Recent posts about education

No matter their size, private/public designation, endowment, or geography, all colleges and universities are experiencing major changes due to COVD-19. While large universities have received the most attention for the challenges they’re experiencing, it’s often smaller schools that are hit hardest. 

Faced with limited budgets and fewer resources, small colleges are already dealing with the challenges of meeting enrollment demands, effectively servicing students and being nimble enough to adapt to change. With major disruptions for all schools because of COVID-19, smaller schools have to make moves to be prepared for navigating uncertain territory. 

There is no question that smaller schools are an essential part of higher education. They usually have better student-to-faculty ratios, offer specialized academic tracks and are better options for students who want to be part of a smaller environment. 

Small liberal arts colleges emphasize a broad array of academic disciplines, while some regional schools focus more on training for professional services like fire services, nursing and other service-related professions. 

Higher education workflows address key technology needs

The changes that stem from the coronavirus have thrown everyone for a loop. Schools are having to build solutions immediately to address current needs and they are developing plans for an uncertain future. The major difference between big and small schools in the current education landscape comes down to technology and how it’s applied to solve these problems. 

However, budget restrictions of smaller schools prevent massive student relationship management systems and armies of software developers that spin up solutions as needed. While scale of technology may always be an issue, the approach to problem-solving can be addressed by schools of any size. Workflow can be the defining factor for schools being agile because workflow is foundational to how problems are solved, irrespective of the technology that’s used.

Establishing a workflow & process management foundation

Effective workflow, however, is more than just a series of tactical activities. It aligns with user intent and is applied to the unique technology functionality required of a college’s students, faculty and other stakeholders. 

It also helps to create behaviors that maximize usage and deliver meaning to users. This is especially important when higher education is changing behaviors for things like online learning, applying for financial aid, hiring and offering new types of student services. 

A workflow foundation will also help when even those new solutions change as schools change regulations to adapt to new governmental and health and safety requirements.

The three most critical aspects of aligning workflow, technology and university needs are ease of use, solution context, and communication. Effective workflow ensures that all these elements are met so that users have not just a more efficient experience, but one they can begin to rely on to consistently meet their needs irrespective of the rate and type of change they will experience in the short- and near-term. Let’s look more closely at how these factors can support the needs of smaller schools:

Workflow & process management simplifies digital experiences

Process Director provides a great example of how ease of use can translate into effective solutions. It enables the creation of sophisticated, low-code digital applications that take into account the necessary data and workflow sources on the back-end, and considers how users on the front-end will actually use the app. 

By being able to create simple apps that integrate relevant information, including smart forms and processes, students can get the information they need and take action on things like class scheduling, financial aid, and other relevant events. The teams who build the apps benefit from Process Director’s agile approach to adapt as needed to increase adoption and productivity. 

While Process Director is easy to use for those who need to build applications rapidly and continuously meet changing needs.

Workflow & process management provides context for data

Small college IT teams use Process Director to optimize the use of data so that the applications they create help students engage and complete tasks with limited disruption to their schedules. 

Process Director helps direct the way that organizations surface and orient data through interactive forms and workspaces. Just as human interaction is complex, Process Director looks at the workflows in applications not as a linear phenomenon, but as a continuously shared collection of usable elements that allow for context-based structural changes, last moment decisions, and individualized attention depending on each circumstance.

The case management approach inherent in Process Director also helps greatly when delivering applications that integrate historical data on students (transcripts, payments, scholarships). With navigable data that can be filtered for omission or inclusion depending on the situation, applications can adapt as the students’ situations change and evolve.

This approach supplies students with applications that provide them with what they need when they need it, all without forcing them to search outside the context of the case to find answers.

The Importance of Communication

Students and faculty are being bombarded with emails, texts, direct messages and a host of other types of communication in order to get the information they need. However, that information can go unnoticed if it doesn’t fit with how they are accustomed to consuming news and alerts. Schools need to ensure that students see important messages, but also create ways for students to communicate back with them.

With capabilities that facilitate connecting and communicating across departments, Process Director can help schools collect applications, forms and data sources into a collective portal that delivers all student’s actionable needs into a single interface. That reduces response time and enhances the kind of communication students need in order to adapt to changes, stay on top of opportunities and always be current about how they can interact with their school.

Final thoughts

No school, irrespective of size, can meet the demands of the post-COVID-19 world on an application-by-application basis. Small schools that want to align their goals and processes to student behaviors will need to apply change through the use of smart workflow and processes. 

