By David Nagel04/03/13
Tulane University in New Orleans is expanding its use of a document capture, processing, and routing system campuswide in an effort to streamline its business processes further.
The university tapped AutoStore from Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) beginning a few years ago "to serve as a backbone for many of its business processes across a variety of departments," according to NSi. Now the university is planning to double its use of the system beginning in the 2013-2014 academic year.
Tulane processes hundreds of thousands of documents a year on a variety of systems, including three servers and 30 Xerox and Ricoh multifunction devices, with 20 staffers handling document management on any given day. With the expanded deployment of AutoStore, according to NSi, Tulane is looking to reduce time and expenses related to document management and achieve further ROI. According to an NSi spokesperson, Tulane "saved the equivalent of two FTEs ... within the first 12 to 15 months of deployment."
AutoStore is a paper and electronic document system comprising tools for capturing documents, processing them, and routing them through a variety of systems. It supports capture of print documents via multifunction devices and electronic documents via the Web or other sources. Processing capabilities include barcode recognition, document conversion, OCR, image management, and encryption/decryption. The system's routing tools integrate with document management systems and support groupware, file, fax, and e-mail routing. AutoStore also supports customization via scripts using a VB/JavaScript component.
According to Barry Lawrence, Tulane University information systems specialist, the system's security features have been a crucial component in the deployment
"When you're dealing with financial aid, billing information, grants and awards, there are a lot of birth dates, Social Security numbers, financial and personal information in the workflow path that could be prime for identify theft," Lawrence said in a prepared statement. "However, all transmissions with our data capture software are so highly secure we reduce that problem. Correspondence is coming in from students, their parents and advisors. That correspondence is all scanned from paper and captured from email and put into student specific files within a Xerox DocuShare enterprise content management (ECM) repository. It acts as the routing engine or traffic cop so all information goes to the right destination. NSi AutoStore is our on and off ramp for documents,"
Tulane University serves about 13,500 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students in Louisiana. It employs 1,140 faculty and 2,970 staff. Additional details about the original deployment can be found on NSi's site.
About the Author
David Nagel is the executive producer for 1105 Media's online K-12 and higher education publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com. He can now be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/THEJournalDave (K-12) or http://twitter.com/CampusTechDave (higher education). You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=10390192.
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