Central Carolina Community College

Central Carolina Community College was officially weighed down with paper.

The boxes of documentation, file cabinets and offices dedicated to holding all of it became too much. As the college grew, finding a single document in the masses was next to impossible.

Central Carolina Community College was investigating a couple problem areas when they realized their paper usage was becoming challenging. One goal was to get rid of the wasted office space that the numerous boxes of paper documentation were taking over. Another goal was to increase searches for specific documents as the college grew.

“If anything, we were looking for reliability, ease of access and speed of processes,” said Central Carolina’s Associate Director of Information Technology, MontE Christman.

CCCC began using Doc e Serve, Softdocs’ print customization solution, and Doc e Fill, Softdocs’ legacy electronic forms solution, in 2007, around the same time Christman started with the IT department.

Prior to purchasing Softdocs’ solutions, CCCC had all manual paper processes.

The Power of Electronic Forms

CCCC saw huge benefits from implementing Softdocs’ solutions–especially from moving their paper forms to electronic with Doc e Fill.

“It amazes me how much we are using the electronic forms solution and how much time it saves,” said Christman.

Today, all full and part-time employees use the e-forms solution. “The e-forms solution was so quickly adopted by the entire college.”

With CCCC spread across three counties, timely communication was oftentimes very difficult when dealing with paper documentation such as employee leave requests. By making the move to Softdocs, it is so much simpler. “In the past, an employee would have to print off the form, fill it out, sign it and send it through the mail,” said Christman. “If it was incorrect, it would be sent back and the process could end up taking a really long time.”

“With e-forms, requests can be sent and processed in a matter of minutes.”

Christman noted that the e-forms solution is probably one of the most used aspects of Softdocs at CCCC to this day.

The Move to Etrieve™

After many successful years using both Doc e Serve and Doc e Fill, CCCC needed to continue their path to eliminating paper and became a pilot school for Etrieve, Softdocs’ enterprise content management platform.

Etrieve by Softdocs is a true all-in-one enterprise content management platform. Deployable either on-premises or in the cloud, Etrieve provides users with a single point of entry for system administration, access to content, forms and workflows, as well as reporting and security utilities.

“We had already been using Doc e products for years, so we could easily go straight into Etrieve. The synergy was nice.”

“We had looked at a handful of other solutions, but with Softdocs there was, and still is a lot of active development,” said Christman. “There are a lot of flexible integration capabilities with Etrieve.”

CCCC implemented Etrieve Content, Softdocs’ fully browser-based content management solution, and Etrieve Flow, Softdocs’ intuitive workflow engine.

CCCC has seen even more benefit from Softdocs after implementing Etrieve on top of their previous solutions.

“The biggest thing is centralized documentation. Everything can be stored and kept organized, and it gives us the availability to a wider range of people.”

CCCC spans three counties and more than a dozen sites. Before Softdocs, there was a lot of back and forth between sites to retrieve whatever information was needed at the time.

“If we had documentation at one site and someone in another county needed access to a copy, we would either have to drive or send it, which isn’t secure. There was a lot of wasted time and effort.

Implementation as a Pilot School

Being a pilot school for Etrieve, CCCC went through a big learning curve alongside the Softdocs Discovery Team.

“As we implemented, we uncovered new features and different functionality than we had with our original Doc e solution,” said Christman.

Having the Discovery Team there, however, really helped make the move to Etrieve go as smooth as possible.

When asked what advice he would give to similar schools looking to make the move to paperless, Christman came back to taking advantage of the Softdocs team.

“My biggest recommendation is to use the Softdocs Discovery Team—they are extremely knowledgeable and have a high level of understanding and expertise.”

Looking Forward

“I have no doubt that we could bring additional departments up on Etrieve ourselves, but we will bring the Softdocs team back in. They know the processes, what other colleges have done and what might work or not work.”

In addition, Christman would like CCCC eventually to make the move to Etrieve Forms from Doc e Fill, and begin using the full Etrieve platform.

CCCC recognized that implementing new technology can be overwhelming for staff, but when they took the time to identify weak business processes and committed to working with the Softdocs Discovery Team, the benefits yielded time, productivity and financial benefits.

When asked what would happen had they not implemented Softdocs, Christman responded, “Tears and papercuts.”