Australia expects its higher education institutions to deliver top-tier learning experiences while supporting remote access, driving operational efficiency, and committing to sustainability. Limited IT budgets, security and compliance requirements, and fierce competition only add to the stress.
These challenges are steep enough on their own, but institutions working with outdated systems and paper-based processes have an even bigger hill to climb. This is where digital transformation tools can make an enormous impact, quickly.
Why Go Digital?
Higher ed is a document-heavy world, so digitizing documents and digitalizing processes greatly reduce the time, effort, and costs for student onboarding, financial aid applications, payroll, and more. The right digital document solution, including PDF editing and eSigning, should support your digital transformation so you can focus on providing an exceptional education.
Read on to learn how higher education institutions in Australia are leveraging digital document solutions to improve efficiency, security, and cost-effectiveness across the board.
Seven Benefits of Digital Document Workflows for Higher Education Institutions
Australian universities and TAFEs use advanced PDF, eSigning, and analytics tools to achieve a number of advantages:
1. Support both online and in-person learning
Distance learning is only set to grow in demand over the next several years. According to Statista, revenue in the online education market in Australia is expected to show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.44% through 2029—resulting in a projected market volume of AU$10.63 billion. To stay competitive in online learning, institutions must embrace technology that streamlines electronic document sharing, signing, storing, and security.
Digital document solutions like Nitro offer PDF and eSign tools that enable quick, secure signing and document editing to expedite virtual processes. As your student body expands around the world through online course offerings, you can streamline your onboarding and application processes while professors can more easily share documents in a central space with assured security.
2. Improve enrollment and onboarding experiences
For form-heavy processes like student enrollment and faculty onboarding, digital document platforms make editing, updating, and eSigning easy and quick. You’ll reduce form turnaround time, automate the creation and completion of paperwork, and get students and staff up and running as fast as possible.
3. Streamline applications, donations, HR, and more
Donation agreements, financial aid applications, and human resources operations all deal with sensitive financial data. The right digital document solution not only provides a seamless document experience for staff and students, you should be able to securely centralize your paperwork electronically in a single repository.
4. Demonstrate sustainability efforts
The University of Melbourne’s 2022 Sustainability Survey found that addressing climate change is the top priority for staff and students, and reducing the university’s carbon footprint remains a top area of importance as well.
As prospective students increasingly consider universities’ sustainability efforts in their selection processes, higher ed institutions must be able to prove their efforts to reduce waste. Moving away from printed paper significantly reduces your institution’s energy usage and carbon emissions—allowing you to demonstrate your commitment to sustainable operations.
5. Simplify the IT stack
Some popular PDF and eSign tools introduce complexities rather than make your life easier. If your digital document solutions limit your licenses, make contracts a pain to navigate, or add complexity to your IT stack, you’re not using the right ones for higher education.
Look for an all-in-one solution that offers flexible licensing, easy integration with your existing systems, and centralized administration. True digital transformation should always involve simplifying your IT stack—not adding more layers.
Learn how to build a smart digital transformation strategy in our Digital Evolution eBook.
6. Ensure compliance and security
Research from cybersecurity and compliance company Proofpoint found that 82% of Australia’s higher ed institutions “are lagging behind on basic cybersecurity measures,” leaving millions of students and staff vulnerable to cyber threats.
Nitro includes advanced security features like encryption, redaction, password protection, permissions, and more to protect your data and documents. You can centralize your paperwork in a single repository and securely create, share, sign, store, archive, and retrieve any document.
7. Measure productivity and ROI
It should never be a mystery if your organization is deriving valuable returns from your technology investments. Your digital document solution should provide analytics tools to give you full visibility into how users are using the software. With real-time insights into who is leveraging what features and how, you can maximize your institution’s success and ROI.
See the measurable economic impact organizations experience using Nitro in this Forrester report.
Nitro Success Story: University of Melbourne
Prash Sawant, Senior Manager of Service Management at the University of Melbourne (UoM), knew his institution needed a more flexible digital document solution. The licensing complexities and inflexible contracts associated with Adobe led him to explore Nitro, but he was nervous about changing PDF tools, gaps in functionality, user resistance, and more. In our webinar with UoM, Sawant said, “All these challenges were answered as we onboarded with Nitro.”
He leveraged our exclusive Pilot Program to run a risk-free trial of Nitro before committing and was impressed with the outcomes. Upon choosing Nitro, our change management team completed the university’s migration to our PDF and eSign solutions in two weeks. “Two weeks is record time considering the challenges we had in mind,” said Sawant. “With Nitro, we had a proactive feedback loop,” he added, “so wherever there was a concern or gap in understanding, we resolved the issues in a timely manner.”
UoM had minimal issues upon their Nitro rollout and has since experienced cost savings over their previous platform. With advanced insights into their Nitro usage, Sawant stays on top of ROI. “The fantastic support I received from Nitro is something that stands out, and I really enjoyed the whole migration journey,” said Sawant.
Hear UoM share their experience with Nitro in our on-demand webinar.
Why Australian Higher Education Institutions Choose Nitro
Founded in Australia, Nitro designed its digital document tools to serve the unique needs of higher education. Nitro Pro Business—which includes our PDF editor, unlimited eSigning, and analytics—supports the digital transformation goals of universities and TAFEs.
- PDF editing: Use Nitro’s all-in-one solution to edit, convert, combine, collaborate, and sign PDF documents in a secure, intuitive interface. Your document-heavy workflows go faster with less waste while students and staff enjoy seamless experiences.
- Seamless eSigning: Nitro’s secure eSign technology ensures signatures are legally binding and easily completed on any device.
- ROI insights: Nitro’s analytics give you clear, full visibility into how users in your institution are leveraging the software, so you can prove you’re getting your money’s worth to stakeholders.
Change Management Made Easy
One of the biggest concerns for higher ed IT leaders is how the move to Nitro will affect their current operations and existing processes. We know you can’t afford downtime, so we dedicate implementation and migration experts to your institution to ensure your migration goes as smoothly as possible. Our approach to change management includes:
- An expert change management team that manages your transition with a customized roadmap.
- Ongoing training so every user is confident in their Nitro proficiency starting day one.
- Access to our suite of online resources that serve as a knowledge base for your users.
- Highly rated customer support provided by our customer care team that consistently achieves a 95% Customer Satisfaction score.
Interested in learning more about our change management methods? Check out our Switching PDF Vendors guide.
We also offer higher ed institutions the chance to try Nitro Pro Business for free to ensure it’s the right fit. Get in touch with our team to learn more about the Nitro Pilot Program.
Partner with Nitro to Deliver Extraordinary Experiences
Your institution shouldn’t be wasting time in administrative bottlenecks or inefficient workflows. Manual, paper-based systems hinder your ability to provide the best possible experiences for students and faculty. Even if you already use a digital document solution, are you getting the flexibility, provable ROI, and cost-effectiveness you need to stay competitive?
Check out this eBook to learn how Nitro will help you accelerate your digital transformation goals.
And to ease the financial concerns of switching PDF vendors, you could get up to a year of Nitro solutions subscription-free. Talk to our education experts to learn more.