Boys Hope Girls Hope
Boys Hope Girls Hope
Scanning archived documents — called “backfile conversion” — can be a lengthy, tedious process, especially when dealing with nearly half a century of paper files. See how one organization saw success with the fi-7300NX and EdgeXperience Capture Service for a seamless transition... with infrastructure designed for the future.
Boys Hope Girls Hope (BHGH) is an international organization centered on cultivating youth empowerment through the foundation of education and holistic support. Operating in 15 cities in the United States and Latin America, BHGH utilizes structured programming adapted to the needs of each community, unique curriculum, and partnerships with local schools and universities. Thousands of Scholars are part of BHGH’s programs across the United States and Latin America.
Judy Horrell, Chief Financial Officer, identified the organization’s need to manage their supporting documents and business artifacts. BHGH has three main programs that create significant paper-based business artifacts. These include academic documents, operational paperwork and program data. In addition, there are the usual documents required in most businesses, like HR forms, tax and payroll records, and business archives.
• The Residential Program: In each BHGH home, six to twelve scholars are cared for by live-in, round-the-clock professional Residential Counselors. Scholars share chores, do homework together, attend religious services, eat, and grow up together. The amount of supporting documents per scholar is staggering. Multiplying that by 2-3 residences per city and 14 cities in the United States alone generates an exponential amount of paper.
• The Academy Program: Like residential scholars, Academy scholars are enrolled in college-preparatory programs at top-rated area schools or provided college-preparatory curriculum in their current school district; scholars are matched with tutors who help them reach their academic potential and with mentors who share their life experience; they are enrolled in extracurricular activities designed to help them discover themselves and the world around them; and they engage in community service projects that teach them the value of living a life committed to serving others.
• Collegian Program: For BHGH residential and non-residential scholars, a college education is not a dream, it is an expectation. This program is a multi-year, interactive program with specific activities that are proven to prepare scholars for the demands of campus life and independent living.
In 2012, Microsoft donated over $1M in software to enable the automation of BHGH systems. As part of the digital transformation Journey, in 2020, BHGH is again leveraging the Microsoft platform to automate its document management business challenges.
“There’s a real need to safeguard these documents and manage the document lifecycle. BHGH’s Program is based upon Holistic support of our Scholars. Having the right documents available over the Scholars journey with our programs is critical. We thought, ‘Why don’t we digitize these documents, so the right people have the right data at the right time, in a secure and paperless method."
As we roll out the initial back scan project, we are uncovering other business processes that can be automated by the platforms. As a highly distributed organization, operating across 16 different cities, with over 30 unique locations, communications and collaboration are key enablers of our success.
BHGH wanted to start with their legacy documents. As part of their Network Headquarters physical relocation project, BHGH wanted to digitize their backfiles. In business for over 40 years, the amount of paper-based information was enormous.
BHGH found Cloud-ready document scanners to help the non-profit launch its Digital Documents initiative, with the goal to scan, index and store supporting documents in multiple locations based upon document type including the Microsoft O365 SharePoint platform. Microsoft O365 SharePoint Online offers a secure online location to scan, manage and store copies of the important documents and business artifacts.
The Digital Documents project launched in early 2020 with a pilot project at the St. Louis, Missouri, office. Additional Projects are planned for the 14 Residential Programs across the United States.
As part of the initiative, BHGH staff and volunteers will be utilizing the fi-7300NX scanners on mobile carts, without computers, to scan documents to Microsoft O365 SharePoint Online. The fi-7300NX can be deployed without a computer, connected directly to EdgeXperience Capture Service. This significantly reduces the burden on IT to maintain and secure computers dedicated solely to scan stations. Documents can start workflows using Microsoft UiFlow or securely stored in SharePoint Online or OneDrive.
Document access can also be made available using Microsoft Teams. As security is always top priority, the fi-7300NX Scanners don’t store any of the scanned images. The solution does not require a scanning station (PC or desktop) as the documents are scanned directly to EdgeXperience, to be hosted in Microsoft Azure.
Product Features
Perfect for distributed scanning; can be placed untethered anywhere
- PaperStream IP TWAIN and ISIS drivers for application connectivity and stellar image quality
- PaperStream NX Manager for next-generation server functionality which eliminates the need for a scanner PC and enables an end-to-end cloud solution
- Paper Protection technology prevents documents from being damaged during the scanning process
- 4.3" touch screen display enables users to perform operations intuitively
fi-7300NX
The BHGH Digital Document effort is a seemingly simple solution that was quickly delivering benefits to Scholars and the support teams. Non-profit organizations are not exempt from business automation. As the managers of donors’ contributions, they need to make sure they realize good return on their investment of time and talent. Social service agencies can realize benefits of digitizing documents because it streamlines access to and centralizes the location of documents that are vital to our mission. The reliability and usability of the fi-7300NX scanners paired with the Microsoft Cloud are providing BHGH and other organizations with endless ways to streamline their operations.
“We have had desktop scanners and multi-function devices for years; however, the fi-7300NX Scanner Platform when paired with the Microsoft Cloud platform changed the business value proposition of doing a back file scanning project. The scanners have a small footprint, they’re incredibly reliable, they can duplex scan (front and back), scan small items like business cards, thick items like drivers licenses and they are really easy to use, especially when deployed in a PC-less, cloud-enabled mode. We are setting up multiple profiles to simplify training for the people using them. When users are done scanning, a common reaction is, ‘That’s it?’ They are simple to use, and they just work.”