Customer Profile

Founded in 1890 and rooted in the Catholic and Franciscan traditions of Faith and Reason, the University of Saint Francis (USF) engages a diverse community in learning, leadership and service. From its earliest days to its current status as a degree-granting liberal arts institution, USF has remained true to its core mission while always evolving with the times.

Business Situation

USF serves a range of constituents from a large student body, faculty and staff. Students, in particular, are very familiar with mobile devices and prefer using them for everything. Yet, the vast majority of USF’s forms and processes were paper-based. Students and staff would print out Word or PDF documents and fill them out by hand.

Like every other organization, USF’s forms don’t live on an island. They are almost always part of a business process that spans multiple individuals and departments. For example, an internship registration form routes from a student to his or her advisor and dean before finally being routed to the registrar’s office for registration. Using paper or email is inefficient, confusing and error-prone. It wastes valuable time on paperwork instead of focusing it on the University’s main priority – its students.

Further, paper forms cannot access data from their Jenzabar Student Information System or in SharePoint leading to unnecessary data entry and even more wasted time.

Solution Summary

Using frevvo's easy-to-use, visual e-forms and process automation software, USF has now digitized hundreds of their paper forms and processes including employment applications, various business office needs and student-facing forms such as housing and academic requests.

Many forms are tightly integrated with their Jenzabar One SIS using stored procedures in the underlying MS-SQL database and frevvo's Database Connector. For example, the FERPA function lets students use frevvo forms, which look nice and are easy to use on any device. The data goes into Jenzabar so that internal, administrative personnel can continue to use the interface that they’re already familiar with.

USF is transitioning to SharePoint as their main content services platform. frevvo forms and processes integrate with SharePoint. Employees access form data directly from a SharePoint list rather than a paper image or PDF copy. They also save documents into SharePoint libraries so that it now acts as a system of record. USF’s Form Central portal is designed to be mobile friendly. frevvo forms and processes work automatically on mobile devices providing a key benefit to students who prefer using smartphones.

Electronic workflow routing ensures that people don’t need to know who the next person in the approval chain is. With personnel turnover and changes, this can be time-consuming and confusing. The electronic process simply looks up the next approver in the database and automatically routes to the right person with the proper notification.

Benefits

• The automated business processes in frevvo significantly reduce valuable time spent on paperwork allowing it to be directed towards more important activities – teaching and learning.
• frevvo's software is visual and easy to use and reduces the burden on overworked I.T. staff.
• Mobile-ready forms are more convenient for students.
• Integration with business systems reduces manual data entry and unnecessary errors.

Next Steps

frevvo has now become a critical business system at the University of Saint Francis and they intend to continue rolling out digitized forms and workflows as part of their digital transformation.