Kansas School District Embraces Paperless Initiative

By Karla Paris

Hutchinson Public Schools’ staff spends more time focusing on student, parent, faculty, and staff services while optimizing resources thanks to paperless upgrade.

School districts are under more pressure than ever to streamline operations, doing more with less. One area of opportunity is in the storing and managing of paper documents.  Although using paper has traditionally been a centralized part of the education process, it does not have to be a centralized part of how a school district operates.

Hundreds of schools across the country are going paperless with their admissions, student records management, financial aid, accounts payable, human resources, and administrative operations in an effort to ultimately reclaim budgets previously tied up in paper printing, distribution, and storage costs.

Hutchinson Public Schools in Kansas has integrated a document management system with its student and business management systems. The district serves more than 5,000 students in 12 schools and also operates a career and technical education academy.

Hutchinson Public Schools had been using Laserfiche document management software to store and manage hundreds of thousands of paper documents for its human resources, finance, and student records departments, but staff found that they really needed a system that could integrate with the district's Skyward Student Management Suite and School Business Suite, something the Laserfiche software couldn't do.

Ultimately, the district selected the OptiView Document Management solution from Advanced Processing and Imaging (API). OptiView enhances existing business processes by integrating with line-of-business applications and organizes documents as information that is easy to access, analyze, and share. The central repository of the OptiView system helps sustain organizational knowledge growth and powers the exchange of information. OptiView facilitates information sharing beyond the confines of the organization with the addition of its online information portal and mobile work order solutions.

The district is preparing to implement OptiView in its HR department and has plans to implement the system for its student records, payroll, and business office departments, as well as in the Hutchinson Career and Technical Educational Academy.

According to a news release from API, the district expects the new document management system to improve staff productivity, increase processing speed, and reduce costs across the district.

SOURCE: PRNewswire