Document Scanning Blog

As an “institute for higher education”, it is impossible to imagine an admissions office without stacks of paper on every desk, and administrative offices are not far behind on the “paper trail”.  But with law offices, dental offices, hospitals and financial services businesses realizing efficiencies by going “paperless”, it seems like higher education is taking a bit longer to make the transition. One reason lag may be the fact that higher education offices are dealing with so many different external parties while also maintaining on-campus activities and all aspects of student life. 

Every document scanning project has to start somewhere though, and even an organization as complex as a university can find a way to eliminate mounds of unnecessary paperwork.  In a college environment, there are necessary evils, some of which may never be entirely eliminated.  These include financial aid forms, tuition bills, transcripts, contracts and order forms.  But with so many schools cutting their operating budgets, a document management program can save a university time, money and resources. 

For example, just the ability to implement an online tuition payment system will cut down on printing, postage and administrative time.  Sending out class schedules online and having students print them at home is another savings.  Even the application process has been digitized, and many schools have stopped accepting paper forms. 

With so many elements of a school’s administration going digital, it is important to have a back-end system in place to ensure the documents are accessible yet secure.  For example, a student’s personal records would have a different security level than their class schedule and syllabi.  In the admissions office, their transcript may be viewed by more administrators than their financial aid application, and so on. Implementing a full-scale document scanning management system for higher education institutions may seem like an arduous task, but the end result will be a much leaner and more efficient operation for school administrators, faculty and students.