The emergence of workflow automation has transformed not only the commercial business industry but also education sector activities, roles, tasks, and manual systems into an automated centralized structure.
Automating your manual office tasks makes a massive impact on the productivity of the entire organization.
With the continuously digitalizing world, automating the workflow has become crucial and is being rapidly adopted by all kinds of enterprises due to its radical & vast benefits.
Workflow automation for Educational institutes
Workflow automation is referred to as a systemized design for streamlining the flow of tasks, documents, information and executing the repetitive manual tasks and processes automatically in accordance with pre-defined business rules.
Workflow management for K-12 schools and educational institutes is not about just streamlining the paperwork to the right entity. An effectively designed workflow influences every part of the organization. Designing a workflow automation system requires an in-depth examination of entire structure processes. It evaluates every single unit from attendance, resource allocation, leaves management, student enrollment, assignments & results declaration, hiring, and onboarding to even notification alert system in which automation can be implemented to maximize your business efficiency and everyday productivity.
Let's explore the vital key areas where you can implement workflow automation in your educational structure.
1. Student Enrollment
Online student registration forms have been around for years already and now it has become a must in every educational institute. Despite the revolution of technology, many institutes are still relying on the traditional ways of processing student registration and enrollment that demand gigantic man work and cause stress on the administration.
The main purpose of integrating workflow automation in the student enrollment process is to relax this burden on administrators and staff. A sophisticatedly designed workflow tracks and processes submitted applications until turned into a successfully approved application. Similarly, the same workflow can be implemented for entertaining and managing the application of aspirants’ students in the different extra-curricular activities, debates, and competitions, saving both time and money.
2. Leave Application Requests
Another important area where automation must be applied is the leave management system. Another most frequently recurring that educational institutes have to deal with is PTO requests from staff and teachers and leave applications from the students.
The educational institutes can automate the leave management system by integrating workflow automation. Whenever a staff member or teacher submits a leave request, a system-generated email is sent to the administrator notifying them about the request. The administrator reviews the request and decides on the approval or rejection. It helps the universities, colleges, K-12 schools, training institutes, and tuition centers in reducing truancy and tracking leave trends. Teacher substitution reporting tool can also be integrated into the workflow that eases the management decision on teacher leave and helps to find the replacement of teachers. Likewise, the leave application requests of the students can also be processed using the same workflow structure.
3. Fee Management
Another frequently repeating and crucial process for the educational institutes, K-12 schools, colleges, or universities is the collection and management of fees. The administration has to struggle in issuing and tracking different types of fee receipts for a wide range of students. If your institute offers special or extra facilities like transport facility, hostel facility, and other lab or experiments facilities then managing fees and bill payments become a mess to handle.
A fee management system designed by incorporating workflow automation helps in simplifying fee collection, generation and issuance of challans, tracking and managing records with 100% error-free results. In short, it automates the fee collection process and makes the fee management super easy.
4. Parent consent management
Gaining parental consent and verifying them become a fuss, especially when the numbers are in hundreds or more. K-12 schools/colleges have to ask for permission from the parents for particular activities time after time. It is a critical but tedious process
K-12 schools/colleges can make the parent consent process smoother and more reliable by integrating workflow automation. It incorporates streamlining and circulating digital consent forms to the parents. Parents or guardians can digitally sign the consent form to give their informed permission for trips, lab experiments, or other medical decisions on behalf of their child.
5. Notification system
Every day many events occur and K-12 schools/colleges' administration has to compile emails for sending notification alerts to the related individuals. Management may need to send alert messages to the parents about student absence, progress report, result announcement, holiday declaration, fee alerts or any emergency condition. Manually compiling messages and sending them to the related entities is a tiring task that wastes a lot of useful time and utilizes human resources.
K-12 schools/colleges can use workflow automation to automate the notification system by sending generated reports, emails, and students’ activities alert to the parents and teachers.
6. Admin Approval workflow
K-12 schools and colleges can integrate admin approval workflow wherever one level of approval is required. Administration have to sign multiple papers for approving staff leaves, projects, functions, or announcements every next day. Authorizing or rejecting the papers manually and keeping track of them take a lot of effort, time, and waste of funds on the paperwork.
We encourage educational institutes to streamline such processes using workflow automation. It will boost the process flow and save extra cost spend on the printing sheets.
Why workflow automation?
Workflow automation makes it easier for institutes to streamline their workflows. When daily operations running effectively, the administration has better resources and opportunities to focus on facts & facilities that impact teacher and student satisfaction. According to the Great Districts for Great Teachers survey of the National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ), workflow management is one of the utmost powerful elements in recruiting and retaining teaching gifts. In addition, here some most significant paybacks of integrating workflow automation in your institute's structure.
1. Enhanced Efficiency and Maximum Productivity
Workflow Automation uses predefined templates, forms, and functions in accordance with business-defined rules to solve repeatedly occurring problems. This strategy saves a lot of time by automating the manual work and maximizes productivity by eliminating redundant paperwork and freeing up human resources' time for other tasks.
2. Improved Accountability and Transparency
Workflow automation systems enable the tracking of the assigned tasks and monitoring of the progress of the tasks. Employees have the sense of being monitored and answerable for the work progress.
3. Fast and Flawless
Automating your institute’s workflows ultimately eliminates human errors from the root. Moreover, it streamlines and automates the process that makes eventually leads to faster results.
4. Saves Time and Minimize Redundancy
Workflow automation helps in spotting redundant activities that are wasting expedient time and productivity. It streamlines and evaluates recurring tasks, saving time of employees and reduces the duplicated effort.
Summing up, there are endless paybacks and conveniences of integrating workflow automation in your K-12 schools/colleges/universities or any other educational institutes. If you are interested in transforming your institute's structure but not sure where to begin, start from the most recurring and important processes to save time and money.
Nevertheless, you can also try our free trial NewGenEducationApp service to digitally transform your institute’s structure and automate all your administrative and management operational tasks. It is always best to try first, before the final move.