The K-12 Leaders Forum
By Andy MacIsaac
A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article highlights a major challenge for colleges and universities. They must update millions of web pages and digital assets to meet new accessibility rules. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has updated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These changes set clear rules for web content. Public colleges and universities must now act to make their digital platforms accessible to everyone.
As the Chronicle states, “Colleges must update existing digital content, including course materials, to meet these standards. They must also follow these standards for any new content they create or use.”
Many schools use a decentralized system for content creation. Websites, learning platforms, and marketing teams all produce content separately. Now, they must change their approach. Schools need to shift from fixing issues when they arise to making content accessible from the start.
Colleges and universities create a vast amount of digital content. Many struggle to track:
The new rules require a structured approach. Schools must improve content management, workflows, and compliance tracking. This is a big change for institutions that have operated without central control.
To meet these requirements, colleges and universities should use better document, content, and process management systems. Here’s a simple plan to get started:
1. Centralize Accessibility Resources in Managed Repository
2. Automate Workflows
3. Improve Collaboration and Tracking
4. Monitor Compliance
5. Integrate with Existing Systems
6. Make Accessibility Easy for Everyone
The DOJ’s new rules are a turning point. Schools must see accessibility as more than a legal requirement. It is an essential part of creating an inclusive learning environment. By improving content management, automating workflows, and encouraging teamwork, colleges and universities can:
This challenge is also an opportunity. Schools that act now will build a strong, accessible digital system for the future and improve engagement for all.
Accessibility is not just a rule—it is a responsibility. By focusing on inclusive design and content management, colleges and universities can lead the way in providing equal access to education in the digital age.
Laserfiche provides a comprehensive solution for colleges and universities tackling web accessibility challenges. With powerful document management, workflow automation, and compliance tracking, Laserfiche helps institutions:
By leveraging Laserfiche, institutions can transform their approach to digital accessibility, ensuring compliance while creating a more inclusive and equitable learning environment.
Get started today and build a stronger, more accessible digital experience with Laserfiche.
Download our eBook: Guide to Creating a Fully Integrated Digital Campus
SITUATION
• Needed to replace a legacy enterprise content management (ECM) system
• Sought a more robust, easier to use platform with advanced integration and automation capabilities
RESULTS
• Common forms and workflow platform shared across schools, sites and departments
• Standardized and automated key processes, including Position Control, the Head Injury Protocol, Student Cumulative Folders and Choice Program applications
• Boosted efficiency and enhanced responsiveness
• Able to better allocate personnel and budget to focus on student outcomes
Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) has been recognized as the No. 1 ranked school district in America with over 10,000 students. These high standards extend throughout all of the district’s operations, from enrollment and academics to hiring and IT processes.
“We’re in the heart of Silicon Valley, and with that comes some high expectations,” said Derek Moore, chief technology officer (CTO) at PAUSD. “With the improvements that we’ve made in our technology and processes, we’ve also raised the bar for ourselves.”
This constant evolution led the district to assess legacy systems and processes, to ensure the highest level of efficiency in operations, with the lowest amount of friction to users. Key to the district’s continuous improvement has been Laserfiche, with which PAUSD replaced a legacy enterprise content management (ECM) system. Laserfiche’s ease of use, adaptability to the district’s Mac OS environment, and advanced integration and automation capabilities were the major differentiators that drove PAUSD’s decision.
Today, with support from PAUSD’s Laserfiche solution provider ECS Imaging, Laserfiche has become a core component of the district’s tech stack, helping to integrate and orchestrate data and processes across the organization and support the district’s mission to keep the focus on students and student outcomes.
“Laserfiche is our Swiss Army knife,” said Moore. “If one of our business systems doesn’t have a solution that meets one of our needs, we fill that gap with an integration with Laserfiche. Whether we need to do a form to augment some other process or figure out how to input data — Laserfiche is our answer.”
Since implementing Laserfiche, PAUSD has integrated it with core pieces of the district’s technology infrastructure to enable more seamless process and information flow. Key integrations include Infinite Campus, the district’s student information system (SIS), as well as ERP, active directory, and single sign-on integrations.
“Laserfiche is the automation engine behind a lot of the tools or applications that we’re using which don’t have a good user interface to do the things we need to do,” said Joshua Hung, business systems analyst at PAUSD.
In addition to connecting formerly disparate sources of information and enabling automation of key workflows, Laserfiche has helped to create a culture of continuous improvement and process automation at the district.
“Laserfiche has facilitated better communication between departments and between people,” Moore said. Mapping out processes to validate or question each step has strengthened teams’ understanding of how or why actions are taken. “It’s really helped define our organizational processes in a way that I don’t think anyone in the organization understood. We’ve got a whole list of departments and processes that touch Laserfiche, from our student services to human resources, to our business office and our educational services. Laserfiche has been the backbone.”
