Integration of LMS, ERP, and electronic document management systems in a university and optimization of end-to-end learning and management processes

Abstract

The article examines the integration of LMS, ERP, and electronic document management systems as a key mechanism for a university's transition from «patchwork» automation to a unified digital contour that ensures end-to-end data connectivity and managerial impacts throughout the entire student's educational trajectory. It is shown that the main issues of such projects are not related to technical interface docking but to semantic interoperability and harmonization of heterogeneous information formats: unstructured content of the educational environment, transactional records of management modules, and weakly structured legally significant documents. Based on longitudinal observation of the digital transformation of 14 universities in 2019-2023, a reconstruction of actual process graphs was performed using event logs, supplemented by operation timing and activity cost analysis, which allowed comparing the state of processes before and after the implementation of the integration bus and accompanying optimization. Quantitative effects are presented for labor-intensive administrative support practices of faculty: the time for transferring control results to grade sheets decreases from tens of minutes to units, and the formation of reports on academic performance and attendance becomes almost fully automated; at the same time, the variability of time costs decreases, indicating procedure standardization. Integration of educational activity data with schedules and tariffication improves the accuracy of actual workload calculation and sharply reduces the share of erroneous labor fund distribution, while accelerating budget estimate preparation and improving classroom fund utilization. A significant pedagogical effect is associated with the transition to proactive support: the time for identifying at-risk students decreases, the share of expulsions due to poor performance reduces, the number of appeals due to technical errors decreases, and satisfaction with services increases. The reliability of inter-system exchange is analyzed separately: after introducing strict typing and asynchronous message queues, the frequency of critical data integrity violations and transaction duplications drops by orders of magnitude, shifting risks from the logical plane to the infrastructure one. Ultimately, the integrated ecosystem is described as a source of synergy, where a single event in the educational environment initiates coordinated changes in management and documentary contours, freeing up resources of the academic community and creating a basis for data-driven management decisions, as well as for further implementation of predictive analytics and intelligent superstructures, subject to organizational adaptation and work with staff resistance.