Making the Grade: Common ECM Challenges for School Districts

School districts implement enterprise content management (ECM) for similar reasons. Typically, they are inundated by great volumes of paper. Physical storage is a challenge, as is efficient management of student and administrative records.

As the world transitions to electronic processes, paper—offering a unique set of challenges—can seem like an anachronism. Documents are often duplicated, misfiled, or lost. When colleges, universities, and stakeholders have the expectation of receiving student and administrative information in digital format, converting paper records on the fly can be time-consuming.

As a result, organizations are recognizing the importance of enterprise content management (ECM). A high-performance ECM system has the ability to integrate with legacy and line of business applications, allowing school districts to centralize all of their content in a single electronic repository. ECM helps school districts comply with privacy and record retention regulations. In addition, it makes student records, faculty files, agendas, minutes, payroll reports, invoices, purchase orders, etc. available to authorized personnel at the click of a mouse.

As you begin your transition away from paper, be aware of some of the challenges that are common to many school districts. Successful ECM implementation often depends on an awareness (and subsequent prevention) of potential pitfalls.

Backfile conversion

Most school districts have been dependent on paper for decades. And in order to comply with government regulations, records have to be retained long after students have been matriculated. Paper storage of these records can be expensive. At the same time, it can foster concerns about disaster recovery.

As your school district transitions from paper to electronic processes, it would be worthwhile to implement a strategy for back file conversion. Considerations might include:

• Should we implement a cutoff point?

It is usually not cost-effective to convert all of your backfiles to digital media. With respect to backfile conversion, it can be helpful to come up with a cutoff point for each type of record that you are required to retain. As active documents come into the schools, make a determination as to whether they need to be kept. Documents that will be retained should be imported into the ECM system as soon as possible. This will allow districts to receive immediate benefits from the system. Anything that you don’t need to keep should be destroyed.

• What should be converted? What shouldn’t be converted?

Try to identify—for each type of record that you are required to retain—what your motivation is for retention. Obviously, regulatory compliance drives many records retention strategies. For other records, would you benefit from backfile conversion? Records such as blueprints, minutes, contracts, payroll, certifications, and background checks can be easily located, accessed, and retrieved if they are converted to digital media.

• Should we outsource our backfile conversion?

Many school districts simply don’t have the resources to do a backfile conversion inhouse. Your ECM vendor should be able to provide you with outsourcing options that complement your budget and your infrastructure.

Whether your backfile conversion takes place on-site or is outsourced, you should be able to convert your paper to electronic media without interrupting your daily operations.

Integration

As you evaluate potential ECM software, carefully consider integration capabilities. A high-performance solution should offer the flexibility and extensibility to expand the functionality of your existing software systems and increase interoperability. School districts rely on different software systems to operate smoothly. By integrating these systems with ECM, you make information more accessible and processing more efficient.

Don’t consider an ECM solution unless it offers a solution that is underwritten with Web services. Web services are a universal standard that allows your ECM system to communicate and integrate with your existing software environment. This will enable your users to access documents and other information from within their familiar software applications. Web services improve functionality and information access without adding complexity.

A robust ECM system should have the ability to integrate with your business and registration software systems as well as your student and administrative records and software. Your vender should not charge you additional fees for this ability. At the same time, your system should be able to integrate with websites and portals. It can increase transparency and make information accessible both internally and to the public.

Ease of use

Often, a successful migration to paperless processing is dependent on one factor: is your prospective ECM system easy to use? An ECM system should be intuitive, with point-and-click or drag-and-drop functionality. School district employees are often overworked as it is. Even a system that is designed to simplify their lives can be prone to rejection if it involves learning complicated new software.

Accessibility should be completely web-based to minimize multiple logins. Your ECM solution should be easy to use not only for staff and administrators, but for parents, taxpayers, students, and other stakeholders.

Change management

Involve your staff in your transition from paper processes to electronic well before you implement an ECM system. Ideally, you should solicit your staff’s input regarding process improvement as soon as you begin to plan your transition. Assemble a project team comprised of end users, management, decision – makers, and other representatives from across your enterprise. It is imperative that you gain a gras of your processes—and how they might be improved via automation—prior to implementing process improvement software. Otherwise, you run the risk of duplicating your existing inefficiencies with technology.

Involving staff is, without question, one of the easiest ways to get a picture of your processing methods. Staff involvement has an additional advantage in that it allows people across the enterprise to become invested in the new system. End-users can see firsthand that ECM technology will simplify their lives—not burden them with complicated new software programs to learn.

Improving services to students and stakeholders

ECM implementation offers school districts immediate financial returns, enabling them to minimize their use of paper and other resources that are associated with printing. Storage costs and disaster recovery issues are also mitigated with a transition away from paper. Nonetheless, it is important to bear in mind your ultimate goal: improved services to students, parents, taxpayers, and other stakeholders.

Talk with your vendor to find ways to use your ECM system to simplify your back-office processes as well as your administrative operations. A high-performance system has the flexibility and extensibility to ensure that you improve efficiency throughout your entire enterprise. It is one of the rare investments that pays you back consistently and continuously.

For more information or to schedule a demonstration, please Contact DocFinity now.