Page 10 - THE Journal Innovation in Education, October 2021

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Greatness Awaits: Dump the Paperwork
There’s a lot going on in K-12, so how people spend their time is important. Shifting from paper to digital solutions ensures schools are ready for whatever happens next.
Jim McClurkin
Senior Director, Public Sector SAP Concur
WHILE THE ULTIMATE JOURNEY IN K-12
leads to learning, the roads of operation are too
often potholed with paperwork. Take the example of spend management, which can be a mixed bag. At one end of the spectrum are those districts that are mired in manual processes that involve moving literal paper — forms, receipts, invoices — from one desk or division to another and require actual blue-ink signatures. At the other end are school systems that have modernized their accounting and financial processes through software-as-a-service and digitized all aspects.
Guess which districts fared better when the pandemic closed our campuses, sent staff home to work, and nobody wanted to touch anything?
Getting More than Online Efficiency
The use of SaaS offers more than basic online efficiencies. The right kind of application provides greater visibility, tighter security and a much better user experience.
Greater Visibility
Manual processes offer little visibility into spending, expenses and cash flow. When paper-based invoices, purchase orders and receipts are scattered all over the accounting department, nobody really knows where they are in the payment cycle, creating lags in end-of-month or end-of-year settlement. True spend visibility lets district
and school leaders make better, more accurate and timely decisions. To tighten up spending, they can choose to see invoices that are being routed for approval and adjust spend thresholds that require approvals. The reconciliation process can shrink from months to weeks. Best of all, those in charge of the money gain a better sense of how the district stands financially, project by project or overall. Decisions don’t have to be blunt-force; they can be surgical in their precision: Not “No travel,” but “No travel that includes upgraded seats.”
Tighter Security
Concerns about cloud security linger, needlessly. The
reality is that SaaS providers can achieve a much better security stance by virtue of the resources they’re able to commit. Take SAP Concur: The customers whose data we’re protecting include government agencies, name brand corporations, major universities and school districts like the Rochester City School District in New York and KIPP Bay Area Schools in California. While typical school systems may be able to commit a small number of IT professionals to overseeing cybersecurity, we have a dedicated team of security specialists on the job.
Better User Experiences
We all live on our phones, and we expect to be able to get work done on them too. So, the idea of bringing in a new employee and pointing to a stack of paper and saying, “That’s yours to deal with,” is a non-starter — about as attractive as a cafeteria lacking enough trash cans. Being able to provide a user experience that’s accessible from
The idea of bringing in a new employee and pointing to a stack of paper and saying, “That’s yours to deal with,” is a non-starter — about as attractive as a cafeteria lacking enough trash cans.
any location on any device, in a secure format, with native applications offers a huge advantage over processes that need to be accomplished on premise.
Maximizing Rebates, Eliminating Fraud
Envision this scenario: Requests for payment are sent in via online interface or digitized en masse through a designated service center. The data is vetted to make sure vendors are approved and expenses fall within the expected range or amount. The documentation is immediately tagged for the proper workflow, being approved at each level through a
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