Chinook’s Edge School Division Expands Outdoor Learning Opportunities with Process Automation

A short drive from the Rocky Mountains and some of Canada’s most postcard-worthy national parks sits Chinook’s Edge School Division. The largest rural school division in the province of Alberta, Chinook’s Edge has an established reputation for staff and student wellness, and is on a mission to engage every student in meaningful learning. Although temporarily put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, field trips to the mountains and beyond — with opportunities for world-class hiking, outdoor adventures and skiing — are an integral part of achieving that mission.

With 11,000 students and 43 schools in its division, Chinook’s Edge uses Laserfiche to streamline its field trip management processes, maintaining the integrity of its records as well as supporting its risk management for field trips.

School Division Goes Digital to Improve Risk Management

Parents and guardians voiced their frustrations with the overwhelming amount of paperwork required to provide consent every time a student participated in a field trip, which could be more than 10 times a year per child. The forms included a guardian consent form, medical consent form and health consent form — each of which required duplicate information, such as student name, address and guardian name.

For teachers, the internal request forms to create and plan a field trip were long and detailed. All field trip planning was performed manually, generated mountains of paperwork and required school staff to spend hours of time to coordinate a single trip.

Principals and members of the Chinook’s Edge School Division Board of Education were also concerned about legal liabilities due the rugged nature of numerous field trips and potential natural disasters, as well as a lack of conformity in parent sign-off processes. For example, if a form was forgotten, a guardian might write their consent on a napkin and hand it over to the school. Risk management became an increasing concern, exacerbated by skyrocketing insurance costs.

Chinook’s Edge looked to Laserfiche to automate field trip management, streamline approval processes and enhance the integrity of its records. Jeremy Regehr and his team at Inspiris, a Laserfiche solution provider, developed an end-to-end digital solution that would reduce the work required for parents, teachers and administrators while enabling improved transparency and accountability. All guardian and medical consent forms were consolidated into one user-friendly electronic form, which could be pre-filled for subsequent field trips for the same student. The solution was configured to integrate with Rycor, an online payments software, to simplify payment collection and processing, and PowerSchool, a student information system, to ensure student data is automatically updated.

Digital Transformation Expands Staff Capacity and Student Horizons

In the three-month initial rollout of the new field trip management process, more than 150 field trips had been completed — with over 11,000 students and 18,000 parents or guardians. By the end of the first year of implementation, a total of 758 field trips were processed. The digitized solution with Laserfiche produced 10,697 emails, saving 57,000 pieces of paper. With 70 cases of paper saved, Chinook’s Edge reduced 1,750 kilograms of carbon emissions in one school year.

With much of the workload now completed through an automated process, the division can monitor all trips with just three staff members, who are easily able to do so while fulfilling their other daily responsibilities.

“The new Laserfiche field trip program has been a huge asset to us in the school,” said Leanne Stickland, administrative support in finance for Innisfail Middle School. “It’s quick and easy for both the school and parents. And even better, we don’t have boxes of paper to store at the end of the year.”

“It’s just that easy,” added Susan Roy, FOIP coordinator and treasurer.

The time parents and teachers spend preparing for field trips has been reduced dramatically. What was once eight to 10 pages of paper per trip, per student is now completed via an automatically generated email link. The four hours teachers took to prep for each field trip now takes an average of 30 minutes, and what originally took 30 minutes for parents was reduced to just one minute. All in all, teachers across the division saved an estimated 3,250 total hours, equating to at least $100,000 in cost savings.

Centralizing all field trip information helped teachers identify opportunities to diversify outdoor learning experiences, as well as inspire ideas for new field trips. Laserfiche helps provide oversight for members of the Board of Education, and makes it easy for them to see approvals. On top of that, administrators and teachers use Laserfiche to verify whether all legal and logistical requirements are met and that consent forms are collected before students board the buses. If a natural emergency, such as a wildfire, were to occur, all field trip participant information would be available at a moment’s notice, so that all participants could be easily accounted for and safely evacuated.

Inspiris owner, Regehr, reiterates, “The ROI on the process was as close to instantaneous as you can get. The improvements to efficiency for all teachers and administrative staff was apparent the moment we helped roll out the process— and feedback confirmed that. When I heard the principals exclaim they could sleep at night because they understood the reduced liability, it was obvious to me that the process had already paid for itself.”

Making Honor Roll for Saving Time and Money

Even before Chinook’s Edge set out on the adventure to automate its field trip management process, the organization aimed to streamline processes across the division.

“The finance department had a process to collect eight different documents, twice a year from each of our 41 schools. It was a time-consuming task and often required a staff member to search through emails, open attachments, rename and save files,” says Paul Matsune, core services manager for Chinook’s Edge School Division Technology Services department. Now the forms are easily accessible online for staff division-wide.

The provincial government requires that student report cards are uploaded as individual files, with each student’s unique number. With over 11,000 students, this was a time-intensive undertaking to do several times a year. Laserfiche Forms and Quick Fields — a high-volume capture tool that automates document import, classification and indexing — helped save over 1,000 hours a year for administrative support staff on this task alone.

Other daunting administrative tasks for the Chinook’s Edge People Services team of two have nearly been eliminated thanks to Laserfiche, with automated processes created for personal leave, maternity leave and ID card requests, among others. A dashboard was created for payroll and HR to be notified of employee changes. If a coworker is sick, it’s easy for another staff member to see what tasks need to be done.

The centralization of administrative work hasn’t just saved time across the division, it has also made it easier to reallocate funding and minimize overtime worked. Like any organization on a digital transformation journey, Chinook’s Edge School Division is still seeking new ways to nurture efficiency. For instance, its accounts payable department aims to soon begin using Laserfiche to automate processes such as credit card reconciliation and expense claims.

