Five hundred thousand sheets of paper were bombarding University of South Carolina fax machines and mailboxes annually, just in the name of sharing information between multiple offices. The Graduate School needed a way to share student records and make informed admission decisions while cutting down on the massive paper waste, which was unbecoming of a school with a forestry program.

USC, like most large universities, requires prospective students to submit 50 pages or more of application materials, including the basic educational credentials, essays, letters of recommendation, and test scores. In the mid-90s, USC’s Graduate School was getting 50,000 of these documents per year. At the same time, the office staff had to maintain more than 7,000 current student files. All told, nearly a million sheets of paper could be found in the Graduate School admissions office at a given moment.

Faculty members can only make decisions as fast as applicants’ materials are compiled. While the photocopiers in the admissions office were perpetually flashing and churning out paper, the top-notch students USC coveted were making early decisions.

Graduate School Director of Admissions Dale Moore sought a solution aimed at giving each department quick and easy access to the students’ application files. Ultimately, the Graduate School installed Laserfiche, an easy-to-use Document Management solution.

Laserfiche’s familiar, drill-down browser enabled staff to easily create new digital folders for each student. If a student sent in one document at a time, the hassle was minimal; staff simply pulled up the folder created for the student and loaded the image. Each prospective student had a secure file, and the photocopiers sat calm and quiet.

Today, USC still receives 10,000 applications a year in its Graduate School office. They just don’t need to make 500,000 copies. They don’t need to fax anymore, either. And, since adding a recent Laserfiche innovation called WebLink, they don’t need to rely on e-mail or even the school’s wide-area network for inter-departmental communication.

Through an Internet-based connection, the student records are distributed across the network to the department that needs them with a single installation. The departments do not have to install their own software. They have the ability to retrieve documents from a secure server, as if they were sitting in the Graduate School office themselves.

“We process our documents more quickly and more effectively,” Moore said. “It is much easier for us to monitor quality and to be consistent. That goes for all 17 departments. We’re all on the same page now.”

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