One critical process that helped to get teams excited about Laserfiche-driven improvements was the Head Injury Protocol. Because head injuries — from minor bumps to serious blows — can have serious health implications, the process of reporting them requires significant documentation and multiple notifications to be distributed internally and externally.
Transforming the legacy, paper-driven process with a Laserfiche solution meant that documenting these events were now a lot less manual and less time-intensive, but also reported with more accuracy and accountability.
Because of the integration between Laserfiche and Infinite Campus, a staff member can now enter a student number into the Laserfiche form and the necessary information populates the form — parents’ contact information, parents’ email addresses, etc. From there, the staff member simply answers the required questions and submits the form. The principal then approves it, and the information is distributed to the nurse’s office, risk management, legal services, and the child’s parents.
Transformation of the Head Injury Protocol inspired various teams to realize the power of Laserfiche solutions. “It’s a really fun place to be,” Moore said. “Our users are bringing ideas to us, and we’re able to evaluate and prioritize projects. We’re thinking about our pain points as an organization and how we can create Laserfiche Forms processes to solve them.”
Building on the initial success, PAUSD began creating more standardization around other processes that require the alignment of multiple departments, approvals and systems.
“Our entire organization’s staff is very competent and wants to be empowered to do the job themselves,” Moore said. “That’s where Laserfiche fits in. We help by building small pieces for them or helping to standardize a process. Laserfiche empowers them to complete the tasks that they’re charged with without requiring a lot of tech team intervention.”
A complex yet critical process at the school district, Position Control is one such process which enables the district to track hiring and monitor costs related to various positions. Previously a paper form that was physically passed from stakeholder to stakeholder, the process is now digital and automatically routed in Laserfiche, leveraging an integration with the district’s ERP system. “The Laserfiche process ensures that we are fulfilling the necessary roles from an HR hiring perspective, to the business fiscal department, making sure there’s budget allocated for it,” Moore added.
The updated, expedited process extends to the IT team, which is now automatically notified when people are hired so that accounts and access can be set up immediately. “We want to make the new employee feel welcome,” Moore explained. “We’re onboarding them with a good experience and making sure they have everything they need so they’re ready to go on day one.”
As PAUSD builds a more automated future, Moore and his team understand the importance of being digital-first. One large step the district took toward this goal was to digitize all student cumulative folders, which contain students’ permanent records, including personal information, enrollment, academic records, and other relevant information. The IT team built a Laserfiche form and workflow to input, tag and sort all student documents into the correct places.
“We can say at this point that all of our active files are electronic,” Moore said. “Some information comes in as paper if it starts in another district, for instance, or it may be a doctor’s note that needs to be scanned in. But it’s scanned in via a Laserfiche form.”
This digital-first approach is also evident in the processes that collect information externally, as in PAUSD’s Choice Programs process. PAUSD Choice Programs offer parents and students options beyond their assigned neighborhood school, providing diverse learning environments for different interests and needs.
The district enables parents to fill out a public Laserfiche form, which is routed to staff members who validate the information through an integration with the SIS. The workflow also pulls additional data into the form that needs to be evaluated.
“These lookups save reviewers a lot of time, because instead of clicking to five different pages where the information exists, it’s all there on that one page,” said Hung. Additionally, the Laserfiche form enables the district to collect accurate data from the outset, eliminating the time-consuming data cleaning that used to be inevitable in the legacy process. “We also created a notification process with Laserfiche, to make sure that parents and students receive the right notifications for the specific lottery programs they are being accepted to. Our staff can just click a button that sends out notifications as part of the business process; it’s made it a lot less stressful.”
The IT team continues to innovate the organization’s many processes and procedures that make up PAUSD’s operations. One of the best parts of using Laserfiche for this innovation, the team says, is that they know they are not alone.
“We go to the community events to connect with other Laserfiche users, and we communicate about what challenges they’ve run into, or what new processes they are trying,” Hung added. “We learn from them, and we can pass on what we’re doing, too.”
As the district grows, the technology team is confident in its ability to support the student-centric mission of the organization. Through digital solutions, PAUSD can prioritize the programs and budget items that are going to have a positive impact on student outcomes.
“We’re still adding people and adding positions, but what we’re not talking about adding is people to simply process paperwork or process data,” said Moore. “We’re more focused on how we can better use people and budget to serve students.”
Join us as Inside Higher Ed's Colleen Flaherty and Josh Moody present an exclusive look into the 2024 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers. The webcast will showcase high-level findings on how these leaders think and feel about key topics such as college affordability, cost-cutting strategies, financial outlooks, mergers and consolidations, and generative AI.
