Transcripts play an important role in many different school processes. Evaluating and admitting new students, determining financial aid eligibility, confirming a student’s graduation readiness. This data is part of the life blood of higher education.
When you know just how critical these documents are, you understandably want to handle them with care. Many universities default to processing them manually. But this requires staff to invest painstaking hours reading, transcribing, and managing transcripts.
It might seem like the most effective way to get the information you need while protecting sensitive student information. However, this hands-on effort hinders your staff, your students, and your bottom line.
Paper Problems: Why Manual Transcript Processing Doesn’t Make the Grade
Focusing on the downsides of manual transcript processing on your personnel is tempting. Rightfully so. This labor-intensive approach takes a toll on their time, energy, and focus.
“It's tedious to copy all the lines from a transcript into another application,” explains Scott Craig, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Softdocs. "That work is eye-glazingly mundane. It prevents your staff from focusing on tasks of higher value, like making program recommendations or serving more students."
Employees aren’t the only ones who experience drawbacks from the inefficient handling of transcripts. Students also feel the effects.
Students often find themselves waiting for decisions or directions from your institution. Many of those decisions -- admission, graduation eligibility, and financial aid -- hinge on the information locked up in their transcript.
More efficient transcript processing means quicker decisions and, as a result, a better student experience.
Efficient, Effective, and Experience-Driven: Softdocs’ AI-Powered Transcript Processing
The “old school” way of handling transcripts just doesn't cut it anymore. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce Softdocs’ new AI-powered transcript processing, built with your school in mind.
Softdocs Intelligent Transcript Processing (ITP) removes the pain from manual transcript processing. Using generative AI, ITP is purpose-built for education to interpret transcript content in a human-like pattern. It reads fields and tables to parse information like class names, credit hours, and grades into extract structured data. That data is then available as JSON or XML, or integrated directly.
Although that sounds complex, ITP is easy to use by admissions, enrollment, and financial aid staff.
“We interviewed hundreds of customers and looked at thousands of examples of building this solution,” Scott says. “We designed the user interface based on the work our customers need to accomplish using their feedback and input. We designed it for them and with them.”
That means no steep learning curve, and no duct-taping or jerry-rigging things to make it work for your higher ed institution.
At Softdocs, we approach AI as a user experience and not as a technology. That means you benefit from faster workflows, fewer errors, and more time for student support, with zero waiting on IT.
How Is Generative AI Different from Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?
The high volumes and manual labor of processing official transcripts isn’t a new challenge. It has long been a slow-going struggle in higher education.
Because of this, plenty of technology companies have introduced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as a solution. OCR scans documents and converts printed text into digital characters that computers can understand.
But OCR is imperfect. Not all transcripts look the same or adhere to the same formatting or document structure. An OCR solution needs a new template for each type of transcript. This helps the solution extract information accurately.
But if a system requires hundreds of example templates to automate the process, it doesn’t save much time. Or reduce the administrative burden.
Even with prescriptive templates, OCR does not understand the context of the information. It simply recognizes individual characters and digitizes them. Softdocs ITP uses generative AI that “reads” the transcript like a human. It understands complex tables, or text split across pages.
You don’t need to create and manage an ongoing roster of templates. Softdocs' AI-powered transcript processing transforms your admissions, enrollment, and financial aid workflows. From manual and monotonous to accurate and automated.
AI With Integrity: How We Safeguard Your Students, Staff, and Systems
AI offers promise for colleges and universities. But there is uncertainty about how these tools safeguard sensitive student data.
Data security, regulatory compliance, and customer trust underpin every product decision at Softdocs. Using AI is not a light or arbitrary decision. Our goal is to create real value for your students and staff without relinquishing control of crucial data. Our AI-powered transcript processing is:
- Secure: Transcripts include a lot of personally identifiable information (PII). “We must steward that information responsibly,” Scott says. Softdocs does not store any transcript or personal data to train the system. Your student data is always private and protected.
- Compliant: All Softdocs products comply with FERPA regulations, so you can benefit from streamlined workflows without risking privacy breaches.
- Transparent: AI can be a black box, but that’s not our philosophy here at Softdocs. “We’re trying to make AI explainable and transparent to the people using it every day,” explains Scott. “We’re thinking about user-centered innovation and ethical design. Our customers will know what’s behind the AI.”
- Accessible: “We view responsible AI as also being cost responsible,” says Scott. We believe that small, rural colleges deserve access to this technology just as much as a flagship university. We want to deploy AI that’s lightweight, modular, and affordable for all types of schools.
- Scalable: Our partnership with AWS enables us to scale the AI service to maintain high performance. Plus we have access to the latest innovative technologies and models. Our customers get enterprise value and scale that’s much more cost-effective.
- Supportive: Automated transcript processing does take monotonous work off your staff’s plate. But our end goal is to to support (not substitute) your employees. “We don’t automate decisions, we automate the work,” Scott explains. “Our AI is highlighting, recommending, or summarizing, but humans stay in control of it.”
Time to Graduate from Manual Work
Manual transcript processing slows your staff, delays important student decisions, and drains resources. You'd rather spend that time and effort improving the student experience. For schools that are stretched thin, there's never been a better time to graduate from manual workflows.
The future of transcript processing starts with Softdocs. We built our solution specifically for schools to process transcripts faster and more accurately with no manual hassle. Like the rest of the Softdocs Platform, ITP provides real results. It does this without sacrificing security, compliance, or user experience.
Here's a quick demo of Softdocs Intelligent Transcript Processing:
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