Laserfiche has touched nearly every stakeholder at Chinook’s Edge, including teachers, staff members, students and families, principals and other division leaders. The optimized processes, improved access to information, reduced liability and increased satisfaction of parents all add up to support the school’s vision to help students achieve success as compassionate and innovative global citizens.

Explore more ways to increase staff productivity, automate processes district-wide and efficiently manage student records by visiting Laserfiche for K-12 Schools and Districts.

Jones College Provides One-Stop Student Services with Laserfiche Cloud

In the past year, Jones College began an initiative aimed at improving the student experience by bringing five previously separate departments (financial aid, admissions, records, recruiting and the student success center) under one umbrella. Using Laserfiche Cloud, the college centralized the five teams’ documents and processes, giving staff and students access to forms and information online, and streamlining key student services.

These digital transformation initiatives have enabled Jones College to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and various government mandates, even as the college saw a 15% jump in enrollment during the summer of 2020 over summer 2019

Moving Enrollment Management to the Cloud

Jones College is a public community college in Ellisville, Mississippi, that was established in 1911.

“As a community college, the impact we have in our society is big — we offer high-quality education at a lower price,” said Paul Spell, vice president of enrollment management. “We’ve been here 100 years, and there have been a lot of changes through the years. We have to continue to show value to students and to our community, and to do that we have to think outside the box.”

As part of the organization’s commitment to providing the best possible experience to students, Jones College President Dr. Jesse Smith looked for opportunities for modernization and new efficiencies. In 2018, the college embarked on a mission to bring together five disparate teams — financial aid, admissions, records, recruiting and the student success center — under one department called enrollment management.

“The goal was to have students go to one admissions counselor who can get their paperwork processed and guide students through the enrollment process in a centralized way,” said Spell. Previously, staff and students had to physically walk paperwork across campus to get it to the right people, which was not only inconvenient and time-consuming, but also introduced the risk of information loss. “To centralize the experience, these five departments had to work together as a team, and Laserfiche really enabled that.”

The college turned to Information Consultants, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche Cloud and help to map out the newly formed enrollment management department’s processes. Information Consultants was able to implement Laserfiche within a week, as a result of the cloud deployment.

“We chose to use Laserfiche Cloud because we wanted less of a hassle managing servers and software here on campus,” Spell explained. “We don’t have a lot of IT people, and we are always looking to be as efficient as possible. On top of that, we want our staff to be able to access documents from the office or home — or anywhere — easily.”

“The enrollment management department really took Laserfiche and ran with it,” added Pierre Smith, workflow specialist at Information Consultants (ICONS). “Jones College and its embrace of digital transformation using Laserfiche Cloud is proof that a 100-year-old institution can continue to innovate, and deliver a modern experience for staff and students.”

New Opportunities for Efficiency

Initially, the enrollment management department implemented Laserfiche as a digital filing cabinet, and began scanning paperwork into the Laserfiche repository. Staff quickly saw, however, that capturing information digitally from the beginning of the process would eliminate the need for paper and open up greater opportunity for transparency, efficiency and ongoing optimization through business process automation. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders further highlighted the need to transition to a more digital workplace.

“Everything was put on hold when COVID-19 hit,” Spell said. “When we were able to come back, we realized that paper processes were just inefficient. We decided to have a ‘digital day,’ essentially a deadline for us to go digital with everything. This was all during the pandemic, and we were able to go digital in about a week.”

Spell introduced Laserfiche Forms to the financial aid team. The team’s responsibilities, including managing processes related to grants, fee waivers, scholarships and other financial assistance programs, made it an ideal candidate for transitioning to Laserfiche electronic forms and automated workflows. Within two weeks, the financial aid team had created more than 30 online forms to replace their paper counterparts, including the form to validate students’ tax status, income verification and others needed to qualify for financial aid like FAFSA.

“For financial aid programs, we need to collect and verify a lot of information, which previously was done manually on paper and could take days to weeks,” said Jones College Director of Financial Aid Kari Dedwylder. “Now, students don’t have to come to the office in person. They can access the form they need and get it filled out in less than 10 minutes. We can also leverage electronic signatures which is helpful since a lot of people don’t have a printer, and verifying information electronically is so easy to get done while also meeting the needs of the college, the financial aid organizations and the federal department.”

The college is also working to digitize the graduation application, a long document which students previously had to fill out and physically take around campus for advisors to sign it. Another opportunity for automation is the process of accepting transcripts, which have traditionally come through the mail or brought in by hand. With a new, automated workflow in Laserfiche, the college can automatically email students to tell them whether they have been accepted.

“Communication with our students is huge, and something we’re always looking to enhance,” Spell said. “Through Laserfiche, we can effectively build communication into our processes without having to manually email each student.”

With Laserfiche helping to centralize information and standardize and automate processes, the enrollment management department now offers a more streamlined experience for students. Meanwhile, Laserfiche has improved accountability and trust among the five teams that were merged to form the department.

“Laserfiche not only helped with digitizing our paperwork and processes, but it’s also helped with our teamwork,” Spell said. “Now, we have processes we can see; we have better accountability.”

Spell estimates that the Jones College’s Laserfiche initiative has saved the institution about $30,000 to $40,000 in staff hours, or about three to four months of work for the department. Over the summer, enrollment was up 15% over the summer of the previous year and — during a pandemic and without adding additional staff — the enrollment management department was able to manage the larger workload due to their efforts to streamline processes using Laserfiche.

“When the pandemic hit, we were planning for lower enrollment,” Spell said. “We had transitioned learning to online, and administrative processes were online thanks to Laserfiche. Over the summer, though, enrollment was up while other community colleges have taken double-digit drops. People don’t know what’s going to happen, but the digital processes and automations have taken the burden off of our staff as we navigate these changes.”

Building on a Digital-First Approach for Student Success

The Jones College team continues to look for new opportunities to leverage Laserfiche for business process automation and improved efficiency.