We'll be covering the following in-depth:
Generative AI is revolutionising higher education institutions. Creating a better connected and intelligent campus is a top priority as further education institutions are exploring technologies that offer solutions that will empower staff and students.
Today’s students don’t just desire a digital campus, they require it. Having grown up in the digital age, Gen Z university prospects are accustomed to accessing resources and hyper-speed responses to questions 24/7 at their fingertips. While technology has always played an essential role in higher education, the Covid-19 pandemic drove colleges and universities to step up their digital transformation games much sooner than projected.
This widespread adoption of streamlined technology continues to demonstrate its value as campuses return to in-person learning yet face the next wave of administrative challenges: enrollment declines combined with amplified student service demands. If these obstacles sound all too familiar, you’re not alone. Universities across the globe are racing to update decades-old processes and eliminate administrative drudgery that can strain budgets and negatively impact student and staff success. In this new era of higher education, low-cost business process automation is the gold standard for more efficient, streamlined, and effective approaches to decode multi-departmental collaboration puzzles.
In every chapter of your digital campus transformation tale, business process automation is the protagonist – a technology hero that can turn tiresome tasks into a seamless data workflow. Envision transcripts processed in the blink of an eye, student data updated effortlessly, and access to sensitive information safeguarded with precision. Alongside your university digital transformation journey, Laserfiche’s content management and process automation solutions emerge as your team’s north star, empowering students and staff with transparent portals that deliver the right information at the right time.
Process automation, synonymous with business process management, harnesses technology to automate the mundane. But this digital tool isn’t just about relieving humans of repetitive chores; it’s about unleashing their potential. It’s the spark that ignites innovation, propelling institutions forward.
Though the extraordinary potential for cost savings and efficiency is a clear win for higher education, low-cost business process automation is still an under-utilized resource for many universities. A recent Laserfiche survey revealed that only 10% of schools embrace fully digital processes – an untapped opportunity for the remaining 90%.
Today’s higher education process automation platforms use novel technologies to perform increasingly complicated tasks, such as capturing, categorizing, interpreting and sharing student data from a wide variety of original document formats and across multiple campus departments. Still, humans are the ones who drive this change and innovation. Automation simply allows them to do more as they work to keep student and staff performance moving forward.
So, what’s your next step? Get ready to enter a new era in higher education with Laserfiche’s innovations in enterprise content management and make the most of the outstanding potential that automation, integration, and advanced AI technologies provides.
Harness the full spectrum of strategies, insights, success stories and best practices in higher education content management by downloading Laserfiche’s free white paper – “Your Guide to Creating a Fully Integrated Digital Campus.”
I Want to Learn More about Higher Education Content Management
Popular concepts of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are often associated with futuristic applications and cutting-edge innovations. However, the use of AI in higher education today is already amplifying real-world applications in campuses across the globe, subtly revolutionizing back-office operations, empowering staff with previously unattainable efficiency and accuracy, and freeing them to focus on higher-value tasks.
Recent fluctuations in enrollment rates and financial pressures have required higher education institutions and their staff to do more with less. As challenges intensify, institutions are recognizing the need for more sophisticated technology solutions that can simplify complex tasks, optimize shared resources, and streamline budgets.
One area where the potential use of AI in higher education shines bright is admissions. Traditional admissions processes often involve repetitive tasks that can be time consuming. Generative AI has the power to reshape this landscape by making initial applicant screening more efficient.
Laserfiche’s recent partnerships with higher education institutions demonstrate how generative AI can automate information extraction from transcripts, simplifying the admissions process and allowing staff to bypass repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
Picture this: Generative AI can autonomously make preliminary decisions about student acceptance. Though human involvement will still be necessary at higher approval levels, AI can review the quantitative aspects of admissions, such as high-school courses and grades, thereby eliminating a major portion of the upfront workload with admissions staff. This means faster, more consistent decision-making and fewer bottlenecks.
Witness the impact of AI at work. Laserfiche partnered with SUNY Empire State College, implementing AI-powered transcript processing. The results? Response times slashed from a week to under an hour, significantly refining student engagement and boosting their staff’s ability to process higher volumes of applications and requests.
Curious to explore how the use of AI in higher education can reshape your back-office staff’s workflow? Dive into Laserfiche’s comprehensive white paper, “Your Guide to Creating a Fully Integrated Digital Campus,” and witness the extraordinarily impact of AI in higher education. Plus, explore how low-cost business process automation creates high returns at universities, get tips on remediating data silos, and mobilize best practices in change management to set your digital transformation up for success.
