Optimizing College Admissions With Workflow Management Software

Across the country every year, students apply to colleges and universities unaware of the complex series of processes that support their admissions application. Getting this mix of processes and workflows streamlined is critical for this major milestone— one which has a huge effect on the culture of the school, and the life of the student.

Process Director by BP Logix empowers universities in the creation of customized higher education admissions processes, and currently supports a myriad of colleges and universities both nationally and internationally. For students, the intended outcome is simple: acceptance to their desired school. But behind the scenes, Process Director is supporting this potential result through process efficiency, reliability, repeatability, using a suite of unique workflow and adaptive case management tools. With these, admissions departments have the ability to optimally identify and select those students who will be the best fit for the school.

Business Process Management for Efficient Admissions Process

Business process management (BPM) is critical for efficient higher education admissions department because processes drive the student journey from the first point of contact (admissions application), through the financial, housing, and scheduling aspects of a student’s life, and ultimately, all the way to graduation. But this is not without layers of complexity.

This requires an agile approach to process, one that ensures higher education IT departments are able to serve a wide variety of stakeholders (administrators, parents, students, financial aid organizations, among others), and still maintain adherence to governmental, organizational, and industry governance requirements and compliance frameworks. Additionally, they are often restricted by budget constraints, and to ensure equity, the admissions process is usually held to rigorous standards.

How Process Director supports Higher Education Admissions

Process Director is uniquely positioned to support the needs of college IT organizations. Its digital process automation capabilities enable the efficient processing and reviewing of applications across all necessary admissions counselors and administrators. As the application process has become more competitive and rigorous, students are required to provide more data points to make their case and stand out from other applicants. The University of Central Florida, for example, received 43,225 applications for the 2018-2019 school year alone, each of which required analysis and processing, all within a 3-4 month timeframe.

To optimize the process, higher education can rely on Process Director’s case management capabilities as well as the ability to build and deploy these applications through low code development. This makes it easy to create sophisticated digital applications that emphasize a human-directed work style. A case management approach also enables each student’s file to be moved through the processes and milestones required by admissions departments. Process Director applies automation to improve how and where applications are routed, and individual admissions team members are equipped with the tools necessary to collaborate, advocate, and discuss students and the factors being weight to determine acceptance. In the higher education applicant process, this includes: 1) screening, sorting, and scoring; 2) individual analysis; 3) committee collaboration; and 4) decision.

To facilitate and optimize these processes and workflows, Process Director uses capabilities that have been proven to help the unique needs of fast-moving admissions teams, including:

• Application and workflow application integration: The application submission is usually a student’s first touch point with the university, but also a way to engage student data with other applications that can improve her experience. Process Director uses built in connectors for a variety of ERP systems, and allows users to construct forms that can pull and deliver data that can be useful for things like financial aid and scholarships, and eventually for housing, onboarding, registration, and course scheduling.
• Digital process automation: Especially because the admissions process is time sensitive and involves key milestones, universities benefit from Process Director unique suite of tools to stay agile and move fast. Process Director functionality gives organizations the ability to manage, automate, and report on the critical business processes that will take a student’s application from first touch point to final decision. Process Director workflow tools are managed through a browser and require no programming expertise, which enables even non-technical admissions team members to easily create and modify workflows according to their specific needs and processes.
• Among the key features that support the admissions process is document workflow management. Students often need to submit multiple documents, including transcripts, recommendation letters, and other documents that speak to their fitness as a potential student. Process Director offers a document workflow management system that empowers team members to rapidly create filtered searches and tabular reports with a few keystrokes. Reviewing task lists, browsing document folders, or searching for a specific asset about a particular student, Process Director Knowledge Views are easy to configure and even easier to use.
• Digital transformation optimized for education organizations: Most campus administrative desks contain stacks of paper waiting for decisions, approvals, mailing or filing. Departments print, fax and mail electronic documents and information. Email inboxes are filled with important attachments waiting in Outlook files on desktops where they are subject to being lost or deleted. Process Director is enabling colleges and universities to rapidly digitize processes and apply automation solutions to optimize the use of data. The result is greater visibility into each student’s profile and the data within their application packages. Documents and information can be shared with the necessary decision-makers, and milestones in the process can be made with greater clarity.

Colleges and universities are seeing more demand as young people seek higher education as a path into the global economy. To serve these needs, Process Director provides digitally transformative education workflow solutions, facilitates efficient distribution, and streamlines the monitoring and management of information.

The modern educational organization must effectively manage a complex process of applications, reviews, acceptance, and confirmation— and a digital process platform facilitates just that.

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