“This is only our first year using Laserfiche, and all I can think about is how much more streamlined we’re going to make these processes,” Dedwylder added. “Right now, we still have some students who are used to the old processes but, being a two-year college, we’ll have new students who will be introduced to the digital forms right away. Our students are going to expect this digital experience.”

Spell already has plans to enhance existing forms with auto-fill functionality so that there is even less manual data entry for students, and to integrate Laserfiche with the college’s other applications including the student information system (SIS). Some future projects that are not student-facing include a Laserfiche form that keeps a log of all of the activities required for student admission, so that admissions counselors can quickly see what a student has completed and what paperwork has been submitted.

“As a community college, the services we offer are incredibly valuable,” Spell said. “Many students are from rural or underserved communities. The main part of our job is people — the technology solutions that can make us more efficient and improve our processes help to keep us focused on that.”

A Quick Shift to Remote Learning

When the COVID-19 outbreak hit the U.S., the team at Linn-Benton Community College sprang into action. To protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and community, the college had to get classes online and prepare faculty, staff and students to work, teach and learn remotely. Linn-Benton Community College, which works closely with Laserfiche solution provider CDI, previously used Laserfiche to automate more than 200 processes across campus, but this unprecedented challenge would put the organization’s digital operations to the test.

Using Laserfiche as a key tool for communication and collaboration, the IT team has been working tirelessly to ensure everyone has access to the information, systems and processes necessary to keep business moving at the college, and enable classes for the spring semester to begin remotely April 6.

“Our No. 1 priority is health and safety,” said Michael Quiner, CIO at Linn-Benton Community College. “I know it has been extremely difficult and stressful for everyone, but we can help to protect students, staff and faculty, by having people work from home, and having students learn from home. To be able to use technology to enable that — I think that’s pretty amazing.”

Enabling a Quick Shift to Remote Work and Learning

Linn-Benton Community College serves more than 10,000 students, with almost 600 faculty members, and over 300 staff members. As concerns around the COVID-19 outbreak grew, the college braced for unprecedented change.

“I don’t think anyone’s seen or experienced anything like this before,” said Quiner. “But I believe that the team we have at Linn-Benton Community College is very innovative, and we are used to leveraging technology to enable agility and flexibility.”

On March 19, Oregon Governor Kate Brown issued an executive order to immediately implement measures for significantly reducing in-person operations at Oregon colleges and universities. The order also advised colleges and universities to continue learning and teaching operations, but to shift to remote or online delivery.

The immediate challenge was communication. With staff and faculty working both on- and off-campus, and the situation changing by the day, the college needed to make sure everyone knew where everyone else was, and how to get in touch if needed. The college’s institutional research department quickly created an automated process in Laserfiche that emails everyone employed by Linn-Benton Community College each morning, prompting them to fill out a form to indicate where they were working that day and the best way to get in contact with them. “That information is automatically posted in a web portal so people know how to contact each other,” Quiner said.

Next, to quickly transition everyone to operate remotely, staff needed to request remote access to systems they typically use on campus. “This seems simple, but it’s a big workflow that involves staff who have to install software on people’s machines and staff to provision accounts, and more,” said Quiner. The college again used Laserfiche Forms to enable staff to make these requests digitally, and route them to the relevant parties.

“The main benefit of using Laserfiche has been that we’re able to quickly create an automated process, and have that process save all the necessary documentation, contain all the right information, and be seen by the right people so that we can get these activities done right the first time,” Quiner added.

At the same time the college was managing the enormous shift, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA or Act) was passed, requiring certain employers to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. From the passage of the act to the time when organizations were expected to comply was very short.

A cross-departmental team from human resources and IT quickly tackled the challenge and created a work process which has seven unique forms, six decision points, and 16 process tasks. This was made available to college employees inside of 48 hours.

“Laserfiche allows us to keep the college in compliance during a fast-moving situation while dealing with constantly shifting requirements, interruptions, and urgent priority requests,” Quiner added.

Additionally, Linn-Benton Community College modified an existing Laserfiche Form to track the equipment being loaned out to staff and faculty, and enable people to request other equipment they might need. “Before, we were just using this form for staff to request if they needed something new,” Quiner said. “We adapted the existing form so that we could track loaner equipment, and we can still see what additional or alternative support our staff needs.”

Accelerating Transformation

The rapidly changing COVID-19 situation continues to pose challenges for all organizations that are transitioning employees to work from home, and working to standardize and digitize business processes to enable business continuity.

“While this has been extremely difficult for everyone, Laserfiche is helping make an impossible task possible,” Quiner said of the experience.

And while student, staff and faculty health and safety remains the college’s top priority, Quiner explained that the organization’s digital transformation efforts will continue.

“Transformation is the idea that we can use technology tools to better leverage our staff’s time,” he said. “We’ve only started to transform. There are so many exciting things — for example, robotic process automation — that we’re dipping our toes into, that will take a lot of the repetitive work from our staff so we can concentrate on supporting each other and supporting our students.”

Future plans include automating time sheets, and employee onboarding and offboarding processes. Quiner is also interested in working with other community colleges in the region to share data and collaborate on processes, so that the larger community of educational organizations can build on each other’s success.

“We’re saving a huge amount of our staff’s time — and not just IT staff but college staff, too — by using business process automation, and moving documents to the right location using Laserfiche Forms,” said Quiner. “Tools like business process automation and RPA can help us get away from chasing down forms or responding to emails, and enable our staff and faculty can do what they were hired to do, which is to make better people, better families and better communities through education.”

Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity Planning for tools and strategies to keep your business moving in times of uncertainty.

