Paper, paper and more paper.
That was the admissions day process for international students and visiting scholars at Boston University's Center for English Language and Orientation Programs (CELOP), one of the leading intensive English as a Second Language (ESL) schools. In order to process all of those immigration documents, staff had to use huge copy machines borrowed from faculty. Not only were those machines then not available to the professors, the entire system was laborious and painstaking.
The admissions officers needed FileMaker help.
They used the software to create a custom database which allowed them to streamline their operations. Instead of relying on hard copies of all of the records, they automated the document management and saved a ton of time in the process. Scanning time for documents was halved, and once entered, they are now easily available for search. Audits that once took 20 minutes of digging through old records can now be finished in a matter of seconds.
Using FileMaker made the entire change easy. In just three business days, the university's IT team created and tested a new digital file management platform, just in time for an influx of new students. Hakan Rudy Seber, systems support specialist for Boston University Global Programs, raved about the program's efficacy.
"The speed with which we built this entire document management solution is a testament to the FileMaker Platform's ease of use and the helpfulness of the FileMaker community," he said.
Even if you're not dealing with thousands of international students every year, you might be able to benefit from cutting down on paper clutter. Can Filemaker help? For Boston University and a lot of other users, they answer was a resounding yes.