Employee provisioning during a pandemic
2020 left schools frantically searching for tools that they had never needed before. In a world that required all students to attend classes virtually, administrators and IT professionals found themselves distributing thousands of electronic devices without a tested asset management infrastructure. Who was tracking and providing these resources for each student? For each teacher? School districts had to quickly adapt and utilize the tools they had on hand. Many school districts relied on manually tracking these details on paper, in binders, or time-intensive spreadsheets. What could go wrong?
However, two tech heroes at a Maryland school district had other ideas.
Enter Kim and Matt. Our heroes created a plan to utilize pre-existing technological resources to optimize the distribution and tracking of 85,000 electronic devices. They needed solid inventory management capabilities and to make sure everyone who needed a device got one when supply was available. With the Kinetic Data platform, they created a “Tech Bar” to service every school location in the district. With this solution teachers and students were able to schedule low-contact pick up times and service appointments that met the complex constraints for parents, teachers and support staff.
Old manual workflow
But Kim and Matt were just getting started. “Tech Bar” had only solved part of the problem. Students needed parental permissions to check out these devices and all this paperwork needed to be tracked. The school district had previously tracked this paperwork manually in binders, sitting in boxes in the school offices.
Imagine the conversations that came up when a laptop went missing or came back damaged and the parents said they never signed anything. Spoiler Alert: These were not fun conversations. If the paperwork could not be found by hand, the cost would fall onto the school.
What if, our heroes thought, we could digitize paperwork the way we need? A form was electronically sent to parents where a digital signature could be captured? Once this was completed, it would trigger automated workflows for students to receive their devices without any further interaction.
New automated workflow
This information would then be stored in a modern application where information is actually searchable… unlike binders.
At the time, Kinetic Data's digital signature solution didn't meet their use case. Kim and Matt , working with our internal support teams, inspired us to build out a better option that fit their needs and budget. Plus, with our integrations framework as flexible as it is, adding new providers was a cinch.
In summary
Not enough can be said about the customers who have a vision and bring their ideas to us so we can develop the tools to make their dreams come true.
This is only one instance where Matt and Kim have become tech heroes.
As Kim fondly states, “If you can dream it, you can build it with Kinetic."
Stay tuned for more stories like this one!
Do you have a hero in your department that you would like to nominate? We would love to hear their story!
Kinetic Data Team
