Process automation reduces costs and fills gaps at SIU Medical School
The introduction of process automation software at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine began as an experiment with putting paper forms online.
That was in early 2020 when the school began testing Laserfiche software to replace traditional timesheets with their digital counterparts. Since then, the SIU School of Medicine has expanded the use of the process automation product to achieve quick wins in digital transformation, close gaps in software functionality and reduce costs.
Regarding the latter, automated workflows can save the medical school’s employee health department an estimated $80,000 in software expenses. Jennifer Washburn, the school’s IT manager and leader of the process automation team, said the office planned to issue a request for proposal (RFP) to vendors for a specialized HR system. But the team’s development work made this unnecessary.
“We built so much custom process automation for them that it wasn’t necessary,” Washburn said.
Washburn learned of the put-on-hold when she received her annual flu shot from the director of employee health. Cost avoidance proved to be the largest financial benefit the school has achieved through process automation to date, she noted.
However, a more targeted approach to documenting such results is currently underway. Washburn’s team recently created an automated process review using Laserfiche. The system sends an annual survey to each process owner assessing overall satisfaction and asking about time or cost savings through automation.
Process automation for a number of customers
The process automation team’s first timesheet use case took off when the medical school’s 2,000 employees became remote workers with the COVID-19 outbreak. Timesheet pilots proved successful, and by October 2020, every school division was using the online time tracking process.
The rapid transition of a previously manual process typical of digital transformation projects in the age of the pandemic paved the way for further adoption. Subsequent automation efforts focused on leave request forms, employee performance reviews, and provider onboarding for the school’s healthcare practice.
Jennifer Washburn
Washburn said her team has been working on HR processes for the past few months. One project was about adding out-of-the-box functionality to a SaaS product. The school’s human resources office recently launched an applicant tracking application that automates job opening and hiring tasks. However, the medical school requires an additional onboarding step that the SaaS system does not cover: providing budget details to fund a position.
“We built this [functionality] in Laserfiche, so it governs how we will pay for the positions,” Washburn said.
Speed as a selling point
According to Washburn, the process automation team’s ability to quickly introduce new processes was a plus in using Laserfiche.
We have developed so many customized process automations for you, [new software] was not necessary.
Jennifer WashburnIT Manager, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
The provider offers pre-built processes and forms that give users a head start in automating common business requirements. There are more than 120 processes that Laserfiche calls “solution templates.” available on the company’s online marketplace.
Nucleus Research, a technology research and consulting services firm in Miami, surveyed Laserfiche customers and identified solution templates as a key feature that influences purchasing decisions, said Evelyn McMullen, research manager there. The templates, which span industry and departmental use cases, “can be used to deliver automated workflows more quickly,” she added.
McMullen also pointed to Laserfiche’s pre-configured and customizable analytics reports that identify process bottlenecks that could be addressed through automation.
SIU School of Medicine’s process automation team, consisting of five developers, has used Laserfiche to automate more than a dozen processes since 2020. Requests for automation continue to come in. “There’s still a long list of things that need to be built,” Washburn said.
John Moore is a TechTarget Editorial writer covering the role of the CIO, business trends, and the IT services industry.