American University of Beirut Uses Laserfiche to Take Fundraising to New Heights

In January 2017, the American University of Beirut (AUB) launched the most ambitious fundraising campaign in its region’s history. AUB needed to streamline and automate many key business processes, including gift processing and donation management. Using Laserfiche to automate many of the manual tasks involved with receiving gifts and acknowledging donors, the university has made the process faster, more transparent and more efficient, while also helping to keep any confidential information secure.

Supporting BOLDLY AUB

Founded in 1866, the American University of Beirut (AUB) is a private, independent institution of higher education. Lauded as a transformative leader in academia, the university has substantial impact on the region and the world—from its graduates’ contributions to the active research, community outreach and medical care the institution provides. In order to continue attracting top scholarly talent, enhance its current programming, and build and maintain world-class facilities, AUB launched BOLDLY AUB—the university’s largest-ever fundraising campaign—with the goal of raising $650 million in five years.

Along with an influx of donations, AUB also anticipated an influx of the paperwork related to those donations. The university needed a way to efficiently process and track funds, and thank donors, even when the volume increased dramatically.

AUB’s Advancement Services department is responsible for receiving and processing gifts, as well as acknowledging donors. Before implementing Laserfiche, this entire process was manual and paper-driven, requiring multiple photocopies for staff review, and additional copies for a master file. Once gifts were reviewed and approved, the gift processing team would issue an acknowledgement letter to the donor, which also must be reviewed by multiple people before finally being mailed to the donor.

The AUB team knew that the process had to change: Advancement Services receives an average of 5,000 donations per year. The tasks involved with processing each gift and acknowledging their donors could take anywhere from seven to 10 days per donation. At the same time, all of the hard copies required by the paper-based process resulted in the use of around 40,000 pieces of paper per year.

Automating for Efficiency and Achieving New Goals

Using Laserfiche, AUB re-engineered this process by creating a workflow that allowed the university to digitize donation information and automate many of the tasks involved. Now, information about gifts is automatically sent to the relevant reviewers. Managers and their staff are able to track the documents throughout the entire process, increasing accountability.

Additionally, because Laserfiche automatically names and files documents into a repository, staff can more easily locate records when they are needed. Documents are no longer misplaced, and the entire process has been streamlined.

The time needed to process a gift and issue a letter has decreased to just two days. Employees in charge of gift processing now save two to three hours’ worth of manual work, resulting in nearly $30,000 in savings. As a result of implementing Laserfiche, staff members spend less time on manual tasks and have increased the university’s donation processing capacity.

AUB has also reduced paper use by 75 percent, further helping the university reduce costs and its environmental impact.

As a result of the successful workflow automation in the Advancement Services office, other AUB offices have begun using Laserfiche solutions at various levels as the primary content services tool. As the institution continues to digitize and automate processes, it will continue to serve students and further AUB’s mission of providing excellence in education in the Middle East and beyond.

Modernize your campus for student success through secure records management and process automation. Click here to learn more.

How Keller ISD Streamlined Bullying and Harassment Investigations with Laserfiche

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Joe Griffin, CTO, Clint Mehta, Systems Integration Architect, Dustin Blank, Assistant Superintendent of Student Services, Joseph Baker, Area Director of Student Services and Laura Lockhart, Area Director of Student Services, Keller Independent School District

Keller ISD serves more than 35,000 students across Tarrant County, Texas, and employs more than 4,000 staff members. Like other school districts, Keller ISD must keep students safe and manage bullying and harassment allegations while staying in compliance with federal reporting regulations.

Federal law requires an investigation of bullying and harassment allegations to be completed within 10 business days of its submittal. Keller ISD’s previous manual process made it hard to process incident reports, complete investigations within the time frame, and hold participants accountable

The district has completely streamlined this process using Laserfiche Forms.

Allegation Forms Can Be Submitted Anonymously Online

Allegations can now be reported through an electronic form on the district and campus websites. The form submitter can choose to remain anonymous.
The Allegation reporting form is linked from the district’s website.

If the submitter knows the names of the students involved, he or she can input them into the form. Otherwise, the submitter needs to provide a thorough description of the incident and students in order to help identify them so the incident can be investigated.
The Allegation reporting form is filled out electronically.

Once the form is submitted, it is sent to the principal of the campus on which the incident occurred. The principal can choose to investigate this allegation or delegate it to an assistant principal or other campus administrator. The campus administrator reads through the allegation and, when ready to start the investigation, clicks the Create Investigation button at the bottom of the form.
The campus administrator clicks the Create Investigation button to start the investigation.

This action triggers a Laserfiche Workflow which launches the Investigations Forms process. This process is automatically assigned to the campus administrator and appears in their Forms Inbox as a new task. The campus administrator also receives an email about this task. To make filling out this form easier, the Investigation form has many fields prepopulated with data gathered during the Allegation process.
Workflow launches the Investigations process in Laserfiche Forms.

The Investigation form contains a long checklist of items that need to be completed as part of the investigation. The campus administrator inputs the student ID numbers of any students involved, which prepopulates many of the form fields. If an allegation is submitted verbally or in a method other than the Allegations form, then the campus administrator launches the Investigation form directly and fills out any of the fields related to the initial allegation.

Each incident is assigned a unique allegation incident number in order to make reporting easier.
Bullying and harassment investigations are managed through the Investigation form.

The form walks the campus administrator through the whole investigations process through a series of checklists. There is also a section in the form to describe actions taken in response to the investigation. Some of these actions include, but are not limited to:
  • A separation of the target student and perpetrator student.
  • Appropriate counseling provided to the target student.
  • Additional staff training.
  • Changes in student schedules.

Once the form is submitted, it is routed to the student services department. An employee from that department reviews the information in the form and, if more information is needed, can send it back to the campus administrator.
The Investigation form includes a section for actions taken in response to the investigation findings.

Once the investigation is finalized, the form is submitted and saved in the repository.

