Meredith College Continues to Digitize the Campus

Last fiscal year, funds were approved to move forward with the purchase of OnBase by Hyland, Inc.

What is OnBase? OnBase is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution. OnBase combines the ability to manage our documents, processes, and data on one platform.

Why Go to OnBase? The goal is to eliminate/limit the use of paper on campus and secure sensitive student/employee data. By going to OnBase we are essentially digitizing the campus, which provides several benefits to the College:

1. Protects our environment by limiting the amount of paper used by the campus.
2. Decreases the amount of time it takes to search for files needed by the employee.
3. Increases collaboration between departments.
4. Increases security, and provides a backup of student and employee documents.
5. Improves processes by eliminating/limiting the use of intercampus mail while also decreasing response time.

Where is Meredith on the OnBase Project? Over the last year, Technology Services and the Provost’s Office have been collaborating to capture data from both the Administrative and Academic sides of campus. Progress on the project is as follows:

• The Accounting Office is fully functional, keeping new documents stored electronically, except for Purchase Orders. Currently, there is no plan in place for Purchase Orders to transition to the Meredith OnBase System.
• All previous Campus Police Incident Reports have been scanned and indexed.
• Health Services has completed the scanning portion of all their graduated student files. All scanning was completed by the DRS Group to aid departments who have little time to dedicate to the scanning and indexing of their documents. These files are currently being indexed.
• Marketing is currently being trained to scan and index their documents.
• The Office of Academic Programs is currently scanning and indexing their Faculty files.
• The Registrar’s Office is currently scanning and indexing their active student files.

Who is the DRS Group? The DRS Group is a certified scanning company located in Virginia. Meredith has an active contract with the DRS Group to provide scanning and indexing services to the campus. Any Department is welcome to use the DRS Group to scan and index their documents. If needed, Departments can opt for on-site scanning services for files/documents that need to be kept secure and on-campus.

Who is next to join OnBase? Institutional Advancement is next on the list to join the Meredith OnBase System. If your Department wishes to be next on the list, please contact Angela Gouge, director of information systems, at angela@meredith.edu or (919) 760-2243.

Next Steps after Scanning and Indexing Documents? Next steps would be to test and utilize the Forms and Workflow piece of OnBase. We hope to begin testing in the Fall of 2018.

More information to come as the project progresses.