Case Study: DocFinity And Fujitsu At Palm Beach Community College: ECM And Point-Of-Entry Scanning Improves Student Services And HR

Palm Beach Community College (PBCC) serves approximately 47,000 students across four campuses located within the Florida hurricane zone. Due to their location, disaster recovery played a big part—as did the need for space and improved efficiency—in their search for an enterprise content management (ECM) system.

By 2006, they had experienced two failed attempts at implementing an ECM system. They approached the project again, this time hiring a consultant and building a business plan. With multiple locations—some an hour apart—PBCC was often constrained by the limitations of paper. The need for simultaneous access to information without faxes and phone calls was apparent.

"Students are our number one priority. We wanted to implement measures to serve them more efficiently, with faster turnaround time," said Chuck Zettler, Director of Information Technology Project Management at PBCC. "As we explored ECM options, we realized that if we implemented workflow we could distribute work to staff across the multi-campus environment."

To get the information into the system, PBCC would need scanners throughout its campuses. "We looked at different scanning companies, and measured their capabilities against a number of criteria that were essential to our business processes. Obviously the quality of the scan was crucial. We also looked at the ability to handle odd- and mixed-size documents, auto feed, duplex scanning, color scanning, twain imaging, and other factors."