In 2009, during Typhoon Ondoy which flooded a large area of Metro Manila, the JASMS Campus was flood in waist deep water. Their computer system which hosted their Student Records was saved but the same could not be said for their Student Record paper files. The steel filing cabinets that contained these files were flooded up to the second drawer.
It would take 3 years to dry them out. During that time the Registrar's Office operations were disrupted and student's could not get copies of their records.
The JASMS management was determined not to let this happen again.
The Solution
SYSTEMA was chosen in 2013 to scan and index JASMS' Student Records and provide a Document Management System (DMS) for the storage and easy retrieval of their electronic Student Records.
SYSTEMA recommended the Alfresco Community Edition, a leading open source document management application, as the repository of their student records.
SYSTEMA also designed and implemented the filing and indexing system that suited their needs.
Because implementing an open source solution such as Alfresco is very cost effective, JASMS could channel most of their budget to the scanning and indexing of their paper records.
SYSTEMA also designed the workflow to efficiently scan and index JASMS' paper documents.
The Benefits
With the new electronic system, the Registrar's office can just do a search by Name, Course or Year enrolled to get to the student's records. They can print a copy of the paper scans in .pdf format if needed.
Before, personnel from the Registrar's office would have to go to their storage room and physically look for these records. This would entail lifting heavy boxes of files and manually searching each folder for the student's record.
The new electronic system also stored the box identification numbers of where the files were stored to make it easier to find the box that held a particular student record.
Since the Student Records are already in electronic format, they are also easy to backup. JASMS is now periodically backing up their electronic files and keeping them for safekeeping at an offsite location.
Future Improvements
The focus of SYSTEMA's Alfresco solution was for electronic document management. Improvements can be made in the filing system of the physical Student Records paper documents. There are physical filing systems available to save space and organize the folders used in storing documents.