Built-In Timers Ensure Process Completion and Federal Compliance

Timers have been built in throughout the process in order to ensure that every investigation is completed within 10 business days, as specified by law. After five days, the campus administrator and student services department are notified that they have reached the halfway point in the process.

Within three days of the allegation submission, both the victim’s and perpetrator’s parents are automatically notified of the ongoing investigation, as per federal reporting regulations.

Administrators can use the Forms Operational Report to track the status of all investigations and make sure that none of them fall through the cracks.
The Operational Report displays the status of all investigations.

Reporting on the Data Helps Administrators See Incident Patterns

Data obtained through the Forms process is also used to create an annual overview report, which breaks down the allegations per campus based on type, location, protected class/group, etc. This report helps each campus identify any trends and leads to ideas on how these incidents can be mitigated.

“We want to address the root cause, not just the outcome. A thorough investigation helps ensure that both the victim and perpetrator get the required help they need. After all, they are bullying or harassing for a reason,” says Laura Lockhart, area director of student services.

An unintended benefit of creating an electronic allegation reporting form and embedding it on the website is that there have been many more incidents reported. In the past, incidents would go unreported because it was difficult to submit an allegation to school administrators. With more data available from which to draw conclusions, the school administrators can get a wider view of the harassment and bullying problems and come up with more effective strategies to address underlying issues.

How Southwestern College Uses Laserfiche Forms for Academic Planning and Scheduling

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Donna Harrington, CTO, Southwestern College

Located in Santa Fe, NM Southwestern College is a small, private graduate school offering degrees in Counseling, Art Therapy/Counseling and Art Therapy for Clinical Professionals as well as specialty certificates for ongoing professional development. A non-profit school that is one hundred percent dependent on tuition, the college accommodates an average of 200 students each term and graduates around 60 students a year.

Southwestern College is open for classes five days a week all year and rarely closes for holidays, and with only three classrooms, the college registrar faced challenges of needing to maximize facility use while meeting the needs of the students to fulfill all of the classes needed for their degree.

According to CTO, Donna Harrington, “Getting students to their graduation date is like a juggling act of epic proportions. We don’t want a student close to the end of the program find that a class that they need for graduation won’t be available for two years. For very specialized schools like ours, a solution like Laserfiche was the only way to do this accurately with less human capital.”

The college’s former academic planning and scheduling process, which was done using pen and paper and the occasional spreadsheet, was extremely manual and time-consuming. Looking to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the process, the college implemented Laserfiche Forms.

Laserfiche Forms is the Solution

Laserfiche Forms has become the one-stop-shop for managing student course loads and course planning. All of the tasks are performed from a central Menu page.

Each option launches a separate Forms process. Some of the options are tasks such as degree planning or student status change while others are reports such as student list by course and class list by quarter.

The Degree Review by Course Number form works as follows:

  • The director of student services enters the student’s ID number and plan type.
  • The rest of the form is populated with information about the student’s courses with each year having a different tab in the form.

The Degree Review by Course Number form.

Certain form data is populated from a database.

When a student is planning their courses, he or she meets with the director of student services who walks the student through the proposed plan. If the student decides that their course load is too intense during one quarter, then classes are easily removed or added. Sometimes, the student’s plan has to be modified midway through their degree for reasons such as an unexpected leave of absence. This form allows these changes to be made easily.

Reports are generated by looking information up in the Populi student information system. Reports can be filtered by information such as course numbers. Each report can be either saved to Laserfiche or emailed. These reports created allow the director of student services to predict course load for the next academic year. For example, it is possible to see the number of students in part one of a particular course, therefore it’s easier to predict the number of students in part two of that same class next quarter.

Reports are generated from information stored in the student database.

Simplified Planning for Student Success

The Laserfiche Forms solution has transformed the way the college handles planning for the next academic year. In addition to time savings for staff, the college has achieved better support for students and more flexibility to accommodate their needs.

“We can actually predict our course counts for the upcoming academic year based on the planner information that is in the Laserfiche solution. My CFO about fell out of her chair when she could click a button and see with a level of accuracy how much revenue we could expect over the next year so that we can budget. This has changed our lives,” says Harrington.

Information about student enrollment in specific courses is displayed in another form.

Learn more about how Laserfiche electronic forms and process automation drive student success.

Technology Helps Frisco Independent School District Manage Unprecedented Growth

Frisco Independent School District (ISD), located about 30 miles north of Dallas, Texas, has grown over 800% in the last 20 years. A focus on providing strong academics and outstanding opportunities for students has made the district a destination for families moving to the area. In order to continue providing students with personalized high-quality education, however, the district needed to address staffing needs and the administrative growing pains that coincided with a high enrollment rate.

The district assessed that it would need to double the number of educators on staff — a challenge made even more formidable with legacy manual, paper-driven HR processes. To accommodate a short hiring season of approximately four months, the district turned to Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to automate the employee onboarding and resignation processes. Using electronic forms and an automated workflow created in Laserfiche, Frisco ISD’s onboarding process can now be completed in a matter of days rather than four to six weeks.

Staff and faculty members have since expanded their use of Laserfiche beyond human resources, in departments such as accounting, operations and student services. Laserfiche now streamlines more than 50 key processes throughout the district, enabling faculty and staff to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time focused on the success of the district’s growing student body. Additionally, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Texas, Frisco ISD was able to seamlessly transition to remote and hybrid work environments, and easily adjust its electronic forms and automated processes to address the needs of its staff and students.

Onboarding Employees at a Record Pace

Frisco ISD has almost 64,000 students, 73 campuses and 8,000 employees. The HR department is tasked with onboarding approximately 1,600 employees every year.

The legacy employee hiring process depended almost entirely on paper, and district leadership knew that it would not support future growth. The resignation process was similarly paper-based, and driven by manual, ad hoc tasks. As a result of delays in both processes—which often had to be completed simultaneously during a short, four-month period—it would take four to six weeks to onboard a single employee.

