Background: Moving Beyond Manual
Oklahoma Community College serves approximately 10,000 students. While the admissions team had a dedicated staff, they faced operational hurdles that slowed down student mobility. Christina Atencio, the Transfer Evaluation Coordinator and a 12-year veteran of the institution, recognized that relying on manual data entry was unsustainable. The Admissions, Records, and Graduation team sought a way to move beyond the manual processes that were holding back the Registrar’s office and ensure students received the decisions they needed to enroll.
The Challenge: Legacy OCR Failures and Financial Aid Bottlenecks
Before partnering with Smart Panda Tools, the institution relied on a legacy Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solution that created more work than it saved. The error rates were so high that the staff found it faster to manually enter data than to fix the OCR’s mistakes.
This manual friction caused significant downstream effects. During peak times, transcript evaluation took 3 to 4 weeks. This delay created a critical bottleneck for financial aid. Because transcripts could not be evaluated in time to verify eligibility, students were unable to access their funding, forcing some to withdraw.
“We did timed tests and learned that it was faster to just have somebody manually enter data than mess with the OCR that we were using. It didn’t read things correctly, and we were always having to fix things.”
The backlog created significant internal friction. Because the queue moved so slowly and lacked a system to flag urgent financial aid cases, officers had to call Christina or The Admissions, Records, and Graduation office (ARG) daily to manually prioritize specific student files.
“I’ve had students say, ‘If I don’t get my transcript evaluated, then I don’t get my financial aid, so I’m gonna have to drop’.”
The Solution: Eliminating Manual Entry with Raptor
The institution needed a solution that integrated with their Ellucian Colleague environment and could handle the complexity of varied transcript formats. They selected Smart Panda Tools to optimize transcript processing.
Using Raptor to automate transcript data extraction, the team eliminated the need for manual data entry. Skeptical at first, the leadership team quickly saw the value as the solution handled complex tasks like grade management and reading logos on grayscale scans.
“My supervisor and I were very skeptical on how this would work, but we’ve had to eat our words.”
Raptor’s ability to recognize grade codes (like “DEV” for developmental grades) and standardize them automatically meant the system learned and improved over time, removing the need for repetitive manual corrections.
“The way it’s reading things is fabulous. We were afraid that it wasn’t going to work, because physical transcripts are very different from electronic transcripts, but they’re reading them well.”
Operational Results: From 4 Weeks to 48 Hours
The implementation of Smart Panda Tools fundamentally redefined the department’s processing capabilities. The processing time for transcripts dropped from nearly a month to just two days.
“We went from 3 to 4 weeks to 48 hours turnover.”
This speed improved the relationship between departments. The daily emergency calls from Financial Aid have stopped because the data is already in the system.
“I have a coworker that works in Financial Aid, and we used to have to talk daily. Now he just comes by to say hi. He doesn’t need anything.”
Strategic Impact: Scalability and Student Success
The efficiency gains allowed the team to change their entire operational model. Previously, they could only prioritize transcripts for enrolled students due to time constraints. Now, they process every transcript received, regardless of their enrollment status.
This proactive approach means that when a student meets with an advisor, their transfer credits are already evaluated and in the system.
“The advisor is already ahead of the game and knows exactly what’s coming over. They don’t have to look anything up, and they don’t have to call me.”
“There’s stuff I have put off for five years and I’m finally able to tackle it all. It’s great that Raptor’s going to help us, moving forward, to speed up even more.”
—Christina Atencio, Transfer Evaluation Coordinator