It’s the time of year, where “wish lists” can sometimes be approved. If your institution is consolidating unencumbered monies, please give Softdocs consideration. We can easily add products to your existing solutions, as well as install the Softdocs Self Scan Station—a product developed in partnership with Fujitsu—allowing students to scan their own documents through a touch screen interface.

If you decide to use 2011 – 2012 monies, please provide us time to perform the installation to meet your state auditor’s requirements.

See our Solutions Guide for a list of add-ons (listed under “optional features” on product pages).

For most institutions, this process can be a headache.

Luckily, Softdocs’ Doc e Fill and Doc e Scan work together to ease the burden of these evaluations, by automating workflow and eliminating paper.

Doc e Fill allows you to complete electronic forms—including Performance Evaluations—on the Web and easily re-route them to others for review. That data can then be imported or exported into your ERP system and documents can be automatically archived into Doc e Scan for indexing and document tracking after final approval.

With these solutions, there is:

• No more mass printing. By having electronic versions of documents, administration can easily send forms to multiple employees at once.

• No more excessive reprints. Instead of reprinting an evaluation because of errors or mistakes, the e-form can electronically be re-routed back to the individual who sent it, before approval.

• No more hard-to-decipher handwriting. With everything being electronic, there is no more misinterpretation. Simply go into Doc e Fill through your Web browser, select the form you need, fill in the necessary information, add any notes or comments, assign it to the right person and POOF—Doc e Fill sends the evaluation form where it should go and archives it in Doc e Scan all at the same time!

• No more waiting. With Doc e Fill’s ability to notify users of pending actions via email, no one has to wait for things to be delivered by hand before being able to complete them. With one touch you can instantly send a document to anyone with view capabilities for instant approval or disapproval. If it’s not approved, you’ll receive a notification of changes that need to be made. Once things are corrected, Doc e Fill will simply re-route the document back into workflow, according to the approval process.

• No more vanishing paperwork. With Doc e Scan’s integration into Doc e Fill, a copy of the entire evaluation document is automatically imaged, indexed and filed away, with all the notes and comments that have been made throughout the approval process—from employee to supervisor.

Let’s take a look as we compare Paper vs. Paperless Performance Evaluations —

Paper Performance Evaluations

1. Supervisor prints the evaluation form, fills it out and adds notes
2. Supervisor makes a copy
3. Supervisor and employee review evaluation copy
(If there are no problems or changes needed, move to step 4, or repeat steps 1 and 2.)
4. Employee approves and signs off on evaluation copy (hopefully with a smile)
5. Employee makes a copy
6. Employee submits original copy back to supervisor
7. Supervisor makes another copy, which goes to Personnel
8. Personnel receives, reviews and stamps it for approval
(If there’s a problem, refer back to step 3 and repeat.)
9. Personnel makes a copy for Supervisor
10. Each person involved files their copy in a folder—on their desk, in a cabinet—wherever they have room!

This process alone could take weeks to complete, not including any problems that may arise! All of that copying, signing and submitting, only to re-copy, re-sign and re-submit over and over is such a hassle! Not to mention the paper you’re wasting with having multiple copies.

PaperLESS Performance Evaluations with Softdocs

1. Supervisor logs into Doc e Fill and completes evaluation e-form from computer
2. A copy of the completed evaluation is automatically routed to the employee for review
(If there’s a problem, the employee rejects it and the evaluation is sent back, electronically, to the supervisor with any comments or questions, along with an email notification asking them to review. Repeat step 2.)
3. Employee approves and e-form is automatically sent to Personnel for review/approval
4. Personnel reviews and approves
(If there’s a problem, form is sent back, electronically, to both parties with an email notification. Repeat step 2.)
5. Evaluation is automatically imaged, indexed and filed away into employee’s electronic folder within Doc e Scan with a clear audit trail and review path.

Do More in 2012!
Contact us for more information on paperless Performance Evaluations.

