ECM Agility for Higher Education - Laserfiche Shared Service ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Agile Business Processes: ECM in Everyday UseStandardizing on ECM doesn’t just provide aconsistent way of viewing, storing and accessinginformation, it also gives the institution acentralized, flexible and secure way to createautomated, repeatable processes in everydepartment.With ECM, user rights and privileges can beconfigured so that individual schools, departmentsand even individual users retain control over theirown filing structures and business processes, whilethe IT department retains central control overinformation storage, disposition and security. Notonly does this speed and simplify collaborationby automating content-related activities, it offerscentralized control of records and ensures that datais consistent, reliable, useful and available. In thisway, standards and security are enforced, but noone is compelled to adopt an aggravating or timeconsumingnew practice that does not make sensefor a particular situation.Agile, intuitive ECM that balances central controlwith local flexibility helps institutions of higherlearning provide better service and respondrapidly and flexibly to changing conditions. Morespecifically, ECM enables colleges and universitiesto:• Facilitate disaster recovery.• Enhance business office efficiency.• Quickly disburse financial aid.• Centrally manage faculty records.• Guarantee student record security.• Automate accounts payable processing.• Facilitate facilities management.Facilitate Disaster RecoveryIt’s crucial for colleges and universities to plan andprepare for operational interruptions. Agile ECMplays a key part in disaster recovery planning,securing records and limiting the cost and effort ofsalvage and restoration.• Ensure that administrators, maintenanceemployees and local police and fire departmentscan instantly access critical documents—including building plans, E-sized drawings andmaintenance forms—via the Web in case of anemergency.• Protect against file loss and damage in the case ofa fire, flood, theft or other disaster.• Organize architectural drawings, schematicsand operations manuals by school so they’reeasily accessible in times of crisis.• Instantly reconstruct damaged or destroyedrepositories and provide immediate access toauthorized personnel.Monica Baccardax, IT project manager for theFaculty of Medicine at Dalhousie UniversityMedical School, notes that it was a huge relief tostaff “when they realized that our ECM systemserves as a backup should documents be destroyed.They no longer [had to] worry about losing paperdocuments.”Meanwhile, David Haugland, associate viceprovost at the University of Southern California(USC), explains that “Disaster recovery has reallybeen the catalyst for enterprise-wide adoption ofECM.”5
Enhance Business Office EfficiencyThe business office—responsible for recruitingnew faculty and staff, administering payroll,managing contracts and grants and dealing withcorrespondence—must deal with a large volume ofdocuments every day. Using agile ECM increasesefficiency and cuts costs by eliminating paper-basedprocesses, improving information accessibility anddecreasing the need to store paper documents.• Automate key business processes such as accountspayable processing, agenda management andcontract management, among others.• Improve staff productivity by removing the needfor time-consuming manual filing.• Increase transparency by providing a securepublic portal that grants vendors, reporters andother interested parties with access toinformation.• Digitize and barcode timesheets for easy storageand retrieval.• Free up space for faculty offices or classrooms byeliminating the need for file cabinets.• Cut costs by decreasing the need for overnightshipping and mailing.The Chancellor’s Office at a large university inSouthern California scans, indexes and distributesthe university’s incoming mail using an agileECM system, giving approximately 150 staff andfaculty members across campus instant access torelevant items. The university’s communicationscoordinator notes that mail gets to recipientsmuch faster than it did when people had to deliverhard copies around campus by hand. She alsoappreciates the fact that the ECM system allowsreaders to annotate documents so that otherrecipients can quickly see if there is any follow-upaction that needs to be taken.Spotlight on Accounts Payable ProcessingIn the Chancellor’s Office at California State University, the accounting department uses the businessprocess management (BPM) tools in its agile ECM suite to automate accounts payable processing asfollows:• An invoice is scanned into the system.• Laserfiche Workflow automatically routes it to an approver, who receives notification via e-mail.• Approvers access the invoice by clicking on the link in the e-mail, opening their Approver Folders inLaserfiche and double clicking on the invoice.• After reviewing the invoice, approvers provide payment information (or explain why payment is denied)by inserting sticky notes with purchase order and/or chartfield information.• Using a drop-down menu, approvers either approve or deny payment.• Workflow then automatically routes the invoice back to the A/P technicians.• Laserfiche Quick Fields extracts index field data from the invoice. An integration with the university’sA/P system allows Laserfiche to autopopulate additional fields, eliminating the need for manual dataentry into Laserfiche.“Laserfiche is very user friendly, and the automation saves our staff a lot of time,” says Terry Hamilton,the former A/P manager who served as the project lead in USC’s Chancellor’s Office.“One huge advantage of Laserfiche over other ECM systems,” Hamilton adds, “is that it is very easy forsystem administrators to add template fields, which adds a lot of flexibility to adapt to changes in theway we process our invoices. Laserfiche also tracks changes to documents and keeps a record of whohas seen or worked on any given invoice, increasing the level of control we have over document security.”6
Page 1 and 2: ECM Agility for Higher EducationHar
Page 3 and 4: Table of ContentsIntroduction .....
Page 5 and 6: To mitigate these conflicts and dem
Page 7: ECM at Work on CampusECM has many b
Page 12 and 13: Agile ECM Administration: What the
Page 15 and 16: A Simple Shared Services Maturity M
Page 18 and 19: The Laserfiche Institute teaches st

ECM Agility for Higher Education - Laserfiche Shared Service ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?