01
Map the daily operating pressure
- List the workflows that slow staff every week: admissions follow-up, student records, attendance, LMS delivery, compliance evidence, curriculum updates, and reporting.
- For each workflow, name the current owner, backup owner, source system, and manual workaround staff rely on when the system does not answer the question.
- Separate visible symptoms from root causes. A late report may come from missing source-of-truth rules, unclear field ownership, or a platform that never matched the workflow.
- Flag any task that depends on one staff member's memory, private inbox, or spreadsheet because that is usually the first audit or handoff risk.
02
Check records, evidence, and handoffs
- Verify which system is authoritative for student profile, enrollment status, course placement, attendance, grades, documents, policy acknowledgements, and communication history.
- Review whether important changes have timestamps, staff owners, and review notes instead of silent edits or undocumented exceptions.
- Inspect the handoffs between admissions, registrar, academic, compliance, finance, and instruction teams to find where duplicate entry or missed ownership starts.
- Identify the smallest record cleanup project that would make later LMS/SIS, compliance, or AI automation work safer.
03
Choose the first fundable project
- Estimate the weekly staff hours lost to the top two friction points, then compare that cost against implementation effort and urgency.
- Choose a first project with a clear owner, measurable outcome, and short feedback loop, such as missing-document review, admissions routing, attendance exception cleanup, or LMS course-shell standardization.
- Define what should not be automated yet because ownership, policy, or data quality is still unclear.
- Turn the result into a 30-60-90 day roadmap with quick wins, deeper system decisions, staff training, and risk controls.