School IT Pros Tap ACOM for Financial, Efficiency Challenges

Published: February 14, 2006

by Victor Wortman

School officials often struggle to balance the needs of their constituents, the students and staff against historically limited resources. Since the situation shows no signs of abating, school districts increasingly have turned to the creative application of technology to wrest fullest advantage from the resources that are available. In particular, IT departments in three United States school systems are among many that have responded by implementing electronic payment management and electronic forms management software from ACOM Solutions.

Lake County School District

In Central Florida, the Tavares-headquartered Lake County School District serves about 32,000 students in 55 schools in 11 communities, running Crosspoint's Total Educational Resource Management (TERMS) software on an iSeries 810 production platform and a Model 820 development machine. Both are located in an IT department some distance removed from the administrative headquarters. A high speed T3 fiber network links the various sites.

The iSeries environment was installed about four years ago when IBM discontinued support of their IBM 9221 VSE box. Coincidental with the move to iSeries platforms, the district sought a flexible payment solution to accommodate a complex payment environment comprised of different checking accounts for part-time and full-time employees, differing payment scenarios for a variety of teaching schedules, and multiple options and parameters within categories.

"Our solution has to be very flexible," says supervising systems programmer Heather Hamilton, a 10-year employee and herself a product of the Lake County school system. "The ACOM solution was recommended by Xerox, and it was the only system we examined. It has proved to be cost effective, easy to implement and flexible enough to handle all of our requirements. Support has been excellent and whenever we've needed them, ACOM's personnel were always easy to reach by phone."

The payment management solution includes batch check production, manual check production, form template design and production, the PDF module for electronic filing and document retrieval/distribution, automated sorting and more. The district also purchased three Xerox N4525 MICR-Laser Printer Solutions from ACOM that are situated at the headquarters location and which are defined as virtual devices on the system and network.

The district's payroll department typically ran payroll checks twice each month, printing, decollating, bursting, sorting and stuffing them at night at the school system headquarters office, then sending them in batches by courier to the schools for distribution. The new solution has enabled the payroll department to eliminate most of the post processing, as well as the burden of preprinted forms handling and waste--including burning a few with each check run to assure proper registry. Accounts payable checks are also run more frequently now to take advantage of negotiated pricing.

The MICR laser checks are generated as complete, signed checks on 8.5- by 11-inch perforated blank security check stock, and as before, they are produced and readied for distribution in the payroll department. The department adheres to the original disbursement schedule but with dramatically reduced labor input both in IT and in the payroll department.

"Payroll runs the jobs remotely from their own offices," Hamilton says. "They merely have to merge the data with the appropriate templates and print. Because we use blank perforated check forms, they can change bank accounts without ever having to change stock. It is less expensive and much less labor intensive all around. In IT, we have been able to shift our operating staff around and we are doing far less night work."

ACOM professional service personnel designed the check templates and the W2 forms. They also trained Hamilton and others in the use of EZDesigner/400, a graphical design tool that can be used both with EZPayManager and with the EZeDocs document management solution to create electronic form templates. Various projects have since been executed by district staff using EZDesigner/400, among them templates for student schedules, printed locally, and report cards, which continue to be produced centrally.

"The schools retain a lot of autonomy," Hamilton says. "We recommend various things for them to do, such as automating their mailing labels. We can design whatever templates they need and they can then access the templates over the network."

Ft. Worth Independent School District

The Ft. Worth (Texas) Independent School District had over the years found itself preprinting and inventorying check forms for more than a dozen different bank accounts--accounts as varied as payroll, accounts payable, bond servicing, grant programs, and others that drove the unique requirements of the accounting department.

Ft. Worth ISD has an enrollment of more than 80,000 students in 145 schools and an instructional/non-instructional complement of more than 10,000 employees, about half of whom are paid by check.

CIO Bill Richardson's 60-person IT department performs all of the processing for all of the district's departments and activities using Pearson School Software's CIMS system. Since the acquisition of ACOM's EZPayManager/400 payment management solution about three years ago, he has been able to offload much of the expense and a lot of the headaches by transferring the printing of checks to check issuing departments.

