Texas Christian University
Speeding up Admissions evaluations
​
Founded in 1873, Texas Christian University (TCU), located just five miles from the heart of Fort Worth, is committed to a mission of global understanding, ethical leadership and the pursuit of creative discovery. In 2012, TCU enrolled 9,245 undergraduate and graduate students in 2012, who are participating in 131 undergraduate areas of study, 49 master’s programs and 23 areas of doctoral study. Learn more at www.tcu.edu.
​
QUICK FACTS
Client Focus: Higher Education
​
Business Location: Fort Worth, TX
​
Shamrock Services & Solutions:​
-
Custom development
-
eForm development
-
Solution deployment
​
Project Focus: Admissions, Technology Services
business
pain points
-
Want deeper integration between Perceptive Content and PeopleSoft to improve information sharing.
-
Need new eForm functionality to enhance data integrity and reduce manual entry.
-
Fast-paced timeline.
-
Need a cost-effective professional services partner.
shamrock's
SOLUTION
-
Custom scripts enable more effective and efficient data exchange.
-
Updated eForms eliminate risk of comment deletion, add time/date stamp, and improve data capture.
-
Completed custom scripting and eForm deployment within one month.
-
Shamrock stayed on budget at an affordable price-point.
Speeding up Admissions Evaluation with eForms and Custom Scripts
The Registrar’s and Admissions Offices implemented Perceptive Content (formerly lmageNow) and Perceptive E-Forms from Perceptive Software several years ago to remove paper, boost productivity and speed up student application evaluation. These solutions have lived up to their promise and delivered time and cost savings, but TCU wanted to get even more from their process and content management project.
​
To help them do so, they turned to Shamrock Solutions, a leading provider of IT professional services and partner of Hyland Software.
​
At the same time as Shamrock was working on TCU’s scripts, the company was also designing and publishing new and updated electronic forms to aid information capture and sharing within the admissions department. The forms functionality that Shamrock developed adds a time and date stamp each time an e-form is updated, and improve data integrity by eliminating the opportunity for users to edit or delete comments made by others involved in the evaluation process.
​
“The e-forms features that Shamrock provided do everything we need them to,” Candace Appleton-Kuntz, Director of Admission Information Technology says. “They’ve improved usability, collaboration and data security, and have also automated a couple of data entry steps.”
Perceptive recommended Shamrock Solutions and after our initial discovery call it became clear they could meet our professional services needs cost-effectively.
​
- Candace Appleton-Kuntz, Director of Admissions Information Technology
​
Improving Decision Making with Deeper Integration with PeopleSoft
A key part of TCU’s efficient, well-organized admissions process is the tight integration between Perceptive Content and the school’s PeopleSoft student information system. Over time, Appleton-Kuntz and her colleagues have thought of ways to further deepen this connection, with the goal of increased automation, removing yet more manual steps and adding greater business intelligence.
Shamrock Solutions’ knowledge of both these systems enabled the company to design and publish several custom scripts to help meet TCU’s unique needs. One of the scripts empowered Perceptive Content to look in PeopleSoft to see if there are new ACT or SAT test scores pertaining to a student that have not been added to his or her project folder. As students can take several tests before and during the application process, they often submit new and improved scores before a decision is made that could impact their selection. They often also submit new class rank information, letters of recommendation and other content that an admissions counselor would not typically find without a time-consuming manual search.
If the Perceptive Content system finds new test scores, an updated class rank, or any other new information, it routes the applicant’s file to an “updated” workflow queue, pulls in the updates and then automatically routes the documents back to the assigned counselor’s queue. In addition, Shamrock fixed three scripts that were not functioning optimally.
With Shamrock's custom scripting, ImageNow and PeopleSoft pull and push data more effectively and we were able to remove some redundant effort. These scripts contribute to faster and more informed evaluation decision making.
​
- Candace Appleton-Kuntz, Director of Admissions Information Technology
​
Exceeding Expectations
TCU set ambitious deadlines for its custom scripting and e-forms projects and was satisfied that Shamrock Solutions was up to the task.
“Shamrock finished our lmageNow scripting and e-forms in less than a month, which was ahead of schedule,” Appleton-Kuntz says. “The fact that they had two professional services projects running for us simultaneously and were able to stay organized and responsive with both impressed me.”
Part of the reason for this success was Shamrock’s structured project planning and implementation methodology and commitment to responsive and cooperative customer service at every stage of TCU’s projects. “It was convenient that Shamrock was able to do almost all their project management remotely and communicated proactively via e-mail,” Appleton-Kuntz says. “I’m very hard to please when it comes to vendors and they do a fantastic job. We’re definitely going to work with them on future projects.”
​
As a result of TCU’s satisfaction with Shamrock, the university is planning additional projects to improve the processing of International and Transfer student applications, in addition to various other initiatives within admissions and Technology Services.
​
In the few years that TCU has been using Perceptive Content's process and content management solutions, the university has seen a huge increase in applications. The custom scripts designed and implemented by Shamrock have helped ensure the Perceptive system is running at maximum efficiency to handle this content influx. “Since we first implemented lmageNow we have increased our applications by 60% and evaluated files by 70%,” Appleton-Kuntz says. “Without the use of Shamrock’s scripts and the enhanced functionality they provide, we’d never have been able to meet the deadlines for our students.”
​
​