Admissions office shifts to paperless system
As fall approaches, so does the start of the 2007-08 application season in the Office of Admissions. But this year will be like no other as the undergraduate admissions office has implemented a document imaging system: They are going paperless.
Admissions has always been a paper-based process, involving a great deal of paper. At UW–Madison, there are more than 30,000 applications processed each year. An average application is comprised of 13 sheets of paper. Each application is touched a minimum of four times as it moves from the mailroom to the processing staff to counselors and throughout the office. That’s 1.5 million pieces of paper routed each year. And that number doesn’t even take into account what happens once the paper files leave the Red Gym and go to Student Orientation, Advising and Registration (SOAR) and ultimately campus academic advising offices.
The admissions office is streamlining the process and employing cutting-edge imaging technology to move beyond this million-page paper shuffle. Following a yearlong research and development project that included site visits, vendor research, and a great deal of collaboration within the Division of Enrollment Management and across campus, the office is now in the process of launching its full imaging implementation.
ImageNow and PeopleSoft will be used to capture documents, link them to student records, and retrieve them for review. There are many benefits:
- Alleviate the time-consuming inefficiencies of manually filing and retrieving documents
- Eliminate the cost a space issues associated with maintaining paper-based processes
- Facilitate one-click and simultaneous access to student documents for admissions staff members, as well as additional university stakeholders
- Simplify the existing paper-based workflow
Although the move to imaging has huge impacts on the Office of Admissions and its processes, there are also important opportunities and impacts for campus at large. Having the ability to access admission files can lead to increased collaboration with partner offices such as athletics, AAP and TRIO, and various honors and scholarship committees.
That being said, there are important technology, access, security, cost and policy issues to be resolved before the entire campus can share in the benefits expected as a result of imaging. The Division of Enrollment Management, led by Vice Provost Joanne Berg, is leading these campus discussions.
In the meantime, the Division of Enrollment Management will offer ImageNow software training sessions starting this fall to meet downstream user needs. As the sessions are scheduled and more details are available, the admissions office will communicate directly with impacted units.