Jacob PattonAdmissions

Coordinator of Information Systems & Communications

Admissions Processing

All slides originally developed and supported by William Peterson, LeanBP.com

MissionThe communication and information management team

(CIMT – Processing) strives to achieve quality and accurate outgoing communication as well as accurate processing and analyzing of incoming materials in order to successfully bring

in the best possible class for the admissions office while meeting departmental goals and targets (deadlines).

VisionAccurately process and analyze incoming materials within

24 hours of submission in order to provide the best admissions experience for applicants.

CharterMission – The communication and information management team (CIMT – Processing) strives to achieve quality and accurate outgoing communication as well as accurate processing and analyzing of incoming materials in order to successfully bring in the best possible class for the admissions office while meeting departmental goals and targets (deadlines).

Burning platform – Inability to process applications in an accurate and timely fashion during high volume times causes loss of quality students due to poor customer service and inaccurate information for admissions team.

Process Description – Receiving application to completed processing.

Problem Statement – Inaccurate and slow data delays student completion of application/components/and decision.

Sponsor – Luke Hodson

Process Owner – Jacob Patton

Team Lead – Jacob Patton

Facilitator – Jacob Patton

Team – Jacob, Debora, Danielle

SIPOCSuppliers Inputs Policies Outputs Customers

• Admissions Teams

• Bluegrass• Prospective

students• Other

departments• Outside

resources- Parchments- College board- Feds- …• Jess

• Student Data- HS transcripts- E & E - Application• Counselor/reps

data • Test Score Load• Financial

Information• Jess’ designs• Bluegrass

Requirements• Interoffice

requests

• Staff Access and security.

• FERPA• Admissions

Policies• GDPR (EU)• ISS Policies• College Policy- Purchasing- Labor - Financial

/FAFSA• Document

Security• Shredding

• Communications (emails, letters, mailers, etc.)

• Time• Data• Physical

documents• Imaged

documents. • Functioning

system• Reports

• Prospective Students & parents

• Counselors• Luke• Other non-

admission departments

• International students

• Printing services

• Bluegrass communication

• Labor students• Campus visit

Hi-Level Process Map

IncomingReceive Data/

Information

Review Data/Information

Outgoing

Communications

Outgoing Data

Received by customer

Process

Volume > 6,500 in admissions

cycle

WIP = Various

Lead Time = 1-3 Business

days

Rework = ~ 40%

Constraint = Missing

information, time constraints

Strengths Weaknesses

ThreatsOpportunities

SWOT Analysis

Inte

rnal

Exte

rnal

• Experienced team• Well used system• Documented processes• Student labor

• Data from other sources• Time constraints• Lack of communication

• Connect system company support

• Training• Bluegrass

• Other college experiences• Competition for students• Unclean data from other sources• External EU/Gov policies

Gap Analysis Opportunities and Priorities

Inaccurate and slow data leads to

uninformed admission decisions, poor

representation of Berea College, and

missing out on great students who

decide to go somewhere else.

Current State

Seeing the Process

Future State (Now implemented)

Future State – Scanning Changes

- For Physical Documents, when scanning into folders, we used to have a folder (per document type. Transcript, recommendation, essay, etc.) that we continually scanned documents into and processed from throughout the day. Generally, it meant first in, first out , however outside of morning, there was no “set” scan time. It just happened as students were able or realized something needed scanned. Sometimes that meant that documents waited until the next day if someone missed scanning, or were scanned in after Debora left (She doesn’t work a full 40 hours).

- Part of the .75 success handoff rate was due to not being able to quickly preview documents after scanning them in.

Future State – Scanning Changes- We went to scanning/batching it twice a day, around 10:45 am and 3:00 pm, we know that

everything up until that point has been scanned in. UPS mail is delivered by 10:30, and any spare documents are caught at 3. This allows Debora to do paper documents before they leave for the afternoon.

- We can also track these batches, as they are scanned in with the date and AM/PM designation allowing for FIFO, and know that it has been processed within 24 hours. This allows for accountability, but also allows for me or the other processing person to shift our focus when it does it does infrequently take longer than 24 hours.

- The new software, which the college implemented and was outside of my control, has allowed for us to better set a default scan settings, and when combined with the new preview, has decreased the amount of documents that are unreadable.

Future State – Other Scanning Changes- College Transcripts used to be scanned in whenever, and frequently they were the

last thing as they were slightly more complicated (in color, with envelopes).

- College transcripts are now scanned in first. This allows Debora to process these first, allowing them to go over to the Registrar’s office on the same day (2pm mail run), rather than sitting in our office until the mail run the next business day.

