Case Study: The Colorado Community College and Occupational Educational System

The Colorado Community College and Occupational Educational System (CCCOES) represents over twenty campuses throughout the State of Colorado. When the CCCOES decided to implement an electronic information management system, they sent an RFP to over thirty solution providers.

Vendors were required to support DEC Alpha systems running on Microsoft NT networks with a Microsoft Visual Basic front end. Of the vendors responding, Liberty IMS proved most capable of meeting the school system's requirements. Ease of use, open system architecture, and process automation capabilities proved to be the driving forces behind the selection of Liberty.

Initially the Financial Aid offices on each campus were installed. Recently, Admissions and Records, the Registrar's Office, and the Controller's Office were added as the system continues to expand statewide. Today, CCCOES has doubled the number of Liberty seats to 200 seats across 14 campuses statewide since the initial installation.

The initial configuration called for each campus to use a small RAID system (up to 10GB) for on-line storage. Due to the successful implementation of Liberty IMS and the subsequent demands placed on the developing system, Data Connect Corporation (DCC) was asked to upgrade the RAID devices to increase storage capacity. A Fujitsu 3093 with a Kofax compression card was recommended to handle document scanning. Data Connect further optimized the processes at CCCOES by creating a customized interface to link Series Z student information records with any related paper documents from the student's files that were scanned into the Liberty system. With DCC's interface, users click a single button on the Series Z screen and are instantly linked to the images of the student's additional documentation. DCC also integrated a barcode reader which, based on the information contained in the barcode, automatically populates the "year" and "document-type" fields on the input screen. With the inclusion of the barcode function, users are only required to manually enter data into one field instead of three.

Liberty IMS offers the power and functionality necessary to meet the requirements of higher education with integrated Taskflo, COLD, document management and electronic imaging. Data Connect offers the expertise to install and tailor the best possible answer to any document management issue. CCCOES, partnering with Liberty and Data Connect is implementing the administrative information management solution of the 21st century on all of their campuses.