Why should we use a document management system?

The higher education world is full of paper. Final exams, transcripts, financial aid forms, student records, and athletics documents fill filing cabinets in universities and colleges nationwide. When one of these documents is needed, finding it can be a challenge for whoever has to look through the filing cabinets, hoping the document was put in the correct place.

Traditional paper storage also takes up valuable real estate on campuses that could otherwise be used for classrooms, or to provide additional resources to students.

While technological advances have revolutionized education—Smart Boards replacing chalkboards, online testing, tablets replacing textbooks, etc.—many universities and colleges are still using old, inefficient processes to manage their paper documents. There must be a more efficient, streamlined method to handle all of the documents in the higher education world, right?

There is. The answer is a document management solution (DMS).

Many colleges and universities still utilize an archaic method of filing, which costs more than a digital document management system. Aside from cost, perhaps the most compelling reason to use a DMS is for security. A DMS can keep all your documents secure and easily accessible. Your filing cabinets are probably full of student, faculty, and other records required to keep your college running. Why risk the security of these documents?

Don’t put your students’ records at risk. Increase your efficiency and save money by using the most secure, user-friendly document management system available. You won’t believe how easy it is to go paperless!

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management September 2019 issue of Spaces4Learning.

About the Author

Jesse Wood is the CEO of eFileCabinet (www.efilecabinet.com), a best-of-breed advanced document management system. Wood has 20 years of leadership experience innovating custom technical solutions for a wide range of business applications.

Featured

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Myrtle Grove Elementary

    Phased Construction Keeps Students on Campus During Rebuild

    When Escambia County School District needed to replace most of Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla., it had three distinct challenges: honor the school's legacy in the community, bring state-of-the-art learning environments to the county, and be seamlessly built on the same site as the active school campus.

  • GeoCam and UCLA: Modernizing Campus Accessibility Mapping

    In early 2025, UCLA partnered with GeoCam to capture and modernize its pedestrian infrastructure data. The goal was ambitious but clear: to produce a high-accuracy, imagery-backed digital map of every sidewalk, pathway, ramp, and ADA-related feature on UCLA’s 419-acre campus.

  • Phoenix School District Breaks Ground on New Prep Academy

    The Creighton Elementary School District near Phoenix, Ariz., recently broke ground on a campus replacement for Biltmore Preparatory Academy, according to a news release. The new space will allow the school to expand its enrollment by 50 percent for K–8 students and accommodate modern, collaborative learning styles.