How can you meet the competitive challenges universities face today? Oracle WebCenter 11g realizes the vision that content management is a core component of today’s enterprise infrastructure – a centralized but open platform with pervasive services that ‘content-enable’ business processes. Unstructured content is consolidated across diverse systems so it can be centrally managed and exposed from within desktop productivity tools and business applications to fit the needs of any university department.

Join us for the HEUG Webinar Series on Tuesday, May 22, 2012  2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT:

Webinar title: How you can expand the power of PeopleSoft to
improve communication with students  Register here

Look for additional Webinar details in HEUG communications over the next few weeks.

In this edition, the spotlight is on Loren Weinberg, who joined the Oracle WebCenter team last September, following Oracle’s acquisition of FatWire. As vice president of product management and strategy, Weinberg drives product strategy, direction, messaging, and go-to-market execution for Oracle WebCenter, always with a focus on delivering real-world success for customers.

Oracle WebCenter — from Web experience management, to portal, enterprise content management and social collaboration, the technologies can truly deliver unique value for customers and help them drive customer engagement across online channels.

Read the full story at Oracle WebCenter newsletter.

This information is coveted and schools that can quickly identify it and use it have a considerable advantage in recruiting.

The problem is most universities begin collecting information, but cannot organize it, share it and extract value from it in time to be useful in attracting prospective students during the application phase. Once an application is submitted, the amount of supporting documentation that arrives during a short period of time is staggering. The student evaluation and selection process is labor intensive and seasonal staff is normally required to manage the influx of paper. And still the evaluation process is challenged.

Student lifecycle phases

Once enrolled, a student will touch many departments at one time or another during their college years. Information continues to accumulate as the student applies, enrolls, selects courses and programs, graduates and eventually becomes employed.

The majority of university departments and programs would benefit from having access to student information at one point or another during the lifecycle of the student. A review of departmental processes across campuses indicates student information is needed in order for faculty and staff to effectively do their jobs.

So why do universities keep multiple versions of the same information in departmental files all over campus? The answer is simple, their current systems do not allow sharing of information across departments.

Information is submitted in the form of electronic documents or paper and many schools use document imaging systems for storage and later retrieval. These systems usually reside within and serve a single department, making information contained in them unavailable to the rest of the campus. This prevents collaboration and process automation, and is the underlying culprit responsible for the majority of hidden costs associated with managing information.

So what strategy should a university consider to leverage all the benefits of the information they are collecting? Universities using best practices have implemented a single content management infrastructure with a unified repository that supports the entire campus. Information is collected once and made available to anyone via role-based permissions, completely eliminating the expensive cycle of copying, and routing via mail, fax and email.

Centralized content storage and integration with business applications enable collaboration and workflow automation across departments. Content from the library can be published to websites or portals via web content delivery services.

During a time when capital expenses and budgets are a real concern, universities should eliminate redundant systems and reap the significant benefits of reducing administrative costs across every department by 30 – 35%.

More than cost savings and minimizing risk, it’s about gaining the ability to reach the right students for your university.

Read the full story at Oracle WebCenter blog.

In a world where the use of digital channels is enabling organizations to synthesize large amounts of information in seconds, universities are making it a top priority to gain control of that rogue 80%, which is the approximate amount of unstructured information slipping through the cracks. This information is not easily accessible because it is scattered and isolated in departmental or personal file systems. This is the information employees need to do their jobs.

University structured v. unstructured content

Content management services and software technologies have adapted to changing business environments so quickly over the past ten years, it is difficult to keep up with where the capabilities lie today. The following are five mistaken beliefs about content management and the facts that dispel those beliefs.

5. Content management is mostly beneficial for scanning and archiving documents.

Content management covers the lifecycle of information from creation and publication to archival and eventual disposal. One of the largest benefits of content management is enabling workflow automation. A perfect example is when someone in your organization wants to buy something. The individual begins to create documentation such as pricing research, correspondence, a requisition, purchase order, invoice and a contract to name a few. With workflow automation, these supporting documents are captured, routed and accessed interdepartmentally for approval, payment and auditing. Transactions are processed in hours or days instead of weeks.

4. An SIS (Student Information System) or other business application can effectively manage unstructured information.

Business applications such as student information systems manage an organization’s structured information, i.e. student and employee records, financial information such as the general ledger, receivables, payables and payroll. They are designed to manage an organization’s transactions related to business operations, and may contain a limited document and process management component.

ERP systems are not customizable and therefore are not designed to manage an organization’s diverse business processes. Without content management, even with an ERP system, employees are bogged down with manual processes and paper. Enterprise content management fills the gaps in any ERP system by providing workflow functionality using graphical implementation techniques to fit any business process environment with minimal development. Unstructured content is stored in a single repository and accessible enterprise wide.

3. A user must access content from several interfaces or portals to get all the information needed.

Using service-oriented architecture, functionality is packaged as a suite of interoperable services, a middle layer that makes integration of content between separate applications flexible and easy. This allows workers to access and view all content from a single screen, i.e. in the ERP, HR, Financial or CRM system. Full text and keyword search is streamlined and eliminates the need to access multiple applications or search through electronic/paper files.

