Three paper processes, redesigned for a new system

The district ran its core administrative work almost entirely on paper. Staff moved between fragmented systems, color-coded paper copies, physical filing rooms and basket mail, the internal mail that added a day or two to every handoff.

The same details were entered into several systems and formats, up to seven in one process. Nobody downstream heard when information changed hands, staff in schools had no access to the system at all, and workloads were tracked in paper files and email inboxes. With an enterprise system upgrade on the way, the district needed a user-centered vision for how these processes should work on it.

We ran contextual inquiries with 17+ roles across the three departments, from financial secretaries in schools to department directors, and mapped 34 roles across the processes in all.

• 8

  Frontline staff

  School administrators, financial secretaries and support staff

• 12

  Specialists

  HR, procurement and accounting staff doing the daily processing

• 6

  Leadership

  Directors, board members and approvers along the chain

• 5

  External

  Vendors, contractors and the systems that act in the flows

• 3

  Cross-functional

  Investigators, evaluators and compliance teams

No one person held the whole process.

Each role knew its own steps well, but the processes were so intertwined that the full picture only came together over several rounds of validation, with each role filling in what the others could not.

We documented 20+ current-state workflows as service blueprints. After the first validation session it was clear that most employees did not read blueprints or process flows intuitively.

So I changed the approach for every session after it: either a short walkthrough of how to read a blueprint before we started, or a simpler visual language that met people where they were. Untangling processes this intertwined into clear pictures also took more drafts than I expected.

In workshops with the district's stakeholders and technical experts, we designed 20+ future-state workflows around three ideas: simplify the entry points, automate the handoffs, and connect the systems and roles. To show what that means in practice, I later redrew the request-to-purchase-order flow as screens, to the future state the project proposed.

1. Replaces: guessing the form and the quotes

   A request that knows the rules

   The school says what it needs and what it costs, and the form works out the rest: whether a master agreement applies, how many quotes the amount needs, and where the request will route. Conditions appear only when they apply.

   
2. Replaces: the five-copy paper trail

   A buyer's worklist

   Every open request in one list, with what needs action and what is due soon, so aging requests show up before they are late instead of after.

   
3. Replaces: hand-built purchase order packets

   A purchase order built from the request

   The purchase order carries the request's details over, lists the checks still to clear, and answers the questions buyers actually get stuck on, such as which commodity code to choose.

   
4. Replaces: basket mail between approvers

   An approval route set by the purchase

   The route is built from the amount and the type of purchase, and adds a Board review only for contracts of $100,000 or more. Sending back is instant and needs a reason, and the Director of Purchasing can sign from a phone.

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Three vision books, 191 pages in all, with 60+ recommendations tied to what the new system could do and to the process changes around it. The work directly informed the technical configuration and the change management strategy for the upgrade.

• HR personnel actions

  Seven form formats and 8+ tools for new hires, transfers and separations, brought into one digital form with configurable approvals and automatic notices downstream.

  56-page vision book

• Procurement

  10+ flows, from school purchases to competitive bids and construction change orders, made digital end to end, with a self-service portal for vendors.

  91-page vision book

• Travel and expense

  100 to 200 paper mileage claims every two weeks, moved to a digital workflow with mapping for mileage, real-time budget checks and status updates.

  44-page vision book