In the dynamic realm of higher education and the administrative of students and staff, change is the only constant. As colleges and universities seek to maximize student success, staff efficiency, and overall satisfaction, the integration of advanced enterprise content management systems becomes crucial. Welcome to a glimpse of the “Change Management” chapter from our comprehensive white paper, “Your Guide to Creating a Fully Integrated Digital Campus.”
Amidst the excitement of upgrading and expanding your content management platform, it’s essential to recognize that successful implementation requires a strategic approach. Integrating new systems isn’t just about technology—it’s about cultivating a culture of innovation that resonates across every department.
Crafting a clear vision for your institution’s transformation is paramount. Align the endeavor with your college or university’s mission, creating a shared understanding of success. Paint a detailed picture that goes beyond metrics and embraces the core essence of better serving students, faculty, and alumni.
Your campus is a treasure trove of ideas. Engage your teams and departments to brainstorm strategies for leveraging automation, integration, and AI. Collaborate with peers in higher education, solution providers, and vendors to harness collective expertise. The integration process can lead to reevaluating processes and creating a new level of best practices for your institution.
Consider establishing an innovation steering committee, representing a diverse cross-section of end-users and managers. This committee becomes the guiding compass for integrating enterprise content management systems. It ensures ethical integration, adequate governance, and a standardized framework for decision making.
Navigating change can be complex, especially when working with staff accustomed to traditional methods. Leverage proven change management strategies from other successful digital transformation initiatives. These strategies help assess risks, prioritize investments, and communicate effectively, allowing your teams to adapt seamlessly.
Even if your users are tech-savvy, educating them about the new system’s impact on daily tasks is crucial. Conduct information sessions, online training, and provide downloadable resources. Roll out the new system strategically, minimizing disruptions during peak times.
Prioritize staff training and support in your transformation budget. Allocate resources to ongoing training and troubleshooting as you transition into a fully integrated system. Support packages from providers can expedite implementation and ensure smooth operation.
Start small. Experiment with innovation on low-risk, internal projects to gain experience and confidence. Gradually scale initiatives as your teams become adept at harnessing the system’s capabilities.
As the horizon of automation, integration, and AI/ML unfolds, Laserfiche stands as your premiere partner in transformation. Our solutions are designed to empower institutions, revealing your staff’s greatest potential and resource efficiency.
Ready for a deeper dive? Discover how Laserfiche enterprise content management solutions can help your college or university embark on a journey toward a more productive and digitally empowered ecosystem.
Download Laserfiche’s complete white paper, “Your Guide to Creating a Fully Integrated Digital Campus,” and explore a world of possibilities awaiting your campus.
Universities across the globe are the midst of a digital revolution, and data integration is the linchpin that holds it all together. Say goodbye to spending endless hours in search of scattered student and staff information in an inefficient workplace, stifled by siloed data. Higher education institutions are on a clear path to fully integrated digital campuses, paved with efficiency, collaboration, and streamlined processes. Laserfiche’s suite of enterprise content management solutions is the game changer at the center of your digital campus transformation.
Picture this: your campus operates as a well-oiled machine, with information flowing seamlessly between departments, fostering collaboration and enabling lightning-speed decision-making. This reality isn’t a far-fetched dream; it’s the power of dynamic system integrators in higher education.
One of the most significant barriers to campus-wide efficiency is the presence of data silos. Higher education institutions have long battled these isolated pockets of information that impede communication, create delays, and fracture your university’s ability to deliver a consistent experience to students and staff.
Laserfiche recently surveyed higher education IT leaders and administrators across the nation, unveiling a sobering truth: over 90% of respondents recognized the presence of data silos within their organizations. It’s a challenge that can’t be ignored. The key to overcoming this hurdle lies in integration, and we’re here to guide you through it.
Glen Murie, University of San Francisco Senior Programmer/Analyst, shares how Laserfiche Forms revolutionized their processes. By automating requests and reviews, the university saved the equivalent of 10 to 20 full-time employees’ worth of time per year, demonstrating the enormous impact data integration has on institution-wide efficiency, productivity, and cost-savings.
When remediating decades-old campus cultures steeped in siloed data, higher education systems administrators can profoundly benefit from colleagues sharing their experiences as roadmaps toward achieving their own seamless integrations.
Are you an administrator or an IT team leader on the cusp of your own journey and looking for effective digital campus transformation strategies? Murie and other Laserfiche partners reveal lessons learned along the way in a free downloadable white paper, titled “Your Guide to Creating a Fully Integrated Digital Campus.”
Become an expert in this new era of system integrators in higher education with Laserfiche’s best practices tips and partner resources. Ready level up your campus processes with automation, integration, and advanced AI technologies?
