Germany
Education Services
5 000 - 10 000 employees
With over 40,000 students embracing Science & Engineering Studies, the Duisburg Essen University offers a unique academic environment. The German University also acts as a hub for international students, through their Erasmus student exchange program. Every year, the Erasmus Service at Duisburg University sends out dozens of students abroad to foster a truly global educational experience.
As they were looking for a document management tool to prepare for post-Covid era, they found in Clustdoc a much more complete and flexible solution.
Anna Khodijah and Deniz Golgelioglu, Erasmus coordinators share how they can ensure a memorable experience to each outgoing student starting from the admission stage.
The case for ditching paper-based admission processes
Every year, the Erasmus Exchange Program provides local students with global opportunities across winter and summer semesters. The coordinator team needs to collect a list of specific information and documents, but also inform outgoing students about some exchange program details.
Before using Clustdoc, Duisburg Essen Uni relied on outdated tools which also were very hard to maintain and ultimately caused unnecessary headaches to teammates. Going abroad requires gathering specific documents, to follow precise requirements and nothing can slip through the cracks when it comes to student exchanges.
Also, another challenge after the pandemic was to collect a higher number of applications without hiring new staff. Anna explains:
“After Corona, so many students applied for the exchange program. It was twice the average of applications – in the past we had around 20 students per year, now we have over 50.”
Anna came to the conclusion that her team and the students were drowning into too many manual steps, a lot of different tools, and too much paperwork.
“Our admission process was entirely based on emails to collect required documents and file servers to stock them. Managing a single application used to generate at least 5 to 6 email exchanges with the students which was just impossible to track, as well as the internal approval tasks that we had set up among our team to review the documents.”
Given the growing number of student applications, Anna was looking to introduce a new technology hosted in Europe to optimize their admission process, and Clustdoc came up as the most robust and reliable system to support their needs.
From administrative anxiety to a 5-star travel exchange journey
With Clustdoc, Deniz was able to simplify the entire document collection step by creating digital processes for each semester of the year to easily collect information. Documents and more from outgoing students through a secure online portal, getting rid of paperwork and physical appointments.
“Clustdoc is our day-to-day system. We use it intensively during the peak time, especially to streamline our workflow better and make it easier for our students.”
Clustdoc allows the team to cut the back-and-forth that is often involved in managing outgoing students. Smart features like automated follow-ups, team collaboration and client messaging allow better alignment between Erasmus coordinators and students and faster interactions.
1 day
to complete student applications
5-star
student admission
process
Zero
manual administrative tasks & paperwork
For Deniz, this is a time-saver:
“Instead of taking a week to complete outgoing student files, it now only takes one day. With Clustdoc we now have so much more flexibility and control in our process. We’re also starting to better track individual outgoing student applications so that we are sure that everyone works in a timely manner.“
Efficient verification processes that free up team time
One of the main issues for the team was handling the volume of documents being sent by each student each semester. The Clustdoc applications console is a real time-saver, allowing team members to remotely check each student application, review and progress applications based on their internal requirements — from a single platform.
Duisburg Essen found in Clustdoc a reliable system built to support every student’s University exchange experience.
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