2. Each department must have a separate instance or installation of the content management software.

Since many documents effect multiple processes and cross multiple departments, an enterprise content infrastructure eliminates problems inherent in vertical applications and island architectures. Content is shared through services built on a single platform and an information repository with a uniform structure that eliminates the need to install a separate instance of the same software application in each department.

1. Enterprise Content Management is more expensive than departmental point solutions.

Departmental or vertical solutions are designed and built to support only one business application or process, and will work ok if only one department in your university needs content management. Since that is not often the case, this type of software is required to be installed separately and customized for use in each department. The result is higher expense to implement and maintain duplicate software applications and content repositories.

Enterprise content management software is built as a middleware infrastructure that can be extended to all departments, reducing the overall cost of information management across the university. The initial implementation cost is marginally higher but the cost of extending the system throughout the organization is substantially lower. A point solution is generally purchased by and for a single department and may appear to cost less up front. The cost increases exponentially as each department implements its own system.

If you wait until the end of the process, many people across your organization will have photocopied, faxed, emailed, sorted, filed and re-filed, creating massive amounts of unnecessary work, expense and wasted resources.

A survey of higher education institutions across the country reveals that student records are most often not scanned until they arrive at the Registrar’s Office. The records of students not accepted are usually scanned and indexed separately from the students that are.

All you have gained in this scenario is space. Less than 5% of these records however, will be reviewed, researched or even looked at.

Processing files at the time a student applies is more work up front, but pays off very quickly. The ability to review complete student profiles early can result in better admission decisions. Content management automates the flow of work by creating electronic work packages, tracking missing documents, notifying students, and updating the student information system in real time.

There are many types of content solutions available today. Smaller organizations may get away with using one of the many point solutions on the market. These stand-alone imaging systems store documents departmentally, much like a file cabinet sitting in your office. But what if you need access to information from another department or need to approve something? In this scenario, it is still a manual workflow process that needs human intervention in the form of emailing, attaching, copying, printing, notifying, and …..waiting. In essence this system is only an archive library.

Many organizations are now using solutions that are enterprise driven. The difference between a point system and an enterprise solution is the content is ingested into the system as soon as it is created and routed throughout the business process with automated workflow, approval requests and updates to the PeopleSoft or other ERP system.

Finance talks to Accounting, student enrollment files are available to Admissions, and Financial Aid files to the Bursar. The system tracks and sorts graduate and undergraduate applications and supporting documents, i.e., it knows what an international student needs and tracks the status of the incoming information. Transcript data is uploaded digitally to your student information system and a copy of the file stored in the repository.

Understand your options for content management. Your technology can do the work for you.

That is one way of summing up the findings of Inside Higher Ed’s first-ever Survey of College and University Business Officers, released today in advance of the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

The survey, the second of a series in which Inside Higher Ed is gauging the views of key higher education constituents, reveals a surprisingly upbeat assessment about the financial state of American college campuses (especially private nonprofit ones), as seen through the eyes of their chief finance and business officials, 606 of whom responded to the survey.

About one in six business officers at both public and private nonprofit colleges described the financial health of their respective institutions as “excellent,” and another 57 percent of public-college CFOs and 47 percent of private-college CFOs characterized their respective institutions’ financial health as “good.” Business officers at public and private institutions alike also generally rebuffed the notion that the budget cuts their institutions have suffered so far have damaged the quality of their academic programs or academic support for students — opinions that many other people on their campuses are unlikely to share.

Read the full story at Inside Higher Ed News.

Attend Nexus 2011 and learn how to maximize student success using ECM integrated with your student information systems. Find out more information and register here.

AN INVITATION FROM TERRY SUTHERLAND, IMAGESOURCE CEO

If there was ever a year to attend an Enterprise Content Management Solutions Conference, this is it! Higher education institutions are being challenged financially now more than ever before. Becoming operationally efficient and serving student populations more effectively are critical imperatives.

Nexus is a forum that has matured into one of the most valuable information technology conferences anywhere. Our goal is to help you understand how your students, faculty and administrative staff across the campus can benefit from an enterprise class content management platform.

I’m confident you’ll find helpful information and inspiration from the educational speakers, breakout sessions and networking opportunities we are offering at NEXUS 2011. You will also have the opportunity to learn how your peers have solved similar business problems you are facing and the ECM solutions they have implemented.

The wide variety of breakout sessions will include in-depth technical and industry tracks with specialized presentations about technology solutions. The breakouts, coupled with insightful keynote speakers, will provide fresh and forward-thinking information about ECM today.

In addition to educational benefits, you will also enjoy a great opportunity to meet and network with ECM and business professionals at our Welcome Reception, Customer Appreciation event and Awards Ceremony.

At ImageSource, we pride ourselves on excellence, and Nexus is no exception. Our goal is to combine collaboration with innovation to make sure you maximize your ECM solution.

We look forward to seeing you at Nexus 2011 in Bellevue, WA in November. www.nexusecm.com

TERRY SUTHERLAND
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
IMAGESOURCE