Improving Financial Aid Verification With Ecm: How Palm Beach State College Decreased Backlog From Six Weeks To Two Days

One of the most labor-intensive and cumbersomethroughout the human resources department. This
processes for staff, students, and parents is financialenabled the College to import information from any
aid Verification. On a national level, usually about 30%service desk on any of the campuses.
of students applying for financial aid have to havePoint-of-entry scanning helps the College eliminate
their documentation and eligibility verified. At Palmpaper at the source. Student/staff information is
Beach State College—until recently officially aavailable as soon as it is scanned and indexed. Stored
community college—this number is higher, at timesin a centralized repository, records and other
exceeding 40%.documents are available for immediate processing.
Verification is used to confirm financial aid applicationPoint-of-entry scanning provides Palm Beach State
data or to address discrepancies. Inefficient collectionwith dramatically improved access and information
and processing of Verification documents can delaysharing across all four campuses. As a result, the
notifications of financial aid award eligibility toCollege can accept financial aid Verification documents
students, which can have a negative impact onin person, by mail, or via fax. Different components
enrollment.of Verification can be submitted at varying times.
Palm Beach State recognized that paper-basedPhase two: Workflow
processing was obstructing their Verification process.Upon receipt, Verification documents are immediately
The College had been suffering processing backlogsscanned into the ECM system. When all of the
of up to six weeks during peak periods, and althoughrequired documents arrive, they are immediately
available financial aid had nearly doubled in the pastmarked as received, then automatically packaged
two years, budget constraints prevented the Financialelectronically and launched into a workflow for
Aid Office from hiring additional full-time staff.processing. The ECM system displays a simple
Palm Beach State staff understood that they couldinterface within the student information system,
use enterprise content management (ECM) towhich does an electronic evaluation.
expedite Verification by eliminating paper from theA program which runs in the background creates a
process. The College used their ECMreport that lists students and provides Verification
system—DocFinity, by Optical Imageinformation in a text file. COLD imports the text file.
Technology—to combine point-of-entry scanning,Workflow picks it up and packages the documents
workflow, and outsourcing to address theirelectronically. The package is then workflowed to
challenges. The result was a cost savings of moreseparate queues on campus or for offsite review,
than 50%. Other benefits from using ECM to simplifywhere it can be accessed securely via a VPN. Zettler
financial aid Verification included:explains, “The student information system knows
- Reducing backlog from 6 weeks to 2 days duringwhen all documents are received. A nightly batch
peak periods.report initiates the Verification packet, and DocFinity
- Decreasing waiting times significantly at theirknows when to gather and flow the package for
Financial Aid offices.further processing.”
- Increasing enrollment.Phase three: Outsourcing financial aid Verification
- Processing more Verifications without increasingOutsourcing is a logical solution to Verification
full-time staff.processing, as it addresses challenges resulting from
- Providing immediate feedback to students/ parentsthe seasonal fluctuations in processing volumes. It
when additional (or different) documentation isalso addresses limitations associated with a lack of
required.physical processing space at the College. Zettler says,
- Facilitating submission of documentation—“The VPN authenticates review personnel and
students/parents can submit individual components ofallows them to access the appropriate student
Verification separately rather than waiting to submit arecords and documents directly through DocFinity. By
complete packet.outsourcing to professionals in New York, North
BackgroundCarolina, and other remote locations throughout
Palm Beach State College serves more than 50,000Florida, we can process more work without increasing
students in one of the largest counties in Florida.the number of full-time staff.”
Composed of four campuses, the College receivesDavid Bodwell, Director of Financial Aid at Palm Beach
approximately 20,000 applications per year. PalmState, elaborates, “Verification documents are
Beach State’s success in implementing enterpriseaccessed and processed from remote locations.
content management (ECM) in Admissions andWithout electronic access, we would have to mail or
Registration served as an impetus to expand theFedEx paper documents to a central location, to
solution to the Financial Aid Office.which processors would have to drive in order to
Chuck Zettler, Director of Information Technologywork with the paper. When you take into
Project Management, explains, “Prior to theconsideration the resources that we’d have to
College’s ECM implementation, the Financial Aidexpend, DocFinity saves us 50% of costs that would
Office did not have a system to accept separatebe incurred otherwise.”
components of Verification and required a completeThe big picture
packet to be submitted at one time. This increasedPalm Beach State’s ability to improve Verification
the length of time students remained in anturnaround has a direct impact on enrollment. Under
incomplete status and also created a sense ofthe paper-based system, recipient notification of
frustration for students attempting to complete thefinancial aid award eligibility often took so long that
process.” Processing delays led to backlogs, andstudents would enroll elsewhere. By expediting
ultimately resulted in lower enrollment rates whenprocessing with ECM, students today are notified of
students were unable to receive award eligibilityfinancial aid awards well in advance of priority dates
notices in a timely manner. The College needed toand enrollment deadlines. Enrollment has increased by
find a way to improve turnaround without adding15% since the ECM system was implemented.
full-time staff. At the same time, they needed to cutFurthermore, Palm Beach State anticipates that if
costs.they had not used ECM to address Verification, their
Phase one: Point-of-entry scanningprocessing costs would have doubled. Instead, their
As part of an enterprise-wide analysis in preparationtransition to ECM enabled the College to complete
for their ECM implementation, Palm Beach Statemore Verifications by September 15, 2009, than they
determined that they could improve student servicesdid in all of 2008 for the same cost.
by transitioning from paper processing to electronicZettler summarizes, “DocFinity gave us the ability
workflow and automation. An integral component ofto outsource processing for financial aid Verification.
their transition was the installation of 65 FujitsuWithout it, we would never have been able to dig
scanners on desktops, counters, mail stations, andout of the backlog.