The rising number of students applying to colleges and universities and fierce competition to attract top applicants are driving institutions to revamp their admissions processes. Institutions are leveraging process automation solutions to reduce administrative burden on staff and provide more modernized, efficient, and responsive services to prospective students.
The University of Mary Washington (UMW), a public university with a student population of approximately 4,400, found that the increased volume of applications combined with their largely paper-based process was a customer service nightmare. Determined to meet this challenge head-on, the university implemented Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to reengineer their admissions process.
Accelerating Admissions
Previously, the undergraduate admissions process was very manual and cumbersome. Applications and supplemental documents had to be printed and compiled in a manila folder that would then be physically carried to different territory managers for review. Students were not notified of their application status until the very end, which resulted in numerous calls to the front desk to confirm receipt of documents, and staff had little visibility to track where a document was in the process.
With the newly implemented system, the university has been able to drastically improve the agility and effectiveness of the admissions process. Laserfiche Workflow takes the applications, which are collected through an online portal, and routes them through the various levels of review before pushing data into the Banner student information system. The increased transparency and reduction in manual work have enabled staff to better respond to student enquiries and spend more time on core responsibilities.
"The phone used to ring constantly with students asking about the status of their application; it was an extremely inefficient use of staff time to search a file for a missing document," says Kimberley Buster-Williams, vice president for enrollment management at UMW. "Now we just direct a student to their portal."
Transformative Change
The new paperless system has transformed operations in the admissions department, resulting in the following benefits for UMW:
- New application processing time has been reduced from one month to a few days.
- Phone calls to the front desk have dropped by 50 percent, as students can now view the status of their application, along with any missing documents, online.
- Territory managers can now review applications from anywhere on their mobile devices as they are not tied to their desks.
The increased operational efficiency has empowered staff members to focus on personal outreach and customer service to prospective students. Even student workers, who used to spend hours tediously filing paperwork, are now being used as a recruiting tool to make phone calls to prospective students. The digitization of admissions operations allows Buster-Williams and her team to better serve prospective students, supporting the institution's overall growth initiative.
Click here to see Laserfiche for higher education in action.
Grace Ding is a Software Marketing Specialist at Laserfiche.