Sigma Kappa Shares Their Apps

At SmarterSelect we are continually impressed at the creativity of how our product is used by our numerous sorority and fraternity customers.  Recently, Katie Berger, Collegiate Operations Manager for Sigma Kappa Sorority, demonstrated how her organization uses SmarterSelect for much more than scholarships. 

Sigma Kappa started using SmarterSelect in 2012.  They currently use it for scholarship applications, leadership consultant and internship applications, collegiate chapter reporting, and collegiate chapter award nominations/applications.  Once the organization identified the opportunity to use SmarterSelect more broadly, pilot programs were set up to test. 

Before utilizing SmarterSelect for officer reporting, chapter officers completed a Word document version of the collegiate chapter report.  Officers emailed the Word document to a distribution list that included staff and volunteers.  Chapter officers were responsible for emailing out completed reports to the distribution list and volunteers were receiving large numbers of reports via email.  Using SmarterSelect would allow all reports to be housed in one place for chapters and volunteers.

During the pilot process in 2014, Sigma Kappa created each report and award application as a program in SmarterSelect.  The process was considered quick and easy and they were able to create dropdowns, insert attachments, and use other features to make the programs user friendly for the chapter members.  A user name and password were created for each chapter instead of creating individual officer accounts.  This allowed for all chapter reports to be in one place for the chapter.  

This setup also ensured that the correct individuals were receiving chapter reports.  All individuals on report distribution lists were added as evaluators in SmarterSelect.  Staff members, local advisors, and national volunteers were included.  When a report was submitted, the report would be assigned to the evaluators listed on the distribution for their review.

The pilot results were "overwhelmingly positive."  Very few changes were made to the pilot setup and a full rollout for all collegiate chapters happened in January 2015.  During the first year of full implementation, the chapters were given the option to complete their reports through SmarterSelect or use the former method.  The majority of chapter officers are using SmarterSelect.

Katie shared that SmarterSelect works for Sigma Kappa because everything is in one place and the process is streamlined.  There is no more emailing of multiple versions of report updates and no reports filling up email inboxes.  Instead, the progress of each collegiate chapter officer report can be viewed and shown as incomplete or submitted.  Evaluator progress on reviewing reports is also easy to see in the evaluation section.  Reports can be set up for all reporting requirements.

Thank you Sigma Kappa for sharing your SmarterSelect experience and realizing the flexibility of the software to meet your many needs.