To serve these needs, Process Director provides digitally transformative and contextual education workflow solutions, facilitates efficient distribution of information and streamlines the monitoring and management of information.

Learn how colleges like Cal State Stanislaus and Ogden-Weber Technical are using process director and preparing for a post-COVID reopening. 

"There's no good time for a pandemic. But for admissions, this has got to be the worst time.”
- Jon Boeckenstedt, vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University

For millions of current and incoming college students, the financial, health, and social factors surrounding COVID-19 are causing them to change their higher education plans. As a result, college admissions and IT departments are going to have to change their normal processes to adapt to the needs of a whole new wave of college students.

Consider the findings from a recent poll about incoming college freshmen: One in six high-school seniors who expected to attend a four-year college full time before the coronavirus outbreak are now planning to embark on a different path in the fall of 2020. Three out of five students who still plan on attending college are seriously concerned about their ability to afford college.

The reality of all this uncertainty creates a huge workload for college admissions officials and IT leaders who will need to develop new software applications processes to address a variety of admissions issues, including:

• Enrollment deferment 
• Changing admissions requirements
• Communication with students
• Timelines and plans for reopening campuses, which includes facilities and scheduling

These are just some of the issues that schools are dealing with, none of which can be addressed in a simple fashion. For IT departments, the key is agility. Decisions are being made by school leadership on a daily basis which impacts enrollment, admissions for the fall semester and beyond. 

Low-code development starts with data, builds with process

University data and content is currently stored in a wide variety of applications. They range from the basic (spreadsheets and graphics) to complex (some data analytics solutions and massive ERP systems). All of that data serves a purpose, and in a time when colleges are moving quickly to create new and updated admissions and enrollment processes, the data has to be able to be called into use whenever and wherever it can be most applicable. Information is important, but using it in context with other data is where schools stand to be most effective. To do this requires being able to build software apps quickly and for specific purposes.

The best way to bring new applications to productive use is to reduce development time, and when addressing the changing landscape in response to COVID-19, speed is critical. To meet this challenge, low-code development has emerged as an efficient way to create software. It is a methodology and approach that uses reusable, pre-built components of code and applies them in a drag-and-drop fashion that simplifies the coding effort and accelerates the pace at which applications are built.

Rapid application development for the post-COVID university

The promise of low-code development is attained through speed, efficiency, and the democratization of technology. Business needs can be met through rapidly-built applications that can be created by non-programmers. All of a sudden, solutions can be created and put to use by those closest to business problems. At a time when the future is difficult to plan for, this level of agility will give college IT departments their best chance at delivering solutions for these unique times.

It’s easy to think of low-code as a rip-and-replace substitute for all application development, but in this case, it’s more about enabling university administrators to iterate on their changing admissions application requirements.  It also puts people who are closest to problems in a position to create or at least initiate solutions. But much of the ability to do that corresponds to understanding admissions needs, changing academic requirements, and the available data the school can work with. Even though low-code is much easier than complex development, it still demands time, a plan, and trial-and-error. 

There is no one single system of record that can be used when changes are happening so quickly; colleges typically rely on a variety of different student information management and other types of enterprise planning apps. The key becomes, then, the ability to integrate data from those sources into custom-built apps to serve their changing needs. Speed will be critical to developing these new apps. Schools will not have time for traditional software development cycles, which means non-developers will have to be included in the process of scoping and building apps. 

Learn how colleges like Cal State Stanislaus and Ogden-Weber Technical are using process director and preparing for a post-COVID reopening. 

Changes happening now in higher education as a result of the coronavirus pandemic are undoubtedly having a major impact on students all across the country. The way they engage with classes and benefit from various services will undergo sweeping changes as social distancing becomes more normalized into every day human behavior. 

There have been hero-like efforts by many who have conceived and delivered short-term solutions; these are the people in IT who have had to integrate systems, build custom apps, and generally drive a completely new face of the university in record time. But their solutions are helping with changes that affect more than just students.

What many may not realize is this: for schools to remain viable and adhere to their mandates, they will need to change their HR practices in order to create a workforce that can deliver the next phase of higher education. To do that will require HR processes that enable them to hire, reassign, and manage the right people to deliver solutions for the new world of higher education.

Agility to meet changing HR needs in higher education

Higher education strategies for HR have typically been built around hiring that’s mapped to long-term growth plans. But in the face of COVID-19, these plans are largely thrown out the window while schools move rapidly to adapt to their new and changing needs. As a result, a new HR playbook must be created.