Things have been busy around here as we plan out the logistics to serve you the most beneficial conference of 2012. By now we’re sure you’ve heard of Bridge 2012, Softdocs’ User Group Conference that’s packed with business process-focused presentations, roundtable discussions, user testimonies and success stories, product demonstrations and troubleshooting and training.

Unfortunately, we realized we announced the most important part of the conference—session descriptions and roundtable topics, you know, the part that’ll help convince your boss that you should attend—during most of your Spring Breaks. Of course, we’d like to think that our announcement stood out among your 50+ emails waiting in your inbox, but we know what it’s like getting back into the swing of things after some time away from the office. (At least, we think we remember what that’s like.)

So, in case you missed it, the full list can be found here. With almost 40 sessions and roundtables to choose from, you’re sure to leave with a wealth of knowledge to take back to the office.

For more information on Bridge, click here or email our conference coordinator directly: llanders@softdocs.com.

Does this headline catch your eye like it did ours?

Last September, this is exactly where City Year—a local Columbia, SC non-profit that helps to keep students in school—found themselves, according to local news. Seventeen years of records destroyed, in a span of 24 hours.

Imagine if your institution’s only copy of student records, business documents, and other important files were lost in a flood or other natural disaster with no type of backup—years of information gone in just a few hours. How terrifying!

This is why our Records Conversion services are so important. All of our paperless solutions help to eliminate the possibility of lost records, but if your current paper documents are not electronically archived into the system, it could take years to transition a single department paperless. Maintaining two archives—one physical and one electronic—creates confusion and wastes employee time searching for documents.

Softdocs’ Records Conversion division converts archived documents, microfilm and microfiche into digital images that can be stored and retrieved within our enterprise content management solution, Doc e Scan.

Not only does this eliminate the need for filing cabinets full of paper, but the best part is that once all the documents are in Doc e Scan any document can be easily searched for, accessed, and reviewed by anyone with access to the system.

So, why can’t I scan and index our archived documents manually?

You can, and while many institutions without the extra time or manpower decide to let us take this big project off their plate, our Professional Services team can come in and train you on-site.

Whether you decide to do this yourself or have our Records Conversion division do it for you, Softdocs can empower your employees and bring efficiency to your institution by eliminating the hassle of paper-heavy business processes.

And hopefully sooner rather than later, you’ll be asking yourself, “How in the world did I ever find anything in those filing cabinets?” as you quickly and easily pull up a PO or student record on your monitor in seconds.

Click here for more information and details of our Records Conversion process or call Softdocs’ Records Conversion Manager, Patrick Daniel at 888.457.8879 x147.

Remember, Doc e Scan automates your document-centered work processes and archival needs through a single, seamlessly efficient program via a local network or the Web. It establishes queues for documents needing approval and helps to eliminate the manual indexing of documents.

Forms Recognition is one of several tools that files and indexes similar documents for you! Instead of manually typing the same document for ten students then indexing each document and filing it away, Forms Recognition pulls key data from predetermined areas of a document (maybe the form number, invoice number, student/vendor ID number, and academic or budget year) to identify where it should be electronically filed. All it takes from you is identifying your indices and formatting your documents alike.

Scanned documents, captured images and data from your ERP solution can all be indexed using Forms Recognition, maximizing index accuracy and saving countless hours for your institution.

Sounds great, right? But, the best part about Forms Recognition is that it can be used in a number of ways to help file and index various document types —

• Multiple Letter Filing – helps to identify the differences in various types of communication forms that an institution may send out to students, with proper tagging at either the top, bottom, or blended into the document.

• Process-PDF Filing – helps to pull the Colleague ID from a document or document type that has been exported from an ERP system—based on a defined format to a network folder as a PDF—and is then imported and filed through Doc e Scan to the appropriate location.

