New tools for Ole Miss

The University of Mississippi has implemented a new imaging and archiving system to improve business processes in graduate program admissions, financial aid, institutional research and academic discipline.

With the new solution, ViewDirect from Mobius Management Systems, scanned images of transcripts, financial aid forms, references, reports and other documents are indexed for fast retrieval and stored in the ViewDirect repository. The system integrates with the university's SAP Campus Management application and Sigma ProSAM financial aid software, providing a seamless environment to improve productivity and responsiveness.

In graduate school admissions, for instance, applicants complete a Web-based form that triggers a workflow. Supplementary materials, such as transcripts, references and financial aid forms, used to be copied and sent by interoffice mail to about 50 academic departments. Now they are scanned, stored and attached to the workflow.

"Graduate program coordinators in each department now have access to all documents with the click of a mouse for evaluation and admission decisions," says Maurice Eftink, associate provost and dean of the graduate school. "We have an end-to-end electronic process that enables sharing information around campus in new and important ways. We are providing better service to students and improving productivity within and across academic departments."

Says Kathryn Gates, assistant vice chancellor for information technology, "These applications are delivering compelling value to the university community, and we've only just begun. We're working on implementations that will make faculty accreditation more efficient, help us with asset management and take the academic discipline process completely online ... Mobius proved to us that it could provide the needed functionality and integrate seamlessly with our existing IT infrastructure."