Future State – Electronic Recommendations

- For electronic recommendations (Evaluation and endorsements or E&E for short), the decision was made to print E&E’s for two reasons.

- First, due to the security policies in Box, we were limited to 2 computer to process these files, and one of these is the same one we use to scan. If the students were given permission to access the box folder from their account, I couldn’t limit if they downloaded any of the E&E forms to their computer.

- Second, by printing them, we can have several students processing the E&E form from their personal laptops, actually making it quicker due to spreading out the work. It does mean moving it into a completed tray and then scanning the form in, instead of moving a electronic document on the screen. But, since the ID number is written on the form, it can be easily scanned directly to the students folder.

- There is a overall time saving and elimination of a security gap, though an slight cost increase (roughly $300 a year based on last years received online E&E forms), but is a small enough trade off for the security of potentially FERPA data.

- There has been a decrease in the amount of time is takes to get forms into the system, and an added benefit is that a physical tray makes it much quicker for students and managers to see if forms have been processed .

Seeing the Process

Counselor Evaluation Form

Counselor Evaluation Form

- We thought about standardizing the top of this form to match the endorsement form, making it quicker to see if all the required field are filled in. We did move the signature to the bottom line in our most recent version (to kind of make it standard as most signatures are the bottom), but we ultimately decided not to as having this form look different (graphic display) allows us to quickly sort it when the paper version comes in.

- We also converted the Guidance Counselor Form to an online form, which reduces missing fields and illegible answers , since I can force required fields online. This is prominently displayed at the top of the updated form.

Counselor Evaluation Online Form

- For online forms, the notification email we received I added “B#____ and Connect Id:____” (School/Admissions ID #’s) to the top so that this could be on the document when scanning it in. This allows one student to process, write the ID down, and a separate student to scan (possibly different student shifts) without having to look the student up. We also only have 1 scanner. Meaning the scanning person can be focused on scanning instead of flipping between screens and programs looking up ID #’s.

- It also allows for receipt notifications to go the students when the form is submitted. If for some reason the form is misplaced or misfiled, we can easily track down the original form from online. (Rather than it getting lost in the mail or in our shred pile).

Endorsement Form (No Changes)

Labor Student Standard Work

- Standardized training list for students to be able to check off created, and then digital version created.

Student Mail Pick-Up Schedule

- Before we used to just say, you’re here, go get [item] or ask for a volunteer to do the scanning/task. Pickup morning mail was the only mostly set task.

- Having these assigned has made it easier for students to know their task, but also to adjust if someone it out.

Student Work Space 5S- The baskets allow to division of labor that allows students to know what they are to do. Also, items on the

board, like pens and letter opens which are used all of the time, have a standard place.

Spaghetti Diagram- No changes to the Spaghetti Diagram. There is limited space, and the team couldn’t come up with a better

flow as the current flow seems to work well, for example having the incoming/holding basket on the wall allows for students to quickly see if documents need scanned in, but also allows counselors easy access to drop documents off, and we’re limited to where the scanner and two computers go due to the desk setup.

Spaghetti Diagram- However, one change that isn’t documented in the Spaghetti Diagram is shredding. We used to manually shred

documents at the end of the month using the documents from the recycle/shred bin. Depending on the volume of received documents from the previous month, it may take a student a couple hours. Over the summer, we switched to a locked shred bin that a company comes and shreds on site. This potentially saved us 1-5 hours every month, and is more secure.

Results- When asked about handoff below, the processing team agreed that this is more likely closer to 90% or possibly

higher in the current state (after implementing the future state changes), compared to the .76 in the previous state (current state VSM) . This is probably a combination of the new imaging software, for the reasons mentioned under the scanning slide, and better training, especially when students can catch documents with errors before being scanned.

Results- For the step below, since changing to printing online Evaluation and endorsement forms (E&E’s), the current

state (after implementing the future state changes) is faster than when they were entered from the PDF on the computer. Roughly saving 1 minute per form. This is most likely due to the fact that: 1) The tray for newly printed E&E’s is clearly visible, allowing them to quickly see there are E&E’s to process. Before they would have to remember to check a folder on the computer. 2) The task can now be spread out among several computers, rather than just to the two main desktop workstations.

Results- When counselors who were here last fall, and have something to compare this fall to, were asked about the

final step in the current state (after implementing the future state changes) and if image quality or data quality was the same, better or different, it was a mix of “the same” and “slightly better” for data quality with image quality being “the same”, however, this would have generally been caught when we were processing it in the step on the previous slide, so I didn’t expect a lot of change.

- However, as the primary person who handles the calls, Danielle may occasionally also receive these, it felt like I received less calls or emails about it than last year.

