Dear Banner Financial Aid Systems Team,

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I am writing to you to propose an innovative solution that can enhance the efficiency of our processes within the Banner Financial Aid systems.  After doing extensive research on our staff and managers, I’ve concluded that automating certain processes can lead to improvements in our operations and overall satisfaction among our staff.

 

This proposal aims to present automated processes within our Banner systems that can help reduce staff workloads and minimize delays and errors. Having one-on-one meetings with staff, I've gathered that many of their frustrations come from tedious manual tasks that are time-consuming and restrain them from focusing on other projects. These automated processes help streamline tasks and ensure that data is handled correctly. 

 

Many of our processes are performed manually which requires a lot of time and effort.  Automating these processes can reduce the manual workload with tasks such as data entry and generating reports. Streamlining these processes can also reduce errors that can happen from manual processes.  This can improve the accuracy of our data records in our system which can keep everything in compliance with federal policies.  Automation can also help with faster processing times that can lead to a significant turnaround when processing aid and to be able to assist students promptly.

 

Implementing this plan will require our department to review our current processes in Banner and review areas where automation will be beneficial.  Collaborating with staff and receiving feedback is crucial to evaluating what processes to work with and adjust.  It will allow us to work with the appropriate IT groups such as the Development Team and our school’s Banner team to see what tools we require to be able to start working on a pilot project.  In the next 36 months, we will begin reaching out to key stakeholders, creating surveys for staff to determine key issues with the current system, and implementing a budget plan to create this project. It will allow us to create a pilot program to test these automation processes in a test environment that can help us identify any issues and fix the problems before we roll them out to the entire department.  Creating training courses for staff can help keep our staff updated on the new automation system and effectively use it.  Having testing sessions can allow us to identify any issues that need to be addressed and allow for feedback from the staff.

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I look forward to discussing this proposal and how we can implement it.  Thank you and please get in touch with me at your convenience.

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Sincerely,

Benjamin Portillo