A lesson in automation: Document Management for education

Schools, especially higher education institutions are tasked with a variety of challenges, from driving recruitment to managing secure student and employee information, maintaining and driving funding, and developing stronger programs for students and staff. If there’s any industry that handles a lot of paperwork, it’s education. Schools, universities, colleges and other education organizations manage HR forms, student records, state education compliance documents, and class/curriculum forms. And because this information is primarily stored on paper, the processes to manage it is typically manual, inefficient, inaccurate and ineffective.

These archaic processes result in high paper storage and labor costs, lost and misfiled documents, tedious procedures that are taking up valuable employee time, and the risk of non-compliance and security issues. And while an automated workflow solution, like MetaViewer, may seem disruptive to the procedures that your educational institution has had in place for decades, we encourage you to embrace the disruption and replace your laggard process with a new, automated one.

Metafile has deployed document management in a variety of educational settings, from AP to AR and HR. Integrating an automated solution has allowed organizations to:

• Automatically collect, route and store student admission forms, HR forms, report cards, standardized tests, payroll, meeting notes and other documentation.
• Improve relationships with students, family, staff and vendors with faster response and approval times.
• Access and manage student and staff data and information.
• Improve visibility to student records, staff information and other organizational data.
• Remain compliant with record retention requirements and safeguard sensitive information.
• Better manage employee time and reallocate time previously spent on manual tasks to more crucial ones.
• Integrate with existing business software solutions, like an ERP system.

Just like any other business, educational institutions need to be agile, tech-savvy and strategic in their software investments. A paperless automation solution is the key to helping schools and universities get on-track toward managing information and data better, more securely and with a proactive approach. It’s time to turn the roles around and let the document management experts teach you so you can become a more data-driven organization.