Oregon school system reaps ROI with EDM

The Portland Public Schools system in Oregon has realized savings in both time and money by automating document sharing, archiving and retrieval.

After asking vendors to submit proposals, the school district chose IKON Office Solutions, a Ricoh company, which implemented Fortis and FortisBlue enterprise document management (EDM) software from Westbrook Technologies.

Portland Public Schools began deploying the solution first in the special education department, creating a more streamlined process for sharing documents with psychologists and specialists.

Ramzi Adas, IT manager of imaging services for Portland Public Schools, says, “Now these professionals use Fortis Web to access documents online for viewing or making changes to student documentation. We moved special education from working with extremely manual and time-consuming processes to a quick, simple method of operation that they love.”

Adas continues, “IKON’s expertise in creating effective document management solutions in educational environments was key in selecting it as our vendor partner. A critical component of our solution is the Fortis software application, which provides scalability, Web access and integration with other applications that the district uses. Fortis was one of the few solutions that offered all the options we needed. In our special education department alone, we have eliminated printing because documents are instantly accessible on demand.”

According to Westbrook Technologies, Fortis reduced turnaround time for retrieving special education documentation from three to four hours to three to four minutes. Its solution is also said to have increased overall productivity by 85 percent, measured in the time employees no longer wait to obtain documents before scheduling appointments with parents. They also don’t waste time looking for misplaced documents. By archiving the documents in Fortis, Portland Public Schools also cut their document storage area in half, Westbrook reports.

Fortis also has been implemented in several other departments in the school district, including security services and IT, finance, imaging services, English as a second language, and talented and gifted.