Alamo Colleges District Uses myOneFlow to Transform Their Virtual Operations

About Alamo

Alamo Colleges District is a network of five individually accredited colleges and seven education and training centers. They serve a population of 1.5 million people within an eight-county region, including the greater San Antonio area. Of the college’s 100,000 students, 53% are economically disadvantaged. 

Paper Based & Disconnected

Before myOneFlow, internal grant operations were primarily manual and paper based. With so many students, services, and locations, departments were siloed and disconnected, making it difficult to effectively manage and track a student’s progress effectively. Data was scattered, and generating reports was cumbersome and time-consuming. Without a straightforward way to monitor a student’s path, it was difficult to discern where in the process students lacked proper support or resources.

The Final Straw

When the city of San Antonio launched its COVID-19 Workforce Development Recovery Strategy in 2021, millions of dollars of additional funding were dispersed to various education and workforce development programs throughout the region.

As a result, Alamo College’s Economic and Workforce Development department more than doubled their number of clients, as well as their available grant funding, to $13.5 million for over 2000 clients. The added funding was great news for the District, but there was no way that their grant staff would be able to keep up with the expanded program using their old paper-based systems.

Dr. Sammi Morrill is the Associate Vice Chancellor of Operations for Economic & Workforce Development at Alamo Colleges. While excited about the sudden boost in funding, she knew it meant her team’s current reliance on manual data entry and spreadsheets would have to change, and fast.

“We had to scale our efforts in how we were going to serve our community. We needed a streamlined process. I wanted it to be as efficient as possible. I wanted to automate wherever I could automate.”

-Dr. Sammi Morrill, Associate Vice Chancellor of Operations for Economic & Workforce Development, Alamo Colleges

The Need: One Network for Many Systems

Alamo Colleges needed one integrated and automated platform that could scale up to efficiently handle multiple services, plus manage and track funding between its seven different centers. And with staff now working from home, the system needed to be intuitive, web-based, and secure. 

Ultimately, the college's decision to go with myOneFlow’s case management solution was made with the student in mind. The way Dr. Morrill sees it, “The more money you’re spending on data entry that is a manual process, the less money is going to support that student. So, I wanted to make it as efficient as possible.”

Automated Accountability

myOneFlow connected all the different locations and service lines, automatically logging every action taken by staff or students within the system, from intake and assessment to job training and placement. It made it easy to see what services and resources a student had received and where they could benefit from added support.

Plus, staff could now refer students to internal departments with the click of a button, rather than writing down an address and sending the student on their way. Dr. Morrill loves the ability to track the pipeline of applicants and monitor performance outcomes.

 “This system tracks every email, every task. You can track accountability-wise, are we doing what we said we were going to do?”

-Dr. Sammi Morrill, Associate Vice Chancellor of Operations for Economic & Workforce Development, Alamo Colleges

A Personalized Student Experience

The student body at Alamo Colleges is incredibly diverse, and no two pathways are alike. During intake, extensive information-gathering connects the student with the resources they need. Before myOneFlow, many programs required that students fill out up to 20 forms, often with redundant information. This arduous process was time-consuming and confusing and posed a significant barrier to enrollment.

With myOneFlow’s self-service platform, students fill out one intake form that auto-populates any other forms that staff need for enrollment and reporting purposes. The system then prompts the student’s next steps based on their responses, guiding them every step of the way.

Using the myOneFlow mobile app makes it even easier: for example, students can snap photos of their documents and upload them directly from their phones. Plus, the ability to use services without a computer or internet connection improves equitable access and further reduces barriers to enrollment for the students at Alamo Colleges.

Planning for the Future: From Transactional to Transformative

Dr. Morrill is excited to continue customizing myOneFlow to further serve the needs of Alamo College’s students. As always, efficiency is top of mind. She envisions a single student application for grant eligibility that automatically generates a list of funding for which the student qualifies.

This feature would make it easy to match a student with funding that could support them at every step of their career journey, from AEL classes to job placement. “That’s where we’re looking internally, to see how we can create efficiencies and centralize all of our compliance, all of our reporting in one system,” says Dr. Morrill. After all, Alamo College’s vision is “to be the best in the nation in Student Success and Performance Excellence.” The dedicated staff and myOneFlow’s student-centered workflows continue to help bring this vision to life.