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The University of Southampton Selects SunGard Higher Education to Help Improve Student Experience and Sustainability Efforts
Date: Wednesday 25 November 2009
Author: PHILIP ALSOP
Banner Document Management Suite Helps the University Meet Increasing Student Expectations and Improve Efficiencies While Reducing Costs.
The University of Southampton launched an ambitious project recently to improve the post-graduate student experience, boost sustainability and reduce overall costs. The university integrated SunGard Higher Education's Banner Document Management Suite (BDMS) into its administrative system and according to the university they are already reporting an improvement in student experience as well as anticipated savings of more than £10,000 over the next 3 years on reduced physical storage and paper consumption.
BDMS is specifically designed for higher education and provides imaging, document management, data capture, storage management, and output capture and report management for individual departments, or for an entire institution.
By integrating BDMS, the university has increased the speed of its existing processes, reduced the need for physical storage space and has progressed towards a target of turning post-graduate student applications around in just seven days – a target that was the key to providing a business case when applying for funding.
The university hopes that by digitising labour and resource intensive processes that they can spend more time with non-standard applications and also meet the expectations of a digitally native student body with continuity and efficiency.
After soft-launching in February, the benefits quickly became apparent. The University of Southampton's Head of Student Systems & Operations, Christine Smith, commented: "because we've reduced the physical element of storage and reproduction, we've seen an immediate benefit from bringing in BDMS, and have been able to spend a lot more time with non-standard applications. For instance at a recent meeting one school remarked that they had completed all their offers ahead of schedule and therefore their student s had already taken up their places on the pre-sessional courses.
The imaging and document management project began when one of the University's senior academics, Professor Andrew Roberts, wrote a paper that outlined exactly why they needed to improve their process management systems to become more efficient and boost the experience for post-graduate students. "We decided to remove as many manual processes as possible. We had heard about the Banner Document Management Suite and how we could integrate this with our existing Banner system, so it was the obvious choice," said Professor Roberts.
"The University of Southampton is a perfect example of how implementing SunGard Higher Education's BDMS can help reduce costs and improve efficiency – ultimately leading to greater access to education," said Chris Howgego, senior vice president of international for SunGard Higher Education. "In these economically testing times, it has become increasingly important to remain cost effective, something that SunGard Higher Education focuses on helping institutions around the world to achieve."
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