Every department of every college and university has the need to perform high-volume processes, repetitive tasks, digital processes, tasks with multiple steps, and tasks that require multiple systems or interfaces. Some of the common areas that RPA can support include Admissions, Audit/Finance, Human Resources, Procurement, Academics, Student Services, Athletics, and Information Technology.

The implementation of RPA provides numerous benefits to higher education institutions, including improved student and staff experience, error reduction, more efficient use of labor hours, cost savings, improved job quality for faculty and staff, and streamlined communication with students and alumni.

RPA in the Back Office

Automating back-office functions frees up an institution’s staff to focus on high-value tasks that require critical decision-making. Exceptional opportunities for RPA to support back-office functions of colleges and universities include:

• Invoicing and reconciliation
• Payroll management
• Expense reporting
• Leave and travel approval
• Financial reporting (monthly and end-of-year)
• Credit card reconciliation
• Auditing and SOX compliance
• Vendor management

RPA for Student-Facing Interactions

RPA is not just for back-office functions; the use of RPA for student-facing interactions is growing. Colleges and universities are applying RPA to such student-facing operations as:

• Course scheduling and add/drop
• Scholarship management
• Financial aid management
• Research support
• Student Services
• Career Services
• Course/exam scheduling
• Student communications
• Reconciliation of student coursework with graduation requirements
• Assignment grading
• Attendance management
• Equipment and room reservation
• Transcript processing
• Query response
• Healthcare and counseling management
• Admission processing

RPA for IT Support

The Information Technology departments of higher education institutions offer unique challenges due to the need for processes to execute over multiple platforms using a variety of technologies, along with the need to manage a vast range of physical and virtual resources. In addition, IT departments often use a wide variety of tools from multiple vendors, and frequently, data cannot be exchanged between them very easily. RPA can bridge the gap between these tools and legacy systems. Some of the specialized IT functions bots can support at colleges and universities include:

• Managing support tickets
• Maintaining/upgrading and testing applications
• Simplifying cloud migrations
• Handling common security alerts
• Managing access

Bots can perform these functions quickly and efficiently, freeing up IT staff hours for value-add activities.

Implementing RPA at a higher education institution can drive cost savings ranging from about 25 to 60 percent, in addition to providing other benefits. At a time when colleges and universities  are seeing a slowdown in enrollment and a tightening of donations, implementing RPA helps lower costs for both institutions and their stakeholders.

Is your higher education institution ripe for automation? Contact Synch-Solutions today to get started on your automation journey!

The post Robotic Process Automation: Applications for Higher Education first appeared on Synch-Solutions.

And in the hands of employees who have been asked to implement a significant change, it is the engine of that change.

Knowledge occupies the space in the center of Prosci’s ADKAR model of individual change for good reason. It is the hinge on which successful change efforts turn. Here’s why:

If an organization has hit the right notes on Awareness and Desire, it will have a workforce that knows change is coming and when, and is on board with it, but has yet to be briefed on the specific roles they will play and where they will contribute to the broader scenario of change, much like a sprinter who is ready to run a race but doesn’t yet know which direction to run.

Once knowledge has been added, employees can move to support the change effectively.

At the Knowledge stage, employees learn “how to change”, which may include learning a new role, understanding new processes and where they fit within them, and training to acquire new skills. This is why training assessments and strategies play such an important role in an overall Change Management effort. Assessing where training fits with which groups of employees takes not only an understanding of what those employees need to know to implement the change, but what they know and are able to do before the change.

Remember, not every employee changes at the same pace. For some, knowledge of what to do may require nothing more than a simple pivot that is easily mastered. For others, change may require learning an entirely new role.

Without the proper training and skill-building delivered to the right audiences at the right time, organizations experience lower than desired utilization of new processes and systems, incorrect use, abandonment, and reversion back to old systems or processes, all of which spell death to a planned change.

The post Organizational Change Management: Knowledge is Power first appeared on Synch-Solutions.