How Richland One Improved Visibility to Make a Critical K

Richland School District One (“Richland One”) serves more than 21,000 students and nearly 5,000 staff across 50+ campuses in urban, suburban, and rural communities.

Aligned with the district’s mission to transform lives through education, Richland One’s IT Department focuses on using technology to improve service, increase efficiency, and make better use of district resources.

The team’s goals include modernizing processes, improving access for staff and students, building internal capacity, and supporting a safe, innovative learning environment.

Transitioning from Legacy Systems

Before adopting Softdocs, Richland One used OnBase for document management and SharePoint during the 2024–2025 school year.

As the district evaluated its long-term approach to document storage and workflow management, the team focused on strengthening continuity and access over time. This included making sure the district could consistently retrieve records during staffing changes and preserve internal knowledge related to system configuration.

A district infrastructure hardware migration accelerated the planned transition. During that migration, the virtual machines hosting the OnBase environment became corrupted. This was not an OnBase issue, but it reinforced the decision to move storage and workflows into a modern platform.

Softdocs migrated data from the legacy system into Content on the district’s behalf, and the legacy system has since been fully retired.

Focusing on Visibility and High-Impact Workflows

Even with larger modernization efforts underway, several of Richland One’s most important workflows still relied on paper and manual routing. This made it hard for teams to see where requests were, who had them, and what was needed next.

To start closing those gaps, the district rolled out Softdocs with two high-impact workflows: DRAPE (Digital Requisition Acquisition Process Expedited) and Legal Agreements.

Since DRAPE touches multiple teams and directly affects technology purchases, the district focused on it early to improve visibility and turnaround.

How DRAPE Worked Before

With DRAPE, the district used a PDF process familiar in many K–12 environments. Staff often printed the form, scanned it, and emailed it, which made it difficult to track progress across departments.

Shared folders and spreadsheets helped in some cases, but they didn’t provide consistent, shared visibility. When requests moved as paper packets, departments reviewed them one at a time. If multiple groups needed to weigh in, timelines stretched even further.

What we found over the years is people like to set up rules for emails, and these DRAPEs would sit in folders. We couldn’t see them. We would put things on a network drive, but not everybody could edit it at the same time. The visibility just wasn’t there. When it moved as a paper packet, only one person could see it at a time and it could take up to eight weeks to pass something on. That’s just wasted time.
Dr. Candice L. Coppock, Executive Director, IT Department Richland School District One

In day-to-day operations, DRAPE often moved slowly, and tracking it was even harder:

Long processes: DRAPE reviews could span multiple weeks, even months.
100 days: In one instance, a request remained in a supervisor queue for a hundred days before reaching IT, highlighting how difficult it was to track progress without shared visibility.
4-8 weeks → 1 week: When submitters provided everything needed up front, the team reduced DRAPE turnaround significantly in the new system.

Challenges: Paper-Based Routing, Bottlenecks, and Limited Visibility

DRAPE highlighted the visibility challenge across departments, but it wasn’t the only process affected.

Before Softdocs, the district managed several workflows through paper forms and manual routing. Teams printed documents, routed them for wet signatures, and followed up to confirm approvals. Because multiple departments participated in the review process, requests often moved through a series of handoffs.

As work progressed, teams spent additional time determining where a request was in the process and what steps remained. Without a shared view of workflow status, tracking progress required checking emails, folders, or paper files across departments.

We alleviated bottlenecks where a document would have to go step by step. We also eliminated the logistics of figuring out where the bottlenecks were, having to track back paper or an Adobe document and say, ‘OK, who had it last? Who’s sitting on it? What does it need?’ Getting rid of paper is huge.
Wendy Hahne, System Analyst, IT Department Richland School District One

Results with Softdocs

According to the district, the goals were straightforward: reduce paper, streamline approvals, minimize repetitive work, and improve visibility for compliance and reporting.

With digital routing and reporting, the team now runs reports to track volume, see where requests sit, and understand how long items remain in each step.

Now I can run reports. I can see how many DRAPEs… I can see how many Legal Agreements… And I can also see how long it’s been sitting with someone. When people say, ‘These things are tied up in IT,’ we can say, ‘No, it’s been in the supervisor’s queue for 100 days. It never made it to IT.’ People can see where it gets stuck, which gives everyone transparency.
Dr. Candice L. Coppock, Executive Director, IT Department Richland School District One

Richland One also saw faster DRAPE turnaround when requesters submitted everything needed at the start. In that best-case scenario, DRAPE moved more quickly from beginning to end.

In a perfect world… it could take weeks from beginning to end… and now it could take a week if they had everything submitted… I’ve had a [DRAPE] in our new system approved in a week… It cuts the time down significantly.
Dr. Candice L. Coppock, Executive Director, IT Department Richland School District One

More than Speed: Centralized Documentation and Continuity

Improving routing speed was important, but visibility helped in other ways too. As the team increased workflow visibility, they centralized how the district stores supporting documentation.

