Customer Since: Spring 1997

Joint School District No. 2, often referred to as the Meridian Joint School District, provides public education for more than 22,000 students in grades K through 12. The district includes the communities of Meridian, Eagle, Star, part of Garden City, and west Boise, southwest Boise, and rural areas between these communities. It is the second largest and fastest growing school system in Idaho.

The district operates 20 elementary schools, four middle schools, an alternative middle school, three high schools and two alternative high schools. All schools (within the district) are accredited by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges and the Idaho State Department of Education.

Rapid growth continues to challenge educational endeavors. Over the past 25 years, total student enrollment has increased six-fold. Planning for and managing the challenges of growth remains a top priority.

In 1997, the district purchased a microfilming system to gain control of the student records that had accumulated since the beginning of the District in 1950. An aggressive microfilming program continued through 2000. To date the Meridian School District has captured over 250,000 images on microfilm.

Industry: Education

Business Challenge:
Because of massive population growth, the Meridian School District was confronted with a dilemma; increased documentation and storage was necessitating the redistribution of employees. There were cabinets in every department and an off-site storage facility creating numerous problems. For example, several files were being removed and not replaced to the proper shelves. Among several objectives, the district administration was presented a primary assignment from the superintendent; get the storage space problem fixed. Another requisite was to increase the file integrity for all active records through the development of an on-line system, which would provide key staff members' access to the database from multiple locations.

Due to the rapidly growing requirement for file storage space and the need for district-wide documentation retrieval and future growth, the Meridian School District required a solution that would manage and centralize various types of documents including scanned documents, word processing documents, faxed documents, emails, forms, etc. It was determined that the current microfilm system would not allow the district to capture real time personnel and Accounts Payable files and that the access to the images would require the use of an Imaging System. Primary considerations for the district-wide imaging system included:

• Ease of Administration
• Technology sound
• User friendly
• Full feature set
• Expandability
• Security System

Another important consideration for the district was Integra's unique implementation process, otherwise known as the Platinum Promise. This process includes intensive documentation in advance of the installation to insure that customer expectations are met. After installation the customer makes the final approval and reviews user documentation that outlines the use of the system.

Why Documentum?
The Meridian School District published an RFP and determined, after a number of demonstrations, that Integra Information Technologies' presentation of Documentum Software was the best fit for the district's needs. Documentum's ApplicationXtender or AX Imaging Software delivers cost effective and fast access to a central pool of mission critical information. AX is the software that is used for the viewing of all the documents stored to the Document Management system and the scanning and storing of all paper and electronic documents.

Why Verity?
Verity's TeleForm builds an information capture workstation to automate the collection, verification and processing of accounting, human resource, marketing and shipping documents into corporate database and knowledge management systems. Using TeleForm, the Meridian School District would be able to collect data from standard HR forms to export into the Documentum database. In addition, TeleForm is a viable transition tool for future growth using internet data capture to create a full access community throughout the district, including remote locations.

Solution Highlights:
After being awarded the contract, Integra had its design team interview the Districts Information Technology Department, as well as the records department, to be certain that all of the needs were uncovered prior to installation. Within a couple of weeks Integra was ready for the installation, and within one week the entire system was installed and the users were trained to use their new system.

Using AX, Meridian School District automated their accounts payable department by scanning and storing all vender names, vendor numbers, dates, and check numbers, while also automating payroll. In addition, the Personnel Department researches their documents using vital employee information such as names, Social Security Numbers, and document type.

Indexing of the documents has been virtually eliminated by using Verity's TeleForm software to perform OCR (reading machine print), ICR (reading hand print), OMR (reading marks on the page) to read the data on the scanned pages. To efficiently scan back file documents, the Meridian School District uses Verity's TeleForm to index data from the Accounts Payable, Personnel, and Payroll file cabinets.

The Accounts Payable department is now able to archive corresponding invoice information for easy retrieval, and the Personnel department is automatically capturing information from forms submitted by the new employee, and yearly from all current employees. For future integration, the Human Resource Department plans to use TeleForm to capture data off of internally created forms, while also developing web-integration so applicants will immediately be indexed, after submitting from the Internet.

When asked about the implementation and their satisfaction with the service of Integra, Business Manager Jim Correia responded, "They have a great staff, which is very knowledgeable of their profession and understanding of our needs".