Quantifying the ResultsImpact Of Reducing Rework Of Physical Documents (Estimated for 1 admissions cycle)

Current (now previous) State errors in data entry step (assume ½ physical documents)3250 X 25% = 812

Future (now current) State Errors in data entry step3250 X 10% = 325

487 fewer documents that needs rework X 3 minutes=1461 minutes

=24 hours24 hours X $25/hour = $600 soft savings

Quantifying the Results

Impact of Reducing Touch Time for E & E electronic document(assume 1/2 of electronic documents are E & E)

1,625 documents X 1 minute saved in the future (now current) state = 1,625 minutes=27 hours

27 hours X $25/hour = $675 soft savings - $300 paper = $375 net savings

Reflection- Part of the difficulty in this project is that there is so much variation in the process, and the inability to track

errors long term. I could start an excel sheet with when errors occurred, but keeping track of these and the reason for the error, as receiving incorrect data is different than data entered incorrectly, would take time. I have done this in previous years when consistent issues started to appear, but it can be time consuming. Setting up a system to track this, and even when it would be implemented, would take longer than someone sending me an email or calling me or a member of my team, as many times these are caught when counselors are talking with a student, doing an application review, or worst case scenario during a decision meeting. Even though it may interrupt our work, that type of “customer support” is part of our job duty.

- There are also other changes, outside of my control, that impacted our work, for example we only require 1 Evaluation and Endorsement form, unlike last year when 2 were required for an application to be complete, that are policies set by a different team/committee.

Reflection- While the goal is 24 hours to fully process a document, this doesn’t necessarily mean a counselor will be

waiting if we don’t complete it in 24 hours as the application is made up of many different parts. Their “pull” of completed apps is only partially connected, through the last component, to the 24 hour period. We also don’t control which or how many components we receive in a day.

- The data that is scanned and entered is primarily used at the point of application review, so we have to treat every component as important/final since we don’t know if it is or isn’t the last piece.

- Comparing to the 24 hour period to historical data is difficult as 1) we don’t know when the document came in compared to the final processing data and 2) what events or student labor availability was in the past.

Reflection- Relying on student workers is also challenging as, due to class scheduling, there may be gaps when student

workers are not available, or when we have several together, impacting the timing of processes on different days.

Student Work Schedule

Reflection- Some of the positive changes, like changing to a shredding company or printing E&E forms, aren’t captured

well with Value Stream Mapping, but it does make an impact on the work and reduces the amount of time on those tasks, allowing other tasks to be completed.

- There are also changes that we’ve made over the last few years, before the LABP class, like creating an online E&E form to essentially create standard work and eliminating variables from writing or missing data, or switching from one generic “Hold - to Shred” bin, to a three drawer “hold – to shred” with clear monthly timeline, which is essentially 5S. These ideas came from training, like Disciplines of Speed, or from team meetings and thinking of how to streamline the process. This made it more difficult, as we had already applied several of the LABP principles.

- Overall, we are more consistently entering data within 24 hours of when documents are received, with less errors. Some of this is due to the changes that we have implemented, but also because the lean meetings created a focus or environment of performing well and a recognizing that what we do impacts the rest of the office.

Next Steps- Next spring, the main next step is to train a student to be able to create a B# ( Berea’s school ID number).

Banner, our system, will be/was upgraded to Banner 9 in December of 2018, and part of this was that it would allow a student to log in with their account rather than a Admissions specific account that wouldn’t be trackable. (As of mid February, I am working on getting permission for student to have data access and then training the team student manager.)

- Rather than train a student on Banner 8 and set up the account, we decided to wait until Banner 9 is in place.

- Having a student create the B# would allow the documents to be entered into our imaging system within the 24 hours, rather than waiting/batching them for when a staff person is able to do it.

- Update the training manual over the summer to reflect changes to the imaging system and Banner 9.

- Re-evaluate steps over the summer before training new students in the fall.

Next Steps- Part of what makes next steps more difficult is that two members of the team will be out on maternity or

paternity leave, putting the B# training on hold until February. (As of mid February, I am working on getting permission for student to have data access and then training the team student manager.)

- It also is more difficult due to the fact that there are new students in the fall or students sometimes leave in the spring. Unfortunately, the student manager we will be training, graduates in May. Depending this number, this means that at the start of the admissions cycle is not a good point to judge the efficiency of any changes made in the summer as it takes time to train students and help them realize the importance of “clean” data and good scanning. There’s also limited documents until about a month in, and the number of documents also decrease near the end of the cycle in March.

Progress Check

Call or email anytime, but send what you have so far