SMU’s College Access Programs office within the Simmons school have long helped first-generation, underrepresented, and low-income students achieve their dreams of a college education here on the Hilltop since 1966. Including TRIO programs like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars, this office has previously handled thousands of student records and grant financial data largely with paper forms and manual storage methods. Both the College Access office and OIT staffer Keven Jones saw a unique opportunity to leverage OIT resources and College Access’ trove of useful data to create a digital document management repository for past and future students and initiatives.
Using the AdminImages platform used in other parts of campus, Keven worked closely with College Access Programs to design a document imaging system that would make work easier while also working to match their current workflow for minimal work interruptions. Scanning stations were configured in the office to help ingest and process paper documents into the system, and conversations between the College Access teams and Keven continue to further enhance the platform as documents are collected to ensure the best performance for each team. So far, the College Access Programs office has scanned 40,000 documents in their first two months using the system!
“I think it’s gonna be a whole new world for [College Access Programs] once it’s all in there.” States Keven in a conversation earlier this year. “AdminImages is their first integration with an OIT application, so this is a game changer.” Once complete, what used to be a massive collection of paper documents will become digitized, searchable, and actionable data that allows each College Access initiative to more easily utilize this information to achieve its goals of eliminating student barriers to higher education.
If you think OIT can help you wrangle your documents into a digital solution, let’s start the conversation!
