University Business - June 2007 - (Page 83)

But we’re getting ahead of our story. Let’s first turn back the hands of time to the dawn of the computer age, when visionaries promised us that technology would soon lead to the paperless office. We all know how that story turned out. Between 1983 and 2003, consumption of paper for printing and writing alone more than doubled, to some 97.3 million tons in the U.S., according to a study last year by Canadian researcher George Sciadas. But now, with environmental and social concerns taking center stage, technology is finally catching up to the promises made so many years ago. Cutting edge document management solutions mean that the elusive paperless office may be closer than we think. Space Savers Wilmington College was in growth mode. In the past four years, enrollment has gone from 6,000 to 10,000 students. But 40 percent more students also meant 40 percent more paperwork, and staff members were already retaining hard copies and microfiche versions of student records dating back to the college’s founding in 1968. “Every year we had to put in the budget for a new filing cabinet and new storage space.” —Erin DiMarco, Wilmington College “We have five sites throughout the state of Delaware,” explains DiMarco. “We were keeping all our student folders in paper form. Each site would keep a copy, and then they would bring all the completed folders to the main campus. If they wanted a copy of the file, I had to get a staff member to find the folder, pull the file, make the copy, send it down, and so on. They were duplicating copies of files that I already had, and every year we had to put in the budget for a new filing cabinet and new storage space.” DiMarco’s main campus office had 72 file cabinets with six drawers each, each drawer holding 200 files. “You don’t even want to know how many tons of paper that was,” she says. The solution for Wilmington was ImageNow, a document management and workflow solution from Kansas-based Perceptive Software. WebNow, the browser-based companion to ImageNow, extends instant document access to the other Wilmington College sites, further improving information sharing. With a staff of part-time helpers, DiMarco managed the conversion—some 58,000 files—in just three months. “It was intimidating,” she admits, “but we insisted on doing it in-house. I know that there are document imaging companies that are bonded and could do it for me, but as a registrar preserving data integrity, I needed to know where my records were and what was happening to them.” First, documents had to be prepared, staples removed, dog ears unfolded, and each page oriented in the same way. Then the pages were scanned and linked to each student’s ID. “You can give the files any field value you want—first and last name, student ID, universitybusiness.com June 2007 | 83 http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - June 2007

Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Virginia Tech Coverage
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Admissions
On The Hill
Future Shock
Independent Outlook
Internet Technology
I Wanna Be Rich
Smart and Sustainable
Walking the Talk
Steering Toward Sustainability
An Organizing Principle for Colleges and Universities
News Shorts
News Shorts
It’s Not Easy Eating Green
Facilities Focus
The New Face of ERP
Document Management Across Campus
What's New
Direct Connect
Calendar of Events
End Note
Annual Directory of Higher Education Consultants

University Business - June 2007