Panhandle Plains Student Loan Center Success Story

Panhandle Plains Student Loan Center invests in technology to better serve customers

"PaperWise is so flexible and easy to work with. It integrated with the programs we already had, making things work so much faster," Darla Davis, records supervisor for the Panhandle-Plains Student Loan Center, says.

PPSLC originates guaranteed student loans for 50 different banks and has nearly 200,000 loan accounts. According to their mission, one of their main goals is to work to help students by meeting their financial-related needs while maintaining a caring, dedicated and experienced staff.

However, being able to accomplish this part of their mission was deterred by constant technical difficulties with their former electronic workflow program. Troubleshooting to mend the system became a daunting task and inhibited their ability to help customers. In order to get past this challenge and also fulfill another facet of their mission, "to invest in technology to better serve our customers," PPSLC needed an upgrade.

Conversion on a large scale

PPSLC was pleased to discover that the PaperWise document management system was flexible and scalable enough to accommodate their large volume of documents. Upon implementation, about 10 million documents needed to be routed to the PaperWise system. Today, they have seen a rise in productivity because employees can now get more done in a day's work.

Today, just six people are responsible for scanning documents into the system, while the majority of the people in the office have the ability to search the database for needed files.

Fulfilling a Mission

Integrating the PaperWise system into their business process enabled PPSLC to focus on what's important: people, partnerships and profits. Processes that took an average of two weeks now take just two days, with the streamlined methods offered by PaperWise. Since implementation, employees at PPSLC have grown to appreciate the benefits of their document management system and now prefer not having to handle paper. Now they have more time to perform important duties and misplacement of documents has been reduced to almost zero.

Continued Excellence

PPSLC has experienced considerable growth in the past few years. After adding locations and employees, they now operate in seven cities and employ 170 people. PaperWise has helped make this transition easier by making files accessible to users, even at different locations or remotely via the Internet. In July of 2004, PPSLC was named the recipient of the Exceptional Performer Designation from the U.S. Department of Education. This designation honors qualified student loan lenders who demonstrate superior performance in servicing Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans. Their continued success will be aided by their commitment to advancing their technology and increasing efficiency throughout their company with the help of the PaperWise system.