Some schools have established hiring freezes. Others have reduced staff who were performing outdated functions. Others recognize that they need people who can turn their campuses into innovative engines that can recreate what a university is going to be in the post-COVID world. For some, that means hiring for these roles, while for others, it means reassigning existing staff and faculty. For each of these situations, schools need to develop effective workflows for smooth transitions and ensure they have the staff they need to limit disruption.

All of these situations require some form of organizational orchestration which can be driven by effective workflow automation. At most schools, the goal is to do whatever is necessary to finish out the school year and maintain the effective delivery of classes. But forward-thinking colleges are not only delivering for the short-term. Long-term strategies can wait, but limiting disruption by deploying the right staff is a priority. But it takes more than a checklist to ensure that goals are met. 

Using workflow automation to meet immediate and long-term needs

Staffing changes involve many organizational and personal data. In order to create smooth transitions, these changes must be supported through data from HR information systems and financial applications. This enables a title change or reporting structure to become officially recognized and creates a clear view into an employee’s job description and responsibilities. It means that schools can reallocate employees where they can most be beneficial in meeting new challenges and sets up the college to be agile once a “new normal” begins to take shape. This is clearly important for the college - the HR team is able to quickly adapt as needed. But it also takes into account the issues of privacy of individual staff information.

To make this all happen requires a variety of forms, documents, requests, and decisions to be reviewed and acted on. In a normal environment, the reliance on paper forms and manual intervention for decision-making milestones might be tolerated. But with massive pressure to conserve money and be highly efficient during this time of great change, HR and IT teams have to pull together all these things into an integrated, rapidly moving set of workflows in record time. 

Many BP Logix higher education customers are already using Process Director to handle these types of issues. Schools like the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)  and Davis Applied Technology College (DATC), near Salt Lake City, cite their ability to be flexible and quickly develop new processes as major advantages of using Process Director’s workflow automation capabilities as core to their foundation.

With a limited budget and vague goals, all college HR and IT teams need to be able to innovate to hire, reassign, and perform other essential tasks related to having an efficiently operating workforce. Process Director delivers capabilities like workflow automation and lightweight application development functionality that enable higher education HR teams to do the following:

• Rapidly build processes and create forms to collect new and existing HR information housed in existing applications, and to be able to integrate that with updated information from the employees themselves.
• Create time-dependent milestones that use automated communication and workflow to ensure that the right decision-makers are included.
•  Efficient approval handling.
• Insight and visibility into all aspects of processes.

Workflow automation can intelligently apply relevant data from various applications and documents into a shareable profile of each employee. This case management approach provides clarity for all workflows that touch each employee so that important decisions that impact their working situation can be achieved faster and with greater context. Process Director also has native integration with popular HR systems like PeopleSoft and other enterprise apps which makes it easy for non-developer to build workflows with the full complement of various application modules that are relevant to employee management.

COVID-19 has clearly changed all aspects of higher education and will test the ability of university leaders to maintain the viability of their schools. When they are able to build the right school with the right people, colleges and universities will be prepared to meet the demands of the new normal. Through the application of workflow automation, colleges will be equipped to meet both the short-term changes and long-term HR demands required in our changing world.

Learn how colleges like Cal State Stanislaus and Ogden-Weber Technical are using process director and preparing for a post-COVID reopening. 

College students face a world that is far more complex than it was even 20 years ago. They must navigate more than only their academic environment; the world they’ve grown up in, and the path for a post-college life present challenges that have left many with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Without a doubt, this is a massive issue. Many administrators are applying innovative ways of helping students through individualized care, supported through effective approaches like case management.

Student Mental Health Trends

Emotional and mental health issues like depression and anxiety have become far more prevalent among today’s higher education students, with many feeling that these issues are among the biggest barriers to fully engaging and performing well in school. More than 16% of  students reported that depression had a negative impact on how they performed with academic and social issues, with anxiety impacting more than 24% of students. Mental illness is clearly affecting far more young people, so it’s important for schools to provide mental health support for their students and for students to have opportunities to seek the help they need.

The management of mental and behavioral health requires different processes and the coordination of many people. Effectively administering services has become more sophisticated and requires the input of a broader array of medical and university stakeholders, and more data from a variety of sources. The key is to focus these inputs and resources so they can deliver better outcomes for students in the form of treatment, medical care, intervention, or other avenues. The most effective way of achieving positive results is through applying a case management approach. This provides insights and context for each individual student who is receiving services and treatment.