“The biggest challenge the human resources department faced with this level of growth was not having enough time in each day to get things done,” said Bob Allen, director of business applications and process at Frisco ISD. “The sheer volume of growth hindered our ability to keep up with not only the hiring process, but also real-life situations. Whether it’s a campus issue, an employee need, or just trying to get a project completed, time becomes a challenging factor.”

To manage the influx of incoming employees, Frisco ISD worked with DocuNav Solutions, a Laserfiche Solution Provider, to digitize and automate its HR processes.

First, Frisco ISD used Laserfiche to automate the new employee onboarding process and now, nearly 100% of the process is streamlined with electronic forms and workflow.

Today, when a candidate is recommended for hire, the HR department receives an electronic notification from the hiring manager that kick-starts the process. An employment-offer email is sent to the candidate, who can accept or reject the offer via a Laserfiche Form. If they accept, they can complete and submit all necessary paperwork online. The automated workflow then sends the information to the relevant personnel for reviews and approvals.

New hires also receive important information, such as the employee handbook and an overview of benefits, through Laserfiche. All of these activities can be completed remotely—which was not possible before digitizing and automating the process.

“The flexibility and convenience of being able to complete tasks from home expedites the entire process and creates a great experience for both the new employee and HR representative,” said Dr. Duana Kindle, managing director of human resources at Frisco ISD.

All employees involved also receive email updates every time a task is complete, or a deadline is missed. Onboarding documents are automatically filed and saved in Laserfiche, helping Frisco ISD maintain secure, consistent and accurate records management without placing additional burden on staff.

Automating the employee onboarding process benefited the district in new and unexpected ways when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Texas. Before COVID, the collection of the I-9 employee eligibility form and proof of identity was intentionally completed face-to-face, to personally welcome employees and provide a form of engagement. The district had to swiftly shift to virtual, however, when in-person interactions could put people at exposure risk. This overnight change was made possible by Laserfiche.

“Laserfiche streamlines the entire onboarding process from beginning to end,” added Dr. Kindle. “New employees are completing paperwork, receiving deadline reminders, and receiving new-hire documents through the system while we are receiving critical information in one centralized location.”

Today, Frisco ISD is in the midst of hiring new teachers and staff for the coming school year, with the aid of the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ARP ESSER Fund) aimed at supporting educational agencies in addressing the impacts of COVID-19. The electronic forms and automated onboarding process are more important than ever before in supporting the district’s hiring needs while navigating uncertainty about the upcoming school year.

Taking a similar approach to the onboarding process, Frisco ISD has a Laserfiche automated workflow that routes the information to the appropriate managers for approval and notifies relevant employees along the way. In addition, the resigning employee is prompted to complete a questionnaire about their reasons for leaving Frisco ISD—providing valuable feedback for improving employee retention and organizational culture.

“Today, the resignation process is just as quick as the new onboarding process, which means we are no longer scrambling to free-up space for our new employees,” said Anna Koenig, managing director of human resources at Frisco ISD. “It’s all one seamless digital process.”

The new employee onboarding and resignation processes have improved tremendously since implementing Laserfiche. Today:
  • Onboarding an employee can be completed in a matter of days rather than four to six weeks.
  • Frisco ISD employees have the flexibility to complete tasks remotely.
  • The HR department has eliminated many repetitive, manual tasks, enabling employees to redirect time to addressing staff and student needs.
  • Employee records are stored digitally, in a central location using standardized filing practices.

Frisco ISD’s Journey Continues

Since these initial successes, Frisco ISD and Laserfiche have formed a strong partnership, and the district has continued to automate dozens of processes across the organization, including, but not limited to:
  • Invoice processing in accounts payable
  • Employee benefits document management
  • Compliance records management
  • Custodial, transportation, and general employee handbook acknowledgments
  • Employee address changes
  • Performance review acknowledgement and archiving
  • Employee transfer requests
  • Finance document management
  • Independent student mentoring registration
  • Student Gifted and Talented enrollment processing
  • Teacher certification tracking

Automating processes and eliminating repetitive, manual tasks has enabled the school district to scale as the student body continues to grow. In the district’s accounts payable department, for example, the staff is able to process 40% more volume with 25% less resources. Also critical to a fast-growing organization, the district now maintains a central location for records that is accessible to authorized personnel, improving information accuracy and governance district-wide.

Most importantly, however, Frisco ISD has established a culture of efficiency and automation. By streamlining the majority of its processes, the district can move quickly to respond to changes in policies or procedures, regulatory requirements and — perhaps most importantly — employee and student needs and expectations.

“We always talk about preparing students for the future,” Dr. Kindle added. “If we are not future-ready as educators, we can’t expect the same of our students. Laserfiche has supported us in being future-ready.”

District leadership knows that with this approach to processes, the organization will be able to gather data-supported insights into operations and make more informed decisions about allocation of resources.

“Our ultimate goal is to implement automation throughout the district so that we can collect process data and improve operations based on those analytics,” said Allen. “Laserfiche is an integral part of this strategy, and we look forward to implementing creative solutions that will ensure student success.”

Planning digital transformation for your district operations in line with the American Rescue Plan ESSER Fund? Join our education IT leadership panel for inspiration!

Keller Independent School District Builds a Culture Focused on Students

Everything that Keller Independent School District (ISD) employees do is focused on providing an exceptional educational experience for students, whether it be teaching in the classroom, maintaining the facilities, or offering support and guidance for students and staff alike. This commitment to student success is evident in all of the school district’s business processes, many of which have been automated and streamlined using Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM). The school district now uses Laserfiche in almost all of its departments, increasing efficiency. This has resulted in staff time being redirected to address students’ needs, while also building stronger interpersonal relationships among staff members.