• Invoice Filing – extracts the invoice number and vendor information for automatic filing in the vendor’s electronic “pending invoices” folder

• Transcript Filing – extracts key student information for the transcript review and filing process

So, are you using Forms Recognition to minimize the physical indexing of scanned documents? You can spend two hours typing, indexing, and filing for the same document type, or … you can spend your time getting rid of the 20 emails that have just flooded your inbox while reading this—the choice is yours!

It is now more important than ever to leverage all of the functionality you can from your Softdocs solutions. Let us help! We can review the existing use of our products and work to develop more efficient processes with the Forms Recognition add-on. Contact us for more information.

John K. Sonnen, the director of enterprise systems 
information at Trinity University sent an email “to thank Softdocs for having such a dedicated technician, programmer, and customer representative.”

This past December, Trinity was looking for a better way to handle the formatting and printing of their financial aid award letters. After learning their existing instance of Doc e Serve was well equipped to handle the task, Trinity decided to work with Softdocs on the form’s creation.

According to Sonnen, the process “went something like this:  “Great, this is approved. No, wait we want to make another change.” Several iterations later and Trinity had their “perfect” award letter.

A typical day for Ben involves installing, troubleshooting and training folks on Doc e Serve, so making changes to a form’s layout is nothing new.

“Ben Spann is a great Ambassador of Softdocs. His skill set is obvious. His dedication and patience are prime assets. … Trinity University’s Information Technology Services department is very glad that Ben Spann did a stellar job on this project. … Trinity University has benefited greatly from our choice of choosing Softdocs to help us with projects like this,” said Sonnen.

Ben holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Technology and a master’s degree in Information Technology. He’s been on the Softdocs team for six years and in the software industry since 2005.

As you know, when enrolling a new student, paperwork and processing takes time. None of us want to admit it, but as students we were probably all guilty of one or more of the following:

• Forgetting to fill something out.
• Filling everything out, but with errors.
• Turning in a coffee-stained, hard-to-read form.
• Misplacing a form.
• Forgetting to turn something in until you were on academic probation. Who me?

Forms often need to be edited multiple times before a problem can be resolved.

As the administrator, all of these incidents cause other tasks to be pushed back. You probably already know how Softdocs’ can alleviate the headache tied to this process.

Here’s a refresher: Doc e Fill allows students to complete electronic forms on the Web and easily re-route them to other for review. Data from e-forms can be imported or exported into Datatel and documents can be automatically archived in Doc e Scan after final approval. Doc e Fill also offers the ability to view the history of a document at any stage, improving accountability and eliminating multiple, mismatching streams of communication.

But back to our new options for Datatel Recruiter—while the student being recruited will now just “live” within Recruiter, there are still documents related to that prospect – applications, transcripts…the list goes on. Just like how Softdocs can help manage this information for your active students, we can do the same for those in the recruitment stage within Doc e Scan, our integrated enterprise content management solution. We can even provide one-click access to these documents from a Recruiter screen.

Even more exciting, once that prospect flips to a student and is assigned an ID within Colleague itself, the appropriate documents can automatically populate a new active student folder for your financial and student records offices within Doc e Scan. Voila! Everything you need is now at your fingertips.

Do More with Softdocs and Datatel
1. Capture & file Colleague output with Doc e Scan.
2. Scan & index documents directly from Colleague and Recruiter with Auto File.
3. Process data output with Doc e Serve to create clean, customized documents.
4. Identify key data to automatically file documents with Forms Recognition.
5. Produce custom, easily-fillable forms for students & employees with Doc e Fill.
6. Track employee time sessions in real-time with EMMA.
7. Distribute customized documents by print, fax or e-mail with eDelivery.
8. Manage your institution’s open positions and job applicants with SoftApp.
9. Archive old documents, microfilm & microfiche with our Imaging Services.
10. Access scanned & captured documents directly from Colleague and Recruiter with Auto Launch.

Datatel Users’ Group Conference is coming up soon! We hope you’ll come by our booth to learn more about the Softdocs + Datatel Recruiter relationship. For more information on DUG, click here.

