How data capture solutions can simplify administrative duties in education

Office administrators and support staff have touchpoints with thousands of documents in their work in education institutions. From permission slips and contracts to financial documents and enrolment forms, there are hundreds of thousands of pages full of sensitive information that need careful attention and proper filing.

Securely storing this information for years at a time in line with compliance requirements can be difficult and incur significant costs in both time and money. To help reduce the burden on administrative staff and minimise costs, education institutions are increasingly turning to data capture solutions to help automate manual tasks like data entry and document management to achieve greater levels of efficiency.

How data capture can help

Data capture is the process of collecting information from a document and converting it into data for key systems. It’s one of the most critical phases when it comes to digitisation with the potential to transform most businesses, regardless of size or sector. If done correctly, it lets users store, search, organise, and retrieve documents in record time. Scanning and storing documents, printed or handwritten, as gathered data is highly beneficial. Data capture technology can take that process a step further by automatically analysing that collected information and syncing it with existing system and workflows.

Traditionally, data capture has been a manual business process. Doing this manually is much more time-consuming and can lead to more errors. Transitioning to an entirely automated process results in better productivity levels, increased information accuracy, savings on time and resources, and a better level of compliance and governance.

Data capture technology delivers several key benefits to education institutions, including:

  • Automatically capture document data: Data capture technology lets you extract large amounts of information that is automatically sent to your database, facilitating easy access to important data. It also saves time and resources with the reduction of data entry and use of paper across different areas of the organisation, including finance and even student records and enrolment.
  • Features at your fingertips: The capabilities that simplify document handling include extracting data from scanned documents, such as student records or enrolment forms, to analyse and edit. This automated process reduces manual processing and mistakes.
  • Ease of integration: By extracting data from documents, including invoices or enrolment forms, and then digitising and assigning it to the appropriate internal systems—like databases or applications—educational institutions can efficiently streamline an otherwise manual process.

Using data capture technology can significantly improve your institution’s efficiency and productivity levels. Documents and forms take less time to process, and information is available sooner, which can go a long way to easing the burden on your administration and support staff. And, it goes beyond helping to streamline efficiencies for office-based staff. Implementing an effective data capture solution can help streamline processes for teachers and educators, including streamlining the collection and storage of exam papers, assignments, and more. Archive documents easily without having to worry about storage space.

Creating a centralised database with data that can be accessed from anywhere is also an invaluable feature in today’s remote and hybrid working environments.

How can Konica Minolta help?

Konica Minolta offers a data capture solution that saves business’s time and money by reducing manual processing and improving workflows.

Konica Minolta’s data capture solutions:

  • automatically transfers everyday documents into business-ready data
  • automate required manual tasks such as data entry, document management and classification

For more information on how Konica Minolta can help you implement a data capture solution that meets your institution’s need, contact the team today.

To find out how Konica Minolta can help your business embrace digital change, contact the team today.