The University of Southampton Selects SunGard Higher Education to Help Improve Student Experience and Sustainability Efforts

Banner Document Management Suite Helps the University Meet Increasing Student Expectations and Improve Efficiencies While Reducing Costs

SOUTHAMPTON, UK – 19th November 2009 – The University of Southampton launched an ambitious project recently to improve the post-graduate student experience, boost sustainability and reduce overall costs.  The university integrated SunGard Higher Education’s Banner Document Management Suite (BDMS) into its administrative system and according to the university they are already reporting an improvement in student experience as well as anticipated savings of more than £10,000 over the next 3 years on reduced physical storage and paper consumption.

BDMS is specifically designed for higher education and provides imaging, document management, data capture, storage management, and output capture and report management for individual departments, or for an entire institution.

By integrating BDMS, the university has increased the speed of its existing processes, reduced the need for physical storage space and has progressed towards a target of turning post-graduate student applications around in just seven days – a target that was the key to providing a business case when applying for funding. 

The university hopes that by digitising labour and resource intensive processes that they can spend more time with non-standard applications and also meet the expectations of a digitally native student body with continuity and efficiency.

After soft-launching in February, the benefits quickly became apparent.  The University of Southampton’s Head of Student Systems & Operations, Christine Smith, commented: “because we’ve reduced the physical element of storage and reproduction, we’ve seen an immediate benefit from bringing in BDMS, and have been able to spend a lot more time with non-standard applications.  For instance at  a recent meeting one school remarked that they had completed all their offers ahead of schedule and therefore their student s had already  taken up their places on the pre-sessional courses.

The imaging and document management project began when one of the University’s senior academics, Professor Andrew Roberts, wrote a paper that outlined exactly why they needed to improve their process management systems to become more efficient and boost the experience for post-graduate students. “We decided to remove as many manual processes as possible. We had heard about the Banner Document Management Suite and how we could integrate this with our existing Banner system, so it was the obvious choice,” said Professor Roberts.

“The University of Southampton is a perfect example of how implementing SunGard Higher Education’s BDMS can help reduce costs and improve efficiency – ultimately leading to greater access to education,” said Chris Howgego, senior vice president of international for SunGard Higher Education.  “In these economically testing times, it has become increasingly important to remain cost effective, something that SunGard Higher Education focuses on helping institutions around the world to achieve.”

About SunGard Higher Education
SunGard Higher Education provides software and support, systems implementation and integration, strategic consulting, and technology management services to help colleges and universities build, unify, and manage their digital campuses.  Bringing together people, processes, and technology, SunGard Higher Education assists 1,600 higher education organizations around the world, including colleges, universities, campuses, foundations, state systems, central and district offices to strengthen institutional performance through improved constituent services, increased accountability, and better educational experiences.  www.sungardhe.com.

About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies.  SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries.
SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector.   SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.

With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses. Based on information compiled by Datamonitor*, SunGard is the third largest provider of business applications software after Oracle and SAP. Continuity, Insurance & Risk has recognized SunGard as service provider of the year an unprecedented six times.  For more information, please visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

*January 2009 Technology Vendors Financial Database Tracker http://www.datamonitor.com
Trademark Information: SunGard, the SunGard logo and Banner are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.