Mental health case management has to incorporate strategies from multiple fields and departments across the institution. It includes social workers, psychology professionals, and medical doctors, and the information they provide about the student must be centrally collected and accessible so they can collaborate. Despite its complicated nature, best practices for behavioral health case management can be summarized by three guiding principles: individualized care, professional responsibility, and a comprehensive approach to treatment. Each of these is an umbrella under which many aspects of effective case management fall. Let’s look at these in more detail:

Individual student care: Case management takes into account that not all situations are the same. Effective case management must take each client’s unique combination of situations and needs into account. This means being able to pull relevant data from different data repositories to get a comprehensive picture of the student’s situation. It might include:

• Background: student demographics and personal information from administrative applications can provide a picture of the student’s family situation and support structure.
• Academic performance: information coming from grades, projects, and reviews may give insight into trends about where, and when, students have been both successful and unsuccessful academically.
• Medical history: university healthcare and insurance information will provide information about substance abuse, medications, or other factors that might contribute to students’ situations.

Professional responsibility: academic organizations are dealing with very sensitive information, so case managers and social workers need a special kind of discipline. The two most important factors in maintaining a disciplined and responsible approach is through, 1) effective documentation, and 2) patient privacy:

• Documentation: higher education health professionals and their support staff must maintain accurate, up-to-date records of their clients that are easily accessible when necessary, and can be used in processes that deliver services. While in the past that meant detailed, hand-written notes kept in a physical folder, the transition to digital patient records has facilitated more diligent documentation along with more streamlined coordination of care.
• Privacy: college and university healthcare providers have to abide by compliance mandates to protect student privacy. A case management approach can ensure guidelines so that patient information is only shared for specific needs and only with student permission. Those guidelines will be used to share information where necessary and permitted, and prevent data from getting into the wrong hands.

Comprehensive approach: successful behavioral health case management requires an understanding of all aspects of a student's life. The right case management solution will connect all relevant providers so as to better integrate clients' medical, social, educational, and vocational information and then apply that information into effective treatment. This treatment may come from university health services, or through contracted arrangements with other providers. But by coordinating through a single case management application, academic organizations have a much better way of achieving the kind of success that’s needed to address very serious problems, and help students become successful.

Case management is a powerful way to enable higher education professionals to be effective contributors to the successful delivery of student health. It also enables integration of relevant data, and timeline-driven workflows that can give professionals visibility into the best courses of action. Case management enables organizations to build and manage digital applications that coordinate the efforts of different groups, yet can connect them all to the same goals. This creates a powerful framework that helps university departments and the power of their IT stack to achieve truly powerful outcomes for students in need.

Process Director can be used to apply a case management approach for student mental health services. It allows schools to integrate data and documents from various applications into a shareable profile of students under care. This provides clarity for all workflows that touch the students during their treatment so that important decisions that impact their mental health can be achieved faster and with greater context.

There were more than 20 million students enrolled in colleges in the United States in 2018, and that number is forecast to increase in the coming decade. More than 2/3 of all college students receive some kind of financial help in the form of grants and scholarships. Just as admissions are critical to an institutions success, ensuring that these same students have access to funding sources is critical to the future of higher education.

Colleges and universities operate to serve their students, and the financial aid they provide reflects this commitment. Unfortunately, however, most of the processes and workflows that support grants and scholarships exist in a combination of paper-based formats and disparate digital repositories, which can make it difficult to identify and utilize the necessary data. Lacking a system for moving this data from intake to funding, colleges are at risk of preventing deserving students from being able to attend and benefit. Fortunately, process automation enables higher education institutions to facilitate the requests of students to help them fund their education.

Is Automation the Future of Education Process Management?

Automation is the foundation of simplifying grant and scholarship management. Just as workflow has enabled human resources in higher education, it is also being used by colleges and universities to facilitate the flow of that data of students, financial institutions, and universities so it can be evaluated and disbursed. Access to this data is only one aspect of the process. Utilizing it and processing it with the right permissions, and with speed, give all parties the best shot at ensuring grants and scholarships are awarded efficiently.

But the process-driven coordination of financing, collection, and student lifecycle management demands an effective workflow framework, one that incorporates activity among government bodies, non-profits (who are often the benefactors who distribute scholarship money), students, parents/guardians, and financial aid departments within the schools. Ensuring your grants and scholarship management solution has the capability to navigate this intricate web of decision-makers and groups in an organized fashion is pivotal in expediting the processes around financing students.

