As the new school year begins, teachers and administrators seek ways to save time, cut costs, and reduce waste. Electronic document management systems for schools can save those tens of thousands of dollars and countless precious hours a year, improve the teaching and learning experience, and make environmental initiatives more achievable.
What is an Electronic Document Management System or EDMS?
An electronic document management system or EDMS for any organization is a technology that permits you to digitally create, modify, edit, distribute, and store all of your essential documents and forms. Solutions like this come with different levels of sophistication with a much more robust system, allowing instant collaboration between all the team members working through your processes.
The high costs of printed paper
According to a report by Record Nations, a typical school uses almost an average of 2,000 sheets of paper daily. During a standard academic year of 160 days, a single school will use 320,000 sheets of paper.
The sheer amount of paper is overwhelming but comes at a staggering cost. The average sheet of paper costs about five cents, but schools’ high printing demands mean these costs are exceptionally high for resource-strapped institutions. At 2,000 and 320,000 sheets per day, a school will spend $100 a day or $16,000 a year just on printing paper. So, US schools spend $2.1 billion on paper every year.
Many K-12 activities require printing, so limiting classroom resources isn’t the answer. However, restricting printing even by one-quarter for administrative activities could help schools preserve their financial resources while saving trees.
Benefits of using EDMS for schools
Every school has a room dedicated to the filing cabinets that hold a seemingly endless lot of paperwork. Getting rid of that room – or rather, freeing it up for better use – is just one of the benefits of implementing electronic document management systems for schools. Let’s look at some of the benefits they offer.
1.Ease of Use
As you already know, dealing with a great deal of paperwork can be time-consuming and very frustrating. The simple task of tracking a form needed can become an hour-long event if it’s not stored at your site, or worse — it’s even outdated and needs to be edited.
Such an electronic document management system eliminates the need to track down a form. It even reduces the time needed to edit one for your particular needs. You can do that and even distribute the form to the appropriate people, collect the necessary signatures and information, and store it all in one digital place.
2.Frees Up Space
Even if you have worked out a successful documenting system for all of your school’s paperwork, we know those forms take up much space.
3.Security
Digital document management in the cloud means far greater security than all but the largest organizations could afford on their own. In the cloud, information is protected with several levels of infrastructure and application security. When cloud-based software providers leverage the massive infrastructure and expert security teams assembled by public cloud platforms, you get best-practice controls, policies, and technologies for data security.
Ready to automate your school’s document management?
A document management system is an integral tool for digital transformation. Understanding how digital document management works is a good start to going digital. However, it’s just one step in a holistic approach. The best strategy includes optimizing workflows and automating manual processes.
Get in touch with our team at SFT Dox Today!