They used to save them in their OneDrive. If they left the district, we didn't have those documents. Now we have this database, so if we’re audited, it's easy to say, ‘Yes… here’s the folder… here’s the resource.’ We have a database to go back and see what people submitted. It’s also helped our technology support specialists. Now they can log in and say, ‘Oh yes, this school has it approved, but this school doesn’t.’ That right there is a big win for us.
Dr. Candice L. Coppock, Executive Director, IT Department Richland School District One

Previously, staff often saved documents in individual OneDrive locations, which limited continuity when employees changed roles or left the district. With a centralized place to store and access records, the district can now find documentation more consistently and support audits and reviews, including web accessibility compliance due diligence.

Early Impact at a Glance

Time-in-queue visibility, including a real example of a request sitting 100 days before reaching IT
Centralized documentation for continuity through staffing changes
Audit-ready access to supporting records, including web accessibility compliance due diligence
Fewer status checks and follow-ups, with a shared view of workflow progress
Tech support can verify approvals directly, including confirming approvals by school
Legacy system was fully retired after Softdocs migrated data into Content

Beyond IT, Richland One extended workflow visibility to school-based technology support. Technicians can now check whether a resource has been approved directly in the system and confirm approvals school by school. This shared access helps staff answer questions quickly and reduces the need to call around or search through folders to confirm status.

Implementation: Built for Iteration and Scale

Richland One brought IT, Legal Services, and Teaching & Learning together to launch key workflows and build shared ownership from the start. The team stood up Legal Agreements and revised DRAPE through cross-functional collaboration, then continued refining both as staff began using the system day-to-day.

On the IT side, administrators review workflow charts regularly, monitor where requests sit in the process, and update routing and configuration as needs evolve.

Lessons learned by the team:

Set clearer expectations earlier about roles, timelines, and ownership
Involve end users sooner to reduce the learning curve
Require all submitters and approvers to attend training before access to the system is granted

On a daily basis, we look at the workflow charts to see where things are and if there are any problems. If anything needs to change, we’re making those changes. The routing functionality is truly amazing. The integration functionality is also very flexible and powerful.
Oleg Uvarov, System Analyst, IT Department Richland School District One

What’s Next: Travel Approvals & Asset Visibility

With DRAPE and Legal Agreements in place, Richland One is prioritizing next-step processes where visibility and turnaround time directly shape day-to-day decisions for staff.

Request for Travel Authorization (RTA)

Today, travel approvals are handled through email and paper. Staff can’t book travel until approvals return, and delays can mean missing lower-cost airfare and hotel windows.

I can’t make my flight reservations until I get the document back. If I don’t get it back for four weeks, the cheaper flights and the cheaper hotel are gone. I can’t track it. It’s not visible.
Dr. Candice L. Coppock , Executive Director, IT Department Richland School District One

Technology Asset Purchasing Visibility

The team is also exploring ways to improve visibility into technology asset purchasing so staff can answer common status questions without person-to-person follow-up.

Our asset purchasing manager gets asked all the time, ‘Where are my printers? Where’s my scanner?’ For him to track that back from person to person is really hard.
Wendy Hahne , System Analyst, IT Department Richland School District One

The district also has requests to digitize additional workflows and content management, including Special Education, Operations Requests, ERP System Access Requests, Time Off Requests, Priority Student Portfolio, and New Course Requests.

Richland One plans to scale through a phased rollout, a standardized process for requesting new workflows, and ongoing training and support.

Adoption in K–12, Momentum Comes from Proof

Richland One’s experience reinforced a simple truth: adoption accelerates when people see the benefit firsthand. Once staff experience a faster, clearer workflow, the demand for training grows organically.

You just have to show people how beneficial it is and then they start spreading the word. When people start sharing their stories, ‘Oh my gosh, this is now only taking me 20 minutes to do versus… two weeks,’ then the word of mouth starts, and now everybody wants the training.
Dr. Candice L. Coppock , Executive Director, IT Department Richland School District One

Richland One also accelerated adoption by aligning rollout timing and expectations.

People were told they needed to have the training to get access, and that DRAPEs would only be accepted through the new system. It sped up the learning curve. That’s your best advertisement… if something succeeds and people see that, it’s much easier.
Wendy Hahne , System Analyst, IT Department Richland School District One

Building a Foundation for a Fully Digital District

Richland One built early momentum by digitizing two high-impact workflows, DRAPE and Legal Agreements, and establishing shared visibility, centralized documentation, and reporting that shows where requests sit and how long they remain in each step.

Richland One is already applying the same approach to additional priorities, with a growing pipeline of workflows identified across the district.

The long-term direction is straightforward: continue scaling digital workflows across departments to strengthen transparency, maintain consistent documentation, and support efficient service for staff and students.

Location

Columbia, SC

Size of organization

21,000+ students and nearly 5,000 staff across 51 sites and centers

How Richland One Improved Visibility to Make a Critical K–12 Approval Process Faster

Transitioning from Legacy Systems