Championing Change

Keller ISD serves more than 35,000 students across Tarrant County, Texas, and employs more than 4,000 staff members. During a recent period of rapid growth, it became clear that there was a lack of uniformity across major business processes. Each department was leveraging a different ECM solution, and each team had their own way of managing core business processes and procedures. This created information silos, which delayed processes and built a culture of mistrust due to a lack of accountability.

New employee onboarding was one process in particular that lacked consistency. “Before Laserfiche the process was essentially a bunch of phone calls and hand-waves,” said Clinton Mehta, systems integration architect at Keller ISD. “It could take weeks, even months, before the process was complete because the process was different depending on the person or department involved.”

Previously, the onboarding process included more than 30 pages of paperwork that needed to be filled out manually. Once new employees completed the paperwork, they would have to physically mail in the documents or deliver them on-site. From there, the process varied from case to case.

Today, the process is completely automated using Laserfiche. The district implemented electronic forms in order to enable new employees to submit their required information online instead of being handed a pile of paperwork to fill out and return. After submission, an automated workflow shepherds the documents through the necessary reviews and approvals. Onboarding can now be completed in a matter of days rather than months, and all parties involved are kept up to date on the progress.

“The HR onboarding process was a quick win that we could use as a selling point to promote adoption in other departments,” said Joe Griffin, chief technology officer at Keller ISD. “There was an initial resistance to adoption because the trust and understanding was not there. This successful implementation in HR was the catalyst for a district-wide adoption.”

Reimagining Student Records

With the success of automating HR onboarding, the Keller ISD team wanted to use Laserfiche to completely reimagine how the district manages student records.

“There is one story that comes to mind when I think about how student records were managed before Laserfiche,” said Mehta. “We had an employee who was transferring student files to another location, and she had placed the folders in her Gucci bag. She had made a pit stop along the way, left the designer bag in her car, and someone broke into the car and stole the bag! Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Today, the district leverages Laserfiche to manage enrollment documents, test scores, sensitive personal information, legal documents, special education records and more. Laserfiche has enabled the team to centralize student information, manage the lifecycle of documents and automate routine tasks related to records. Authorized employees have easy access to accurate and up-to-date student information, and can seamlessly process student transfers. The electronic records management system has also helped the school district to standardize filing and better enforce records management policies, supporting regulatory compliance.

“Keller ISD is considered a pioneer in student records management, with other districts looking to them as the marquee example,” said Cody Bettis, CEO of DocuNav Solutions, the Laserfiche Solution Provider that supports Keller ISD’s implementation. “It’s exciting to see the district lead the way for tech innovation within the K-12 space.”

“It’s quite an accomplishment to have other districts mimicking our solution for student records,” said Griffin. “We have set up our system in such a way that if we were to ever change our registration system or process, we can easily migrate our workflows so nothing is lost and there isn’t a gap in performance. This has a major impact on student success, and it’s exciting to support our district’s mission through IT support.”

Looking Ahead with Laserfiche

Keller ISD has received a significant return on investment with Laserfiche. In addition to streamlining business processes and creating transparency throughout the district, the district has:
  • Replaced five different software systems with a single solution, initially saving the district $100,000, as well as an estimated savings of $70,000 annually.
  • Saved more than $11,000 as a result of reducing paper use in core business processes.
  • Met the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act, which imposes procedural requirements on agencies that wish to collect information from the public.
  • Created a culture of collaboration that has enhanced trust among district employees.

“Once we realized the full potential of Laserfiche, we were excited to expand the solution beyond the storage of digital documents,” said Griffin. “An added bonus was that the software doesn’t just streamline processes, but it also builds relationships by creating transparency and providing accountability. That was a major selling point for us.”

Today, Keller ISD uses Laserfiche in almost 100% of the district in departments such as human resources, finance, IT and student services. Looking ahead, Keller ISD has big plans for its use of Laserfiche in the future: With a successful district-wide implementation, the Keller ISD team is exploring how they can use the technology beyond administrative operations, and to improve processes for students and their families. Some of the student- and family-facing processes that the Keller ISD team plans to enhance with Laserfiche include student enrollment and registration, field trip permissions, and Career and Technical Education (CTE) practicum applications and processes.

“Eventually, we want to provide user-licenses to parents and students so they can be a part of the forms process,” said Mehta. “Right now, we are exploring how we can create a custom solution that would enable us to allow secure access to each parent. There is a lot more we can do in terms of use and integrations that go well beyond document storage. The options are endless.”

STEM Advantage to Celebrate Expansion to Cal Poly Pomona and all 23 California State Universities by 2023

STEM Advantage—a nonprofit organization that funds college scholarships, and provides internships and mentors for women and underserved communities—announced that it has successfully expanded to Cal Poly Pomona this year. The award-winning program has reached over 6,200 students and plans to expand to all 23 California State University schools by 2023.

“When we launched STEM Advantage in 2012 at one college in South LA, we never imagined the impact it would have today,” said Lee Ann Kline, co-founder and president of STEM Advantage. “The program now has an unprecedented 100 percent graduation and hire rate post-graduation. The students we work with continue to prove that there is a pool of talented, diverse students at less prominent schools who deserve a chance to be recruited by top companies.”

STEM Advantage will celebrate the accomplishments of students and recognize scholarship donors at the 7th Annual Scholarship Gala. The event will be held April 27 at the California Science Center, Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Pavilion.

George L. Pla, founder, president and CEO of Cordoba Corporation, will be the keynote speaker. In 2012, Pla was responsible for transporting the Space Shuttle Endeavour through the streets of Los Angeles. He is also on the board of trustees for the California Science Center and is an alumnus of California State University, Los Angeles.

“We give often overlooked—and yet, remarkable—students a platform with paid internships to increase their confidence and experience,” said Marlo Donate, head of enterprise marketing and digital IT for Farmers Insurance Group, which works with STEM Advantage to provide internships and is a sponsor of the gala.

