In the increasingly high-tech world of document management, both large and small PowerSchool school districts are experiencing the pain-points inherent with “information overload”. They just have too many documents stored in too many places and trying to locate a specific record is challenging at best and impossible at worst. One of the most common contributors of information overload is the numerous storage silos available to any and all users. Because of the multiple repositories, finding stored data can be an enormous, and often impossible chore. Content360° is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution built for PowerSchool school districts to help solve the following problems:
- Content spread across repositories: Users often store content in multiple locations, rendering it quickly lost or difficult to find. Examples of where users hide information are: on their individual hard drives, the department’s traditional document management solution, inside a line-of-business (LOB) application (such as a student information system) or on a share drive. Many districts operate with a combination of these repositories, with one for each department, making it near impossible to find documents across departments. Attachments are added to given records without proper metadata, making them largely untraceable. Finding what they need to complete their tasks can be not only time-consuming, but also expensive. Because dozens of users within a district can have years of data stored without a properly enforced tagging strategy, documents can ultimately become untraceable. When data hides in any of the repositories, it becomes dark content and is lost. With Content360°, users access and store all their information in a single location and use the integration functionality to access specific records within their LOB The documents can be found in Content360° directly or through an integration with a LOB application.
- Access from remote locations: Mobility is a noted component of a PowerSchool school district’s data storage challenges. Users experience difficulty accessing documents while on mobile or remote devices, but correcting this problem often means adding yet another repository to the system. With Content360°, relevant information is always accessible in a web browser through a connection to SharePoint.
- File and folder sprawl: Storing massive amounts of content is required for PowerSchool school districts. It is far too easy to print, reprint, copy and repeat. Users store documents on their desktops, shared drives, phones, and other online file-sharing programs. The issue is whether or not anyone from the organization will be able to find those documents again. Without an enterprise content management solution that forces users to store data in a codified system, it becomes nearly impossible to find old documents. In order to avoid file and folder sprawl, document management solutions need systems to enforce rules about indexing and storing documents. Content360° forces the user to store metadata in a codified fashion that is accessible and shareable by authorized users. This codified system effectively alleviates one of the main pain points of document management.
- Use of file servers: Old technology, specifically legacy file servers, is another major problem that further aggravates the pain-point of repository sprawl. Users have difficulty accessing information and tend to fall back on email for collaboration and content sharing. This presents problems such as security, version control, mobile access and expired links. Because Content360° is built on SharePoint, collaborating is easy due to capabilities such as default version tracking to see who made changes to which document and team sites.
By providing one single repository for storing all PowerSchool school district documents, Content360° has alleviated four of the most aggravating and time wasting causes of “information overload”. Now users can generate, store, retrieve and revise documents from one source of information and even collaborate with users in other departments with Content360°.