Edu-leaders

Between Jalandhar and Phagwara towns in Punjab is the Lovely Professional University (LPU), a 600-acre campus with 25,000 students in 20 disciplines. Obviously, a large amount of paperwork flows through the offices of LPU to keep up with students and course information. Presumably in a university like this, it would be a nightmare to dig out any information.

“When a student came to us for some information, we would take a minimum of one day to locate it. We had a dedicated space of more than 500 square feet for papers and documents. More than space, we had a lot of manpower—nearly 10 people dedicated to document management. It was prone to human errors like misplacement. Tracking errors was impossible. We also had to put in a lot of effort to keep the papers safe from rotting or pests because there were no duplicates,” explains Aman Mittal, assistant director of the university.

Growing numbers persuaded LPU to opt for a digital documentation management system. With over 20 tie-ups with foreign universities, there were lessons to be learnt from all quarters. “We decided to take the best practices from all of them,” Mittal explains. However, none of the off-the- shelf IT solutions in the market addressed their needs. “We decided to create our own ERP with the help of HCL. A team of 30 software experts was involved to develop the system that cost almost Rs 12.5 million. This system covers everything from admissions, attendance, exams, faculty to student records,” says Mittal. One of the most daunting tasks was to integrate archival data. “We had to do a lot of re-entry into the system with dedicated DTP operators . It was a painful exercise since we had to verify everything. But the time spent was completely worth it,” admits Mittal.

What LPU now has in place is a highly sophisticated ERP system. The time required to access data is down to one minute, manpower has been reduced to one person, the set-up has been decentralised for each of the disciplines, error tracking is easier with login information, and the system is more student and parent-friendly. As for the threat of losing the data, “We have a differential backup system that saves data every 30 minutes. There are three back-ups of all data, one on the server’s hard disk, one on CD and one in a secure setup 20-km away from the campus,” says Mittal.

LPU has received rave reviews from peers, students and parents alike. But Mittal says that there is still a long way to go before the university becomes completely paperless. Human resources (HR) is only 50 percent on the ERP. Vendor management and inventory management continue to be very paper intensive. LPU aims to up its automated operations from the current 48 percent to 93 percent in 2010.

Challenges of Data Management
For the institutions that still depend on paper documentation, the challenges are the same— human errors leading to misplacement of records, duplication, or loss. Moreover, storage of the records also requires dedicated staff and funds to ensure they are not damaged by dampness, pests or fungus.

Neeta Singh, a lecturer at Delhi University recollects, “In the earlier days, we used to work so hard in filing and documenting our important papers. Now technology has made the task much easier.” A case in point is Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, where a Knowledge Portal was created to consolidate all the knowledge and relevant documents within the institute that would aid strategic decisions as well. Or the ERP software solution created by Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon that is used to manage over 10,000 online journals at the institute.

The Technology Edge
While schools gradually schools gradually tread the technology path, there are many challenges. The bigger management and technology institutes have many advantages in terms of availability of funds, management commitment and knowledge of IT. Puneet Datta, senior marketing manager of Canon points out that among the institutes in India there is a wide disparity among the haves and have-nots. “If you look at the IITs and IIMs, they are way ahead of the crowd. Many others don’t even have a basic infrastructure in place,” he says.

However, the real problem is that educational institutes are not bound by any statutory requirements for maintaining student records over a longer period. “The absence of compliance norms has been the main reason why this sector has been slow in adopting IT. Others like banking and insurance are bound by strict regulations,” confesses Datta. That apart, pressure to reduce operational costs, expectations for improved service standards, and environmental pressures to reduce paper contribute to an unceasing search for better processes.

Many administrators feel that resistance to change is the biggest hurdle. “I don’t think funding is such a big issue,” says Dr D.P. Goyal professor of Information Management and chairperson of the computer centre at MDI. “It is the attitude of the people that needs to change. The commitment of management to improve the situation is very important.”

As institutions grow in size and scope, the challenge of managing critical records only increases. From financial data and student records to library records, research papers, staff records and journals— a typical university has a large volume of information. And a good document management system for institutions must include strategic planning of student life cycle management, academic services, and student services.

Of these, the student life cycle management efficiency is especially hard to achieve due to inter-departmental information silos, and the diverse teaching materials and methods used by faculty. Institutes like LPU have tackled this with customised ERP solutions.

This is followed by library documentation which could include keeping track of both online and hardcopy journals that institutions typically order, lending information and due date, and other finer management issues. ISB Hyderabad has managed this by opting for the Virginia Tech Library software, while MDI in Gurgaon uses Livesys Software. Intellectual property management is of greater consequence to higher education institutes with stakes in research. University of California issued a white paper on Copyright Legislation and Scholarly Communication that clearly states “how to maintain a balance between the interests of the creators and the public”, “maintenance of a viable economic framework of relations between owners and users of copyrighted works” and most importantly how “all intellectual property should be stored appropriately to be shared with all members of the community”.

Managing HR and finance documentation could be adapted from the processes used by other sectors where performance appraisals, promotions, and salary raises, are all tracked in one module. Many institutions have opted to stick to a tried and tested accounting platform like Tally while some integrate it onto the ERP. Performance of the students can also be linked to the performance of the teachers, as has been done by the Department of Education in Chicago.

Best Practices
To solve their documentation issues, educational institutions could also look at the solutions adopted by other sectors like banking, insurance and telecom. ISB, for instance used TCS and Wipro as its benchmarks. Dr K. Mohan, senior director IT and Learning Resource Centre, ISB explains, “Banks have a large number of records and realtime transactions, so they have to create huge redundancy. We decided to follow IT companies like TCS and Wipro because they have smart IT systems.”

Content management is a big investment for many companies, as emphasised by a recent study by IDC. Managing content with ever-increasing volumes of information, mounting regulatory pressure, and disparate applications with isolated data repositories, remains a big challenge, as Ridhi Sawhney, Market Analyst for Asia Pacific Software Research at IDC explains. IBM, EMC, HP, Oracle and Iterwoven remain the biggest players with over 58 percent of the market share (in content management solutions space).

Construction major DLF, had over 8,00,000 pages stored on precious real estate which were digitized with DocImage software, saving the company Rs 160,000 a month in real estate and manpower costs.

At Sony Entertainment Television, employee documents were constantly getting lost. Then there was also the security concern with important documents stored on local hard disks or even e-mails. The company invested in a Rs 6 million document management system that resulted in savings of Rs 5.2 million each year.

ERP for Every Level
Apart from developing theirown ERP or buying ready software, the other option which could be considered by education institutions is outsourcing of documentation and records management. There are companies like the Writer Corporation that offer information management services.

However, academic institutes have so far used outsourcing mainly for digitising their paper documents. Goyal says, “The volumes of student records are not so huge and they can be easily managed in-house. Moreover, we have better control over them this way. With outsourcing, maintaining security and confidentiality becomes an issue.” Many tech-savvy institutes prefer their in-house systems over ready-made packages. “The problem with them is that at times, you have to do a lot of re-engineering to suit your requirements. Or you have to change your way of working according to their systems and processes,” admits Goyal.

“We have created our own in-house solution for registration and record keeping,” says Dr Kamal Karlapalem, Dean Academics, IIIT in Hyderabad. “This was built by our students, who got the Banyan Award for their voluntary contribution to the institute,” he claims proudly.