Streamlining all Points in the Financial Aid Process

Managing workflows for grant and scholarship awards with a platform like Process Director helps present a clear picture to scholarship and grant administrators of all aspects of the financial aid process.

Financial aid processes typically require the input of multiple sources, and not all of them exist within the same organization. Process Director can apply a case management approach which is optimized to coordinate the activity of all involved in the process. This includes university departments like the Office of Financial Aid, Admissions, Registration and Academic Records. External groups include banks and other funding sources, government agencies who disburse grant money, and private institutions and individuals who fund private scholarships.

The Tools Necessary for Comprehensive Education Process Management

Pulling all of this together demands a broad assortment of tasks that includes data that includes paper records, approvals, data sharing among applications and databases, and forms management. With so much at stake, it is essential that deadlines are met and that milestones are attained. Procedure Director generates arrangement among, and between, process phases and different information sources. The result is a system that's inclusive of participants, allowing efficiency, compliance, and consistency. The course of action is all about efficiency and speed. Process Director applies abilities for lightweight application creation, workflow automation, forms management, and integration through a process that uses these steps:

Data collection: students submit applications for grants and scholarships from a variety of sources. This data will likely include artifacts such as an essay, high school transcripts, letters of recommendation, and family tax history among others. All of these items are relevant to the deciders of how grant money is distributed.

Case management framework: Every application is tied to a unique student, and can be considered as an individual case. As a case is created, it will likely be stored in a database, LDAP repository, or cloud storage bucket. But the case is very much active as member schools evaluate the application. Process Director uses a case management approach which enables each student’s file to be moved through the processes and milestones required by financial aid committees and departments.

Distribution of funds: Process Director is built with workflow automation as a critical component, which gives those involved with financial aid evaluation the ability to create rules and processes that will distribute applications internally to important decision-makers, and externally as application data is shared among banks and government groups.

Review/Evaluation: decision-makers will not miss data or milestones when the process is managed with automated workflow. This ensures that all available data can be shared and reviewed, but ultimately, it means that all students have an equal opportunity to demonstrate their needs.

As competition among schools becomes fiercer, there is an increasingly need to provide access to all worthy applicants. Process Director provides digitally transformative education workflow solutions that include facilitating scholarships and grants management, so deserving students can benefit from a higher education experience.

Spring is in the air, and for students, that means that freedom is close at hand. Although their plans may include summer jobs, internships and vacations, college administrators are using this time to re-tool and plan for the coming academic year.

Establishing and maintaining processes for the diverse activities that occur in a college environment is critical to helping students become successful, as they prepare to navigate school and life.

Colleges and universities live by a rigorous calendar that includes many repeatable process activities. Having a business process foundation underlying these actions enables the institution to run smoothly, servicing the needs of students, professors, vendors and other stakeholders. From enrollment to course selection, student services to employee management, the entire college experience (at least, for those responsible for operations and management) requires participation, collaboration, and effective repeatable process management of records and processes.

Let us consider the situation that most institutions of higher learning are in: they are not-for-profit (money is tight), their deadlines are driven by a strict calendar (one that cannot be changed if something goes wrong), they serve a diverse population (students with different needs, from different backgrounds, all with different expectations), and are beholden to a noble, but somewhat vague, goal (create a more educated citizenry). Imagine creating a business plan that has this kind of backdrop. Venture capitalists would run in the opposite direction.

While this scenario might look unwieldy and insurmountable to some, for smart colleges — those that have deliver a great education while existing on a solid foundation of organizational best practices — operating with process efficiency and generating solid results means the same thing as it does for a Fortune 500 company. As with any well-managed and forward-thinking organization, for colleges, BPM software and workflow software are critical tools.

BP Logix has worked with a number of colleges universities and technical colleges, gaining insight into their needs and expectations. Davis Applied Technology College (DATC) in Utah has a goal to continuously innovate and improve, whether delivering programs to students or services to support staff. Recognizing that it had cabinets filled with paper forms —and processes that would benefit from workflow automation— the IT team reviewed its requirements, scope and criteria, then issued an RFP for a repeatable process automation solution to automate its processes and more effectively manage its forms and data. Determined not to build the solution in-house and with the support of the President’s Council, DATC selected Process Director BPM software.

DATC then rolled out the repeatable process management solution to a number of departments. In student services alone there are already 17 completed processes with five in the queue. In Finance there are seven processes. In HR and IT the progress is equally impressive. The Director of IT paid us a compliment when he said, “Knowing where our business processes and workflow are without having to chase them down is invaluable. What used to take days is taking hours — what used to take weeks is taking days.”

