Human Resources

Rapid City Schools Streamlines Contract Renewals with Automation

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 07/13/15

Rapid City Area Schools has adopted a new tool to automate contract renewals for teachers and other staff members.

The district, with more than 24 campuses, about 14,000 students and more than 1,000 teachers and contracted staff, was using a manual process that had issues with management, accuracy and tracking. Each May, the district's HR department ran a report from its business suite for each employee based on their type of employment and compensation to determine appropriate contracts for each individual. Those contracts were then printed and shipped to each school via internal mail to each school, where staff had to retrieve their contract from the main office, review, sign and return it to the principal to be processed.

"Our manual process could take more than two weeks to complete and affected our HR staff productivity," said Valerie Brablec, director of human resources at Rapid City Area Schools, in a prepared statement. "Tracking missing and completed contracts was a tedious process. We would have to manually call or email employees one at a time to follow-up."

The district selected Contract Automation from Advanced Processing & Imaging (API), a company that was already providing a tool to manage electronic student records.

Using the new tool, "Rapid City will be able to perform this annual process more quickly, with less staff involvement and at a lower cost," according to a news release. "Once the contracts report is run utilizing API's Query to Workflow Automation feature, it will feed directly into API's Contract Automation system and electronically distribute all contracts via email to teachers and staff. Employees will then be able to review the contracts online and sign them electronically, eliminating the time and cost of printing and mailing. Completed contracts are returned to HR electronically making the process easier and faster for employees as well. All executed electronic contracts will be stored in API's OptiView document management system for archiving and data protection purposes."

"We're so excited to partner with API on this important project," said Shane Daniel, director of information technology at the district, in a prepared statement. "We'll be able to shorten the process, more easily track all 1000+ contracts and save money."