The Problem
CUNY School of Law had several manual processes that needed to be streamlined and automated. Prior to ProcessMaker’s AWS cloud workflow solution, the school had no way of tracking progress and deficiencies within each process. Without this information, there was no system of accountability in place. Bottlenecks were difficult to identify, as the previous legacy system did not offer the same functionality that guaranteed transparency into workflows among staff.
In addition, the school’s manual workflows involved the human entry of information and emails, along with physically walking to notify another stakeholder that a process had begun. Thus, these were extremely time-consuming, prone to human error, and involved many hours of labor, time, and money that could have been used more effectively elsewhere.
One of the departments most ripe for digitization is the Admissions Office. For example, students would have to complete paper forms for most applications. The back-and-forth between admissions and students wasted time, paper, and money in the process. From this paper-intensive workflow, the school created a digital application that automated this process and coordinated greater flexibility across various departments to solve this issue.
The Solution
After comparing the functionality of platforms, CUNY School of Law set out to automate its core operational processes on the cloud through ProcessMaker. The cloud would offer the security needed for compliance and data privacy concerns, along with a degree of flexibility that would help the School become more agile to changes. By incorporating a cloud-based, intelligent workflow automation solution, CUNY School of Law could modernize its communications between staff and staff-to-student interactions to facilitate faster response times and internal efficiency.
The first process created was a simple Human Resources process that required six other departments. They held a group meeting to present the workflow at inception and saw immediate positive results. Through word of mouth, other workflows were quickly selected for automation, and the school began automating more processes.
The Value Created
Since moving to ProcessMaker, the CUNY School of Law has improved its staff accountability, productivity, and transparency in its core operations. Decision-makers and managerial stakeholders can now locate the source of bottlenecks to address the issue directly, creating visibility and promoting ownership between stakeholder roles and responsibilities.
The six active processes to date involve notifying students when certain information is needed or prompting action from the student for the next step. Messages can be sent to the student that direct that student to the right person automatically without human interference. The entire process is conducted electronically.
Today, CUNY School of Law can now operate with greater agility to student and staff requests, helping to improve the cross-campus experience. CUNY School of Law takes great pride in delivering exceptional student experiences — with ProcessMaker’s cloud offering via Amazon Web Services, the school is looking forward to automating more processes to exceed this standard.
