking features for compliance purposes.

But today, that seems to be about all they’re thinking about. I know the economy’s still playing catch up, so the focus is more on technology’s immediate cost savings. But wouldn’t an IT staffer or business analyst lobbying for this newfangled content management product want to communicate every possible way to use it? I think the obvious answer is “yes.” To help make their argument a little stronger, here’s one way that ECM should be used in higher education that’s too often forgotten: disaster recovery.

The fact that it’s overlooked is especially interesting, given that according to EDUCAUSE’s Top 10 IT Issues, business continuity and disaster recovery have consistently made the list for the past five years. It almost implies that while IT know these two issues are important, they don’t know which tools are best to solve them.

I don’t know about you, but a real example always helps me better understand how a particular technology can be used to fix a problem. On that note, here’s a short story from Syracuse University.

Syracuse had the smarts to include ECM up front as part of their “enterprise business continuity strategy.” In layman’s terms, that means ECM is a tool Syracuse uses to make sure it can still operate and offer services even if there’s a disaster. It’s a good thing, too, since this past December a noon fire chased students and staff from the University’s international services center.  

The incident happened the week before SU’s holiday break – right when 100 international students were getting ready to travel home. It wouldn’t have been a problem, except that the fire prevented anyone from entering the building. And, those students needed certain documents with an authorized signature to return to the U.S. – which, of course, were located precisely in that building.

As corny as it is, ECM really saved the day. Because SU had previously scanned all these documents into their ECM solution, they just had to setup a few computers with scanners in an alternate location to print the paperwork students needed to travel. So other than the fact that the building was in flames, the biggest interruption to the students’ plans was the change in building location.

Like I mentioned earlier, IT folks need to get their hands on any potential savings or benefit of a software product to get the blessing to buy it. Disaster recovery is just one. If you have any less-than-traditional way you’re using ECM (in higher education, or not), the comment feature is always on.

Document management software: Helping to “green” higher education

// May 27th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Higher Education // Ian Levine

Make no mistake. Higher education institutions are under pressure. There’s pressure to break down information silos and improve efficiency, productivity and service. Then, there’s pressure to make information more secure and immediately available to students, parents, faculty and staff. Of course, don’t forget the increasing pressure to become more environmentally friendly.

In this blog post, we’re going to focus on the latter pressure – environmental, and how technology can help to alleviate it. Specifically, we’re going to look at one technology software suite. Worth noting, though, is that it actually helps to do everything outlined in the first paragraph.

So, what is this Houdini-esque higher education software solution, you ask? It’s enterprise content management, or ECM. You may hear it referred to as document management or imaging and workflow, but for this post, we’ll go with ECM.

At Ohio University (OU), a school very much interested in their environmental impact, ECM quickly became a campus standard. The technology, which electronically connects several departments across the institution (admissions, financial aid, registrar, development and alumni affairs, etc.), eliminated the need for filing cabinets, paper pushing/chasing and storage facilities. It did this, in part, by digitizing and automating key business processes that previously relied on paper.

Edward Newman, recycling and refuse manager for OU, wanted to put those cabinets back to work. In an effort to increase recycling awareness, and to replace the boxes that kept disappearing, he worked with the campus construction shop. The goal was to find new uses for the now empty filing cabinets that once held up to 10,000–12,000 documents. 

What they did was convert the old metal cabinets into recycling bins. By cutting slots in the front of each drawer, Newman and team provide others the opportunity to recycle batteries, CDs, phones, ink-jet cartridges, and compact bulbs. These types of items had been ending up in dumps, rotting.

In “Managing E-waste responsibly,” published by Campus Technology, Newman stated, “We’re painting the cabinets in school colors and putting school logos on them. I’m taking these clunky old things and jazzing them up and giving them new life. They’ll last forever.”

Though no technology is going to provide a paperless office, at least not anytime soon, ECM is very much about having offices with less paper. On the road to greener campuses, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Do you have a good story about ECM technology being used to promote a more sustainable or “green” campus? Please share it with us in the comments section.