The data automation tool has been powering institutions and enabling admissions and enrollment leaders to remove manual processes for transfer evaluations and admissions since 2020.
Parchment, the industry leader in academic credentials management, announced a partnership with SmartPanda, a provider of mission-critical software solutions for higher education. The partnership combines market-proven solutions that admissions and enrollment leaders can use to automate the import of transcript data from PDFs or XML/EDI files into their student information systems (SIS) or contact management system (CMS) without wasting time or expense on labour-intensive manual input processes.
Converting transcripts into data is a very manual process, causing a number of problems for both first-time and transfer students and admissions teams alike. Not only can this process be time-consuming and error-prone, but it can also lead to significant delays and frustration for all involved. In a SmartPanda study, manually entering a transcript takes more than 20 minutes on average. This slows down the application review process and can result in important information being overlooked or missed entirely. With enrollment speed becoming increasingly important in today’s competitive higher ed landscape, there is a growing need for a more efficient and streamlined approach to transcript processing to improve accuracy, speed, and overall efficiency for admissions offices.
With Parchment Receive Premium’s Data Automation add-on, powered by SmartPanda’s Raptor and EDI/XML Tool, admissions offices are able to receive application documents from the largest credential network of over 13,000 K-12 schools and districts, higher education institutions, and professional organisations in the world and associate the transcript data with a student record in a few clicks.
The partnership combines the power of Parchment Receive, the most widely adopted transcript collection solution, with SmartPanda’s Raptor and EDI/XML Tool, a proven data extraction and ingestion software set. Institutions can instantly see the benefits of automating their received PDF transcripts as data by leveraging community-shared transcript algorithms and SmartPanda’s machine-learning technology, which continually adapts its pattern recognition to new transcripts based on transcripts it has already encountered. SmartPanda’s Raptor tool has already processed almost half a million transcripts from thousands of colleges and high schools in all 50 states and many foreign countries. For United States colleges, Raptor provides 95% coverage out of the box, enabling the Parchment network to benefit from the learnings of the many institutions already licensing Raptor and the EDI/XML Tool.
Alongside Parchment’s recently acquired course and program sharing, transfer articulation management, and dual enrollment solutions, Parchment Receive Premium + Data Automation can seamlessly enrol dual enrollment and transfer students, ensuring they stay on track and graduate on time.
“This exciting partnership with SmartPanda adds tremendous power and speed to Parchment’s mission of turning credentials into opportunities,” said Kevin Martin, Chief Growth Officer at Parchment. “The end result is that institutions can better serve students – both first-time and transfer – much more efficiently by getting them admissions decisions more quickly.”
“We are thrilled by the opportunities this partnership will bring as we leverage the strengths of our two innovative organisations,” said Paul Rhinehart, Product Development Manager at SmartPanda. “Our new combined solution creates unparalleled value for admissions and enrollment officers by streamlining and automating the transcript process, which in turn makes it more efficient and saves time.”