Columbus Technical College is one of 28 colleges in the Technical College System of Georgia, and its focus is on providing education for the 21st Century workplace in areas like healthcare, business, applied sciences and general studies. Columbus serves about 4,000 students per quarter and operates on an $18 million budget. CTC’s innovative IT department identified BPM software and workflow software as essential elements in solving a long-standing issue: repeatable process management of the vast amount of information required for approvals and decision-making for all types of issues.

The IT group recognized a need to eliminate manual routing of data and documents and replace it with an automated system. They evaluated a number of repeatable process management solutions and decided on using Process Director. As a result, they have been able to streamline business processes on campus—and provide enormous benefits in terms of information access, efficiency and cost savings.

The lesson for today, students, is that irrespective of what the organization does, it has goals, and operating with greater process efficiency while reducing complexity is among them. BPM software and workflow software are proven repeatable process management solutions that enable institutions to ‘do’ business more effectively and remain focused on their greater purpose, no matter what that purpose is.

Ready to see for yourself?  Contact us today and schedule a free workflow software demo of Process Director from a BP Logix BPM software and workflow software expert.

Spring is in the air, and for students, that means that freedom is close at hand. Although their plans may include summer jobs, internships and vacations, administrators in the higher education industry are using this time to re-tool and plan for the coming academic year.

Establishing and maintaining processes for the diverse activities that occur in a college environment is critical to helping students become successful, as they prepare to navigate school and life.

Higher education institutions live by a rigorous calendar that includes many repeatable process activities. Business process management software enables the institution to run smoothly, servicing the needs of students, professors, vendors and other stakeholders. From enrollment to course selection, student services to employee management, the entire college experience (at least, for those responsible for operations and management) requires participation, collaboration, and effective management of records and processes.

Let us consider the situation that most higher education institutions are in: they are not-for-profit (money is tight), their deadlines are driven by a strict calendar (one that cannot be changed if something goes wrong), they serve a diverse population (students with different needs, from different backgrounds, all with different expectations), and are beholden to a noble, but somewhat vague, goal (create a more educated citizenry). Imagine creating a business plan that has this kind of backdrop. Venture capitalists would run in the opposite direction.

While this scenario might look unwieldy and insurmountable to some, for smart colleges — those that have deliver a great education while existing on a solid foundation of organizational best practices — operating with process efficiency and generating solid results means the same thing as it does for a Fortune 500 company. As with any well-managed and forward-thinking organization, for colleges, business process management software and workflow software are critical tools.

BP Logix has worked with a number of higher education institutions, gaining insight into their needs and expectations. Davis Applied Technology College (DATC) in Utah has a goal to continuously innovate and improve, whether delivering programs to students or services to support staff. Recognizing that it had cabinets filled with paper forms —and processes that would benefit from workflow automation— the IT team reviewed its requirements, scope and criteria, then issued an RFP for a business process management software solution to automate its processes and more effectively manage its forms and data. Determined not to build the solution in-house and with the support of the President’s Council, DATC selected Process Director BPM software.

DATC then rolled out the business process management software solution to a number of departments. In student services alone there are already 17 completed processes with five in the queue. In Finance there are seven processes. In HR and IT the progress is equally impressive. The Director of IT paid us a compliment when he said, “Knowing where our business processes and workflow are without having to chase them down is invaluable. What used to take days is taking hours — what used to take weeks is taking days.”

Columbus Technical College is one of 28 colleges in the Technical College System of Georgia, and its focus is on providing higher education for the 21st Century workplace in areas like healthcare, business, applied sciences and general studies. Columbus serves about 4,000 students per quarter and operates on an $18 million budget. CTC’s innovative IT department identified business process management software and workflow software as essential elements in solving a long-standing issue: management of the vast amount of information required for approvals and decision-making for all types of issues.

The IT group recognized a need to eliminate manual routing of data and documents and replace it with an automated system. They evaluated a number of business process management software solutions and decided on using Process Director. As a result, they have been able to streamline business processes on campus—and provide enormous benefits in terms of information access, efficiency and cost savings.

The lesson for today, students, is that irrespective of what the organization does, it has goals, and operating with greater process efficiency while reducing complexity is among them. Business process management software and workflow software are proven business process management solutions that enable higher education institutions to ‘do’ business more effectively and remain focused on their greater purpose, no matter what that purpose is.

Ready to see for yourself?  Contact us today and schedule a free workflow software demo of Process Director from a BP Logix BPM software and workflow software expert.