The economic stimulus package has a significant budget – $650 million to be exact – allocated to educational technology investments in schools. While a portion of this will be for student resources, several schools will need to invest in IT to ensure that its administrative processes are running efficiently. Some schools for example spend unnecessary hours on manually processing tasks such as student paperwork, supply requests and student services – time that could otherwise be spent on enhancing the quality of education for their students.

With an increase in funding, a number of organizations are reevaluating their IT investments and schools are certainly no exception. A few universities have already invested in BPM software that demonstrate the value automated processes brings to colleges and universities as well as K-12 schools.

For example, a comprehensive four-year high school in Illinois with two separate campuses was managing its internal processes using paper forms that were passed around through multiple departments for approval. Often times, forms were lost and employees lacked visibility into important status information. These processes had become inefficient and unreliable and some were also hindered by missing information, or bottlenecked on someone’s desk waiting for approval.

It was not long before the school administrators decided to invest in BPM to automate several of its processes including:

• Student Services Process: this process is used to track and manage critical academic and counseling information for students. By using BPM, the school was able to control access to confidential student data by only allowing relevant information to be accessed. Guidance counselors could view necessary information including learning and physical disablements and insert comments to manage and track student counseling sessions.
• Supply Requisition Process: this process tracks all supply purchases for the school and was being managed manually using paper requisition forms. Paper-based forms were often lost and purchase requests would have to be re-submitted. BPM has decreased turnaround times and provides greater collaboration among the requestor and accounts payable for receiving materials and paying invoices.
• Capital Expenditure Process: this internal process manages the schools procedures for requesting capital expenditures. When a request is made for a capital expenditure, it is required to flow through all appropriate levels of approval. Using Metastorm BPM, the school has more visibility into capital expenditure requests, status tracking, and history of when requests are approved or denied.
• Employee Change Status Process: this process is used to change data related to employee status. BPM helps the school ensure all necessary departments are notified and related tasks are completed.
• IT Access: automating this process now enables the school to manage all paperwork required to issue network passwords and connections, computer equipment, employee badges, telephone assignments, and other necessary access for either existing or terminated employees.

BPM has brought a number of benefits to the school including greater efficiency, decreased approval times, and reduction in errors associated with manual data entry. As schools begin to evaluate how to invest wisely for the 21^st century, BPM should be a top-of-mind priority for faculty and administrators.

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