Manual processes and an increasingly large administrative burden for admitting students, organizing schedules, providing qualified financial aid, and even the day-to-day operations of running your school, come with a substantial time and financial cost.
In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics has studied this:
The largest expense category was the combined category of academic support, student services, and institutional support, which includes expenses associated with non-instructional activities, such as admissions, student activities, libraries, and administrative and executive activities. These combined expenses constituted 62 percent of total expenses at private nonprofit 2-year institutions, 54 percent of total expenses at private for-profit 2-year institutions, and 66 percent of total expenses at private for-profit 4-year institutions.
Digital automation is the most effective way to reduce expense without compromising quality or service. Freeing up work hours in the registrar’s office and other departments empowers your teams to focus on serving students and working on more meaningful projects. Not day-to-day data entry and paperwork.
How Automation Benefits Higher Education Teams
Manufacturing tasks can be automated. You can do the same with administrative and operational tasks across campus.
For example, workflow automation software can use information collected from an online form and direct the inquiry to the appropriate contact or actually complete the request without human intervention by triggering changes to an account and subsequent approvals.
And its services are always online: automation software can operate 24/7 and handle as many tasks as students and staff throw at it.
Ultimately, automation within higher education can:
- Reduce the risk of human error: Data can be imported from other integrated systems, without typos or misreading of information. Step are executed without delays with no risk of an essential step being missed.
- Mitigate burnout: Administrators and admin staff at all levels feel the pressure of high admissions and high turnover. Tedious, manual tasks can be overwhelming. Especially on top of an already heavy workload. Automation can reduce many repetitive and tedious tasks to mitigate burnout and improve morale.
- Increase productivity: When multi-step workflows switch from human operators to automated background work, employees can apply time to projects that improve your school. This fosters a culture of continuous improvement and long-term growth instead of struggling to keep pace with day-to-day noise.
How to Evaluate Automation and E-Forms Tools
Understanding how valuable automation can be to your organization is the first step. Vetting software options is equally critical. As you begin your search, look for answers to these five questions:
Streamline everyday finance & business operations by leveraging workflow automation. In this webinar we’ll provide quick tips for managing invoices, receipts and other correspondence, as well as how to introduce paperless AP processing, drastically reducing turnaround for orders and requests.Join us as we take a deep dive into how your department can restructure manual processes into efficient, automated workflows. Duration: 45 minutes.
Where Do You Start?
Once you have a shortlist of software that answers those questions, it’s time to see which software performs against the functions of your organization. Because students are the priority of your organization, prioritize software that addresses student-related tasks. These should include tasks in these departments:
- Registrar’s office
- Admissions offices
- Financial aid teams
Check out these case studies to see how our automation software solutions have powered more efficient processes:
Additional Campus-Wide Key Processes
Universities and other higher education organizations have more than student-focused operations. You have the same administrative burdens as general corporations and non-profit institutions. Highly manual tasks and repetitive workflows exist throughout every part of running your organization, so look for an automation platform that also powers tasks for the following departments:
- Human Resources (HR)
- Finance and Purchasing
Watch these case study videos to see how our software can streamline performance in these auxiliary departments:
Facilitate Productivity With Automated Workflows at Your Higher Education Institution
Adding e-forms, automated processes, and easier document management processes can shave hours off your teams’ workloads across your organizations. It can also reduce burnout, increase performance, and improve student experiences. See more about how Softdocs can automate your online workflows through our intuitive platform.
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