The following scenarios will take you behind-the-scenes with 4 institutions whose day-to-day tasks changed dramatically after using our paperless solutions.

THEN —

Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz, CA
Over 15,000 students enrolled
Customer for 2 years
It wasn’t uncommon for the financial aid office at Cabrillo College to spend 5-6 hours a day managing incoming and outgoing mail. Since 10,000 students apply for aid each year, Cabrillo was always trying to keep up, but still falling behind.

Florence School District One, Florence, SC
Over 20 schools in the district
Customer for 12 years
The accounts payable department at Florence School District One was used to having a large backlog of paper, all overdue to be filed. On average, around 600 invoices were processed each week.

Stevenson University, Stevenson, MD
4,000 students enrolled
Customer for 6 years
Stevenson University ran out of physical storage space for their documents.

Originally, these issues were solved by adding another campus located seven miles away. But when the admissions department moved to the new campus, those same seven miles inhibited their productivity and dragged out approval processes even more.

Bulloch County Schools, Statesboro, GA
9,500 students enrolled
1,425 employees
Customer for 8 years
Bulloch County Schools needed a better way to manage important documents within their business processes—documents for applicants, new hires and employees.

Going through hundreds of applications “was such an intensive process that completely disrupted our daily tasks,” said Kevin Judy, Bulloch’s assistant superintendent for human resources.

NOW —

Cabrillo College
Doc e Fill, Softdocs e-forms and workflow solution, digitizes every paper-based form that Cabrillo’s students need to fill out for financial aid.

“When you’re processing and reviewing hundreds of forms each day, it already takes awhile for a student to receive their aid…an incomplete form just delays that even more. But with Doc e Fill we can make it so a form cannot be submitted until the student has filled out all of the necessary fields,” said Lena Mason, Cabrillo’s financial aid technology specialist.

Florence School District One
“We’ve eliminated unnecessary phone calls, emails, paper going back and forth, AP deadlines…checks can be cut the same day now,” said Donna Bethea, Florence One’s director of data services.

Florence One now pays invoices faster and the schools maintain positive relationships with their vendors.

Stevenson University
“Workflow has changed everything because we now have the information we need at our fingertips,” Tracy Bolt said.

By adding Doc e Serve and Doc e Scan, Stevenson has increased productivity by eliminating filing cabinets and the need to drive miles away to find documents. They have also minimized spending by electronically filing documents instead of printing them.

Bulloch County Schools
Now, applicants can complete their forms and submit necessary documents online, and HR can use SoftApp’s reporting tools to review and compare multiple applicant portfolios at once. They are also working with the Softdocs professional services team to automatically file an applicant’s documents into a new employee folder within Doc e Scan once they are hired.

Which scenarios relate to you? We want it to be the latter, so contact us today for more information.

Read the full stories on how these institutions went paperless with Softdocs, including the triumphs and challenges:
Cabrillo College
Florence School District One
Stevenson University
Bulloch County Schools

If you work for a school district in the Southeast, you maybe lucky enough to know our account representative, Brian Hinson.

Brian’s been working in the world of software for 16 years and was previously employed by our partner CSI.

A few weeks ago, someone asked Brian for a document detailing the process of going paperless with purchase orders. It occurred to him that we didn’t have the details documented publicly—until now.

As we mentioned before, our focus in 2012 is to help you more clearly understand how we can help you do more with Softdocs (or, go further with less resources) in regard to the business processes that you deal with on a day-to-day basis.

So, what would paperless purchase orders look like? What would the process involve?

If you’re new to Softdocs (or if you currently have our solutions but still use paper within this particular business process), click here for a detailed, unbiased look at going paperless with purchase orders, including the pros and cons of different options.

Or, for a more entertaining look at the process, read on.

Paper Purchase Orders
The process that gives you a headache.