“The work of STEM Advantage levels the playing field and helps students who do not have access to the same opportunities and networks,” said Thomas Phelps IV, CIO of Laserfiche, and executive board member for Southern California, Society for Information Management (SCSIM), both of which are also sponsoring the gala. “As an IT leadership organization, SCSIM believes that STEM Advantage helps solves a critical talent shortage at our member companies, while helping well-deserving students.”

For more information or media inquiries, contact leeann@stemadvantage.org.
About STEM Advantage

STEM Advantage’s mission is to mentor, prepare and inspire women and underserved communities to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. STEM Advantage provides scholarships and paid internships to help students graduate with less debt, along with pairing mentors with students who typically are first generation and low income college students. The program is currently offered to STEM students at California State University Dominguez Hills; California State University, Los Angeles; California State University, Long Beach; California State University, Northridge; and Cal Poly Pomona—with the strategic “23 by 2023” goal to expand to STEM students at all 23 California State University campuses by 2023.

Media Contact

Lee Ann Kline

Founder and President

STEM Advantage

(949) 322-3320

leeann@stemadvantage.org

New Caney Independent School District’s District-Wide Digital Transformation of Student and Employee Records

New Caney Independent School District, located in the Houston metropolitan area, manages over 15,000 students across 18 schools and facilities. With a growth rate of 7% per year, the district’s enrollment and hiring began rapidly expanding—along with its student records archives, and process and compliance challenges.

When Superintendent Kenn Franklin joined the district, his vision for paperless processes began a five-year plan to completely digitize the district’s records and operations. After receiving a Laserfiche demonstration, New Caney ISD was convinced it could realize this vision through the solution’s robust search, electronic forms and workflow automation.

“Laserfiche is one system with endless capabilities,” said Tammy Yarbrough, records management officer at New Caney Independent School District. “The solution’s user-friendly implementation enabled our small records team to create a searchable, secure database quickly—without investing significant time and resources into learning and training on the system.”

Creating More Efficient Employee Contracts

The district’s initial goal for using Laserfiche centered around updating its HR contract processes. Using Laserfiche Forms, Yarbrough’s team digitized the creation, review and approval of employee contracts, as well as other HR documents like incident reporting, performance evaluations and salary placements. The initiative was a quick win that solidified Laserfiche’s position as a core software system for the district’s administrative operations.

“The deputy superintendent was amazed at the system’s capabilities,” Yarbrough says. “At a meeting about a district issue, he looked at my boss and said, ‘I don’t know what you need to do, but you need to make this ‘Fiche-y.’ We then created a process to help analyze and review the data.”

Digitizing Student Folders Simplifies Compliance

Before Laserfiche, the district lacked a uniform approach to file management. To remedy this, the district digitized over 17,000 cumulative student folders and created electronic folders organized by campus, grade level and student document categories and types.

For both new and archived records, Laserfiche can automatically apply document security by document type and employee role, giving New Caney the ability to assign and track nuanced levels of record access across the district. Additionally, records retention schedules help enable administrators to ensure that student files are destroyed at the right time and help enforce proper compliance throughout the records’ lifecycle.

Yarbrough’s team now uses Laserfiche Forms to build solutions for every student and staff need. Administrators, teachers and staff can also quickly upload documents including new report cards, health forms, attendance notes, athletics physicals and more into the digital student folder. The result is a more accurate, holistic student file that can be accessed on-demand through a web portal.

“With Laserfiche, we will never have lost files,” Yarbrough emphasizes.

Expediting Student Enrollment and Record Transfer

By digitizing student files and forms, the district drastically improved the student enrollment process for both parents and staff. Parents now complete enrollment forms online in the district’s student information system, Skyward, and Laserfiche Workflow automatically files them in the relevant folders in the repository. For returning students, a database lookup populates the students’ information from the previous school year—reducing the number of forms that students and parents have to complete and lessening the document management burden on administrators.

Total enrollment processing time has been reduced by 75%. Additionally, all enrollment forms are available district-wide within 24 hours of submission. Beyond these benefits, the district’s student data is more accurate since Laserfiche eliminated much of the manual data entry and folder creation.

Because all student records are digital, file transfers with other school districts are also expedited. Instead of copying and mailing or scanning an entire paper folder, New Caney ISD created a Laserfiche Form that automatically exports student folders and uploads the files to the Texas Records Exchange, a state-run system for school registrars to electronically request and receive records for students attending Texas public schools. Thousands of pages are transferred seamlessly in just a few minutes.

Benefits
  • The district digitized more than 370,000 HR records, and over 2 million student records and enrollment processes without IT expertise.
  • The district saved over $330,000 by choosing to implement Laserfiche instead of outsourcing records scanning and storage.
  • Student enrollment processing, which formerly took two hours per student, now takes less than 30 minutes, and all forms are available for teachers, counselors and registrars district-wide within 24 hours.
  • Transferring student files from the district’s registrar to state education agencies and other school districts now takes just two minutes instead of 45.
  • Laserfiche has helped the district’s compliance with FERPA and HIPAA regulations, and enabled the district to control and track records access using granular records security.
  • Records retention schedules enable administrators to ensure that files are destroyed on time.
  • Teachers and administrators can now access records from anywhere with an internet connection, rather than being required to physically retrieve documents from a records warehouse.

The success of the initial Laserfiche implementation has led to rapid adoption across all the district’s administrative units. The records team is currently working through a three-month backlog of Laserfiche project requests.

“When others see what Laserfiche can do, they want more,” Yarbrough says. “We can provide administrators with immediate solutions to district issues, like employee onboarding, class coding, and enrollment and implement solutions in a matter of days by using forms and document management. When they ask for something, we can drop everything and can fix it quickly with Laserfiche.”