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TOKOPEN
PROVIDES THE RIGHT ANSWERS TO DM AND WORKFLOW AT STEVENSON
COLLEGE
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Document managemnt solutions for colleges
Located
in Edinburgh, Stevenson College - www.stevenson.ac.uk
- is the fifth largest in Scotland and one of the largest
further education (FE) centres in the country.
The
college is an established user of Tokairo's TokAM student
attendance monitoring system - www.tokopen.co.uk/case_studies/stevenson.htm,
and has now adopted the TokOpen workflow and document management
solution.
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Key
drivers
Formerly,
the college had essentially a manual system -
traditional paper and filing cabinets with a basic
archive room. "We'd have major problems in
gathering information for audit purposes, for
example, for the Funding Council and Scottish
Executive, as well as for our own internal auditors,"
says Stevenson College Business Process Manager
Ron Peacock.
The
aim was to provide solutions to a variety of problems.
"We wanted to help our organization as a
whole, for the long-term and across many disciplines,"
says Mr. Peacock. "The principal purpose
was information lifecycle management; how we bring
information into our systems, access, maintain,
distribute and archive it - at bottom, generally
manages it better and streamlines the use of our
resources."
"In
fact, an electronic DM/workflow solution was an
answer to some problems that we didn't know we
had. For example, it would, typically, take a
couple of weeks to get authorization from various
individuals, to clear payment of an invoice. With
an efficient DM system, you can do it in a couple
of hours and make enormous savings in time and
cost - and improve relationships with suppliers."
"We
also wanted to be able to respond more efficiently
to the Scottish "Efficient Government"
initiative - www.scotland.gov.uk/Home
- which represents commitments by Scottish Ministers
relating to efficiency savings, including measures
to deliver
£745 million of annually recurring cash-releasing
efficiency savings and £300 million of recurring
time-releasing efficiency savings by 2007-08."
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Key
reasons why Stevenson College selected TokOpen
"We
looked at a variety of competitive systems," says
Peacock, "and initially invited five companies
to tender. Replies ranged, at one end of the scale,
from those providing little more than extended content
management functionality to high-cost, high-maintenance
document management systems that were essentially out
of our reach."
"We
whittled it down to two that were within our budget.
Both presented and demonstrated their offerings to an
internal evaluation group, and we followed that up by
contacting users running the respective systems."
"Tokairo
won the business through its breadth of functionality
- its coverage of all aspects of the information lifecycle.
We liked the way it worked, its GUI, and its ruggedness
and scalability. We were particularly impressed with
the workflow modules, Web usage enablement and the ability
to delegate control of folder hierarchies. At the end
of the day, it was the most cost-effective solution."
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How
TokOpen helped
Initial
applications for which TokOpen was adopted were
proof of concept projects aimed at demonstrating
the effectiveness of the technology to senior
management. To this end, document storage, workflow
and document control were addressed in four stages.
Stage
1: Within the college's Business Development
Unit, TokOpen is being used to provide a repository
of information for all course documentation relating
to commercial training courses for the Scottish
Parliament. Benefits will include greater consistency
in the courses offered through the ability of
all tutors to access the same information. And
through improved access to a wider range of documents,
there is a qualitative step up in the standard
of courseware.
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Stage
2: Next came the introduction of TokOpen to forms
design, providing the College with easy to use paper
and Web forms, readily captured and indexed into TokOpen.
This was followed using the system for the formulation
of policies and procedures, involving document control
and elements of more complex workflow.
"Forms
design is the pre-cursor for many of the benefits we
expect," says Mr. Peacock. "It allows consistency
for data entry. With TokOpen, we can quickly generate
on-line and paper-based forms that are scanner friendly.
Previously, design was manual with no particular common
format - and often without any thought of how such a
form might scan."
TokOpen
is also being used for the indexing of policies and
procedures that are currently available on the college's
Intranet. In future, these will be available on the
main Web site. "TokOpen will allow us to build
complex workflow patterns where a policy might go through
seven or eight verifiers, two or three editors and a
variety of validation processes," says Peacock.
"We
have many policies and procedures that have to be maintained
and reviewed by numerous individuals. A key benefit
of TokOpen in this area is the ability to pass information
and documents horizontally or vertically within the
College, providing instant, universal and simultaneous
departmental access - and just as easy to distribute
externally. Before this, it was all photocopies and
faxes - often with underlying problems such as who had
which version."
Stage
3: In the Finance Department, TokOpen's workflow
functionality will enable the college to dramatically
speed up invoice payment approval - typically from two
weeks to just a few hours. "With over 1,000 invoices
to process each month this a very significant time savings,"
says Mr. Peacock.
Stage
4: TokOpen is also playing a key role in the area
of student records. "With 12,000 students and typically
at least 10 to 12 documents per student, this is a huge
amount of paper. In the future, all student records
will be available electronically and the long-term aim
is to include all student assessment work, allowing
easy audit and verification of teaching processes and
day-to-day monitoring of student progress for guidance
tutors.
"Overall,
TokOpen saves time and money, improves central control,
security and management of information. It introduces
consistency in our processes, and dramatically extends
access to all information for all authorised college
users. Essentially, it makes information more visible
and accessible. It does what it says on the box."
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