Educational institutions use a large amount of paper. Public and private schools as well as universities have a growing need to effectively manage all of the paperwork for their students and faculty. Document scanning companies can help scan the paper documents and convert them into the required digital formats, which in turns helps save time and space, and also improves processes.
Document scanning and imaging solutions are a practical alternative that addresses specific paper workflow problems unique to education. The areas where document scanning and imaging can be used include the following.
- Administration – As mentioned at the beginning, educational institutions circulate a lot of paper, which results in a large amount of paper waste and lost documentation. Schools can benefit greatly by adopting document scanning and imaging solutions for paperless processes. Ingram Micro advisor gives the example of the Ryburn Valley High School. One of the tasks of school administration is tracking preplanned absences and notifying instructors. This task involves processing paper notes from parents, making copies and walking them across a very large campus to various teachers. The school adopted a simple strategy to save time and paper. This included scanning the absentee requests and distributing them via email.
- Admissions – The college admission process can berather complex. It requires admissions officers to process applications, essays, letters of recommendation, transcripts, financial aid forms etc. Even though some of these processes have already been digitized, many others have not been digitized yet. Document scanning solutions that convert paper to digital files make it easier to consolidate student applications information for circulation and review. A secure central data repository ensures that the information is secure as well as accessible. This in turn results in a more secure digital archive that follows the student through his/her schooling and enables faster decision-making.
- Research and collaboration – Professors in the universities have to manage large volumes of paperwork between dealing with undergraduate papers, masters’ theses, dissertations and their own research. Keeping track of all these documents can be really daunting. It also poses new challenges for educational collaboration, especially if you have to share data with colleagues at a distance or have to submit a manuscript for publication. Document scanning and imaging can help convert large volume paper documents into digital files, thereby helping professors manage their records electronically.
- Historical documents – There are rare manuscripts in educational institutions which have been acquired or donated. These historic documents are often fragile and may deteriorate with excessive handling or exposure to light. Instead of allowing scholars to access the original documents, most historic archives provide facsimiles of rare documents for study. By converting these rare papers into electronic format, they can be easily accessed without damaging as well as shared with scholars around the globe without requiring them to leave their own campus.
- Regulatory compliance – Publicly funded institutions have to maintain a paper trail to validate any number of decisions, from admissions policies to budgetary decisions. Digitizing university paperwork for storage in a central repository ensures a safe and secure archive that supports decisions as well as activities. It also helps catalogue digitized paperwork, making them easy to be retrieved in the event of an audit.
Using state-of-the-art scanning tools, a professional document scanning company can help educational institutions convert large volume paper documents into digital formats. The benefits offered by document scanning and imaging services include saving on space and time, reducing administrative overheads, staff costs as well as ongoing labor costs and allowing school and university employees to focus more on important tasks.