• A purchase requisition is filled out and passed around for approval.
• Once approved, the information on the form is used to create a PO.
• A copy of the PO is emailed to the school.
• The school prints out the orders and holds them in a folder that inevitably receives coffee stains and dirty looks.
• The items ordered come into the school and are received.
• Invoices are snail mailed (something your grandkids know nothing about) to either the school or district office.

School
• Assuming the correct documents can be located, the school takes the invoice(s) and matches it to the correct PO.
• The school looks for any discrepancies between the invoice and PO.
• In the event that more materials come in than were ordered, then the school attaches a ratification checklist to the invoice and PO.
• For blanket PO’s (ones that are left open to receive materials) the school writes the amount on the invoice and notifies Accounts Payable to issue a check.
• If the PO is to be closed, it is documented on the invoice.

District
• The district receives the invoice for a school.
• They mail the invoice to the designated school.
• The school follows the steps listed above.

• When the invoice is ready to be paid, the folder of documents is sent to Accounts Payable in the district office.
It includes:
- Purchase order
- Invoice
- Supporting documents
- Ratification checklist
• POs that can be closed upon payment of the invoice are printed (sometimes on a different color paper). If the color of the PO is white, then it is probably a blanket PO. Sometimes, but not always.
• The invoice information is filed into a squeaky filing cabinet.
• The checks are issued. Each check may pay multiple invoices for a given vendor.
• A copy of the check is attached. All POs, invoices, and related documents are stapled together.
• The documents are then filed by vendor and check number and you wonder if WD-40 would fix that squeaky cabinet. It doesn’t.
Imaging backlog:
• The AP clerks then have to remove the staples—the ones that took you 20 minutes to find—from the documents and scan the invoices and the ratification checklist.
• The process is done, you think. You’re still waiting to hear back from so-and-so about something-or-other.

PAPERLESS Purchase Orders with Softdocs
The simple process that boosts productivity and allows you to concentrate on more pressing tasks.

• Fill out an online requisition in Doc e Fill.
• Assign the form to one or multiple people for approval.
• Once the requisition has been approved, a Purchase Order is automatically created and a copy of the requisition is filed in the vendor’s electronic folder in Doc e Scan, our enterprise content management solution.
• The Purchase Order is then automatically faxed or emailed to the vendor and a copy of it is filed in the vendor’s electronic folder as well.
• The invoice from the vendor is sent to the Accounts Payable office.
• The accounts payable office scans and indexes the invoice to match it to the purchase order in the vendor’s electronic folder in Doc e Scan.
• Once the items purchased arrive, the receiver completes a ratification form using Doc e Fill, identifies the items received and attaches a scanned copy of the supporting documentation matching it to the purchase order they used to purchase the items.
• The ratification form and supporting documentation is routed to the Accounts Payable department to trigger payment.
• The form and supporting documents are filed in the vendor’s electronic folder in Doc e Scan automatically.
• The accounts payable check is then printed using Doc e Serve and it triggers a match on the purchase order number which causes all documents associated with the purchase order number to be re-filed using the accounts payable check number in Doc e Scan, which includes a copy of the check, purchase order, purchase requisition, invoice, packing slip, and any other document that was indexed using the purchase order number.
• The end user can now do a simple search using the check number to access all documents.

Contact us for more information on paperless purchase orders. We can’t wait to make this process easier for you!

The process is easy. Here’s an example.

For Students:
• Place the document you need to scan in the Softdocs Self Scan Station.
• Type in your student ID.
• Select the document type on the touch-screen.
• Go to the cafeteria, take a nap, go to class. You just saved valuable time.

For Administrators:
• After a student scans in a document, the document will be sent over to your inbox
on Doc e Scan.
• Glance at the document to make sure it looks as it should.
• Verify it.
• The document is now filed away in the student’s electronic folder.

Professors or other co-workers can be authorized to use the station as well. It is all up to you and your institution. We’ll tailor it to meet your needs.

Taking our country’s current economic condition to mind, it is more important than ever to leverage all of the functionality you can from your Softdocs solutions.

So, go ahead and start doing something better with your time.