"Our point problem was the multiplicity of check forms, all of which we had to store and print in the IT department," he says. "We are physically removed from the administration building where the disbursing departments are located, so whenever a check run of any size, large or small, was completed, we had to load the checks in a car and physically transport them to administration.

"By converting to MICR-encoded checks and installing MICR laser printers in the user departments, we were able to eliminate form printing and inventory and to transfer not only the labor but also the control to payroll and accounts payable. Everyone is happy with the arrangement. It has simplified our lives and enabled us to reallocate some of our operators' time. Users are happy with the ability to control the timing and production of the check printing process. And the various payees are happy, because it has made the disbursing departments more responsive--it is as easy to print a single check as it is a batch."

In setting up the solution, Richardson contracted with ACOM's professional services departments to design the templates, providing images of the checks as well as sample data streams for the various accounts.

"It was not necessary for us that the check were direct copies," he says. "It was more important that ACOM decide on the best way to do it. We have not done a cost comparison analysis, but we know that the savings have been significant."

Milford School District

Another CIMS user, the Milford (Connecticut) School District, addressed its challenges through a shared resource relationship with the City of Milford.

The school district serves a student population of more than 7,700 in 14 schools and an alternative education site with about 1,200 employees, including teachers and staff. The district's payment requirements include biweekly payroll runs of about 400 checks and 900 direct deposit; vendor checks (assigned deductions, e.g. credit union, retirement accounts); and weekly accounts payable runs of about 200, or more than 800 per month.

The district's information system resides on the city's iSeries Model 270, and historically its payroll, accounts payable, and vendor checks were printed directly from the CIMS software. The district and the city maintain separate networks. Using routers to control access, the district communicates via RUMBA connectivity software.

Until late 2004, all three of the payment functions were performed using the iSeries' IBM Model 6400 line printers and preprinted check forms for each. While direct deposit funds were deposited electronically to employee accounts, they still required a printed advice of deposit form.

Conscious of the continued pressures between available resources and ongoing costs, IS Director Susan Bono took a long look at the district's payment processes and concluded that change was in order: the aging printers required extensive maintenance;

"Fortunately for us, the city was already using ACOM's EZPayManager payment management solution, and since we are in the same building and already had access to the computer and the software, we didn't have to look at other vendors," Bono says. "We simply contacted ACOM and purchased form template design services for payroll, accounts payable and vendor check and for the advice of deposit.

"For secure check printing, we acquired the Xerox 5400 MICR laser printer solution from ACOM. For additional security we purchased a removable PCMCIA card and card reader for storing signatures and other sensitive check-face information. To complete the single-step process, we opted for a Formax 1500 folder sealer and 8.5- by 14-inch Z-fold self-sealing check stock that we also obtain from ACOM."

"In operation, it looks as if we are on the same network as the city," Bono says. "Everything is totally transparent. But in terms of security both sides are very secure. The city can't access our files and forms and we cannot access theirs."

Bono says that she has not sought to quantify savings from cutting over to the new payment procedure but that she is confident that her original assessment is valid. "We are saving significantly on maintenance, printing costs and labor," she says. "The same people are involved, but with a one-step process, there is far less for them to do and the time that's recovered is being better used in other ways."

Bono notes that the district is one of only a few school systems that is ISO 9001 certified, and that the ACOM payment system supports that certification through high standards of quality, error and cost reduction, and increased customer satisfaction. "The certification is useful in that it represents standardized processes across the schools in the district, where in the past, each was free to do things in its own way."

A Business-like Approach

Viewed through the eyes of these school systems technology managers, educational systems are not so different from business enterprises. Both have their issues and their internal and external challenges to economize and streamline processes while remaining within budgetary boundaries. In one instance, the goal is commercial profit. In the other--you could call it a kind of profit, too--the continuous stream of young people equipped to deal with the challenges of living in and building their communities.

Victor Wortman is a Santa Monica-based writer who covers information-processing technology. He can be reached via e-mail at vwortman@earthlink.net.