Case Study: Montana Office of Public Instruction achieves 88% direct certification match rate and reduced paperwork with Alvaria

Montana Office of Public Instruction - Customer Case Study

The Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI), which administers USDA School Nutrition Programs across the state, needed a more efficient way to track student eligibility and meet new federal direct certification requirements. Previously the program relied on time-consuming, error-prone spreadsheets to match students to state assistance programs, leaving OPI without quick access to reliable data for reporting and compliance.

OPI selected Aspect’s Professional Services to deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM and together they built a Direct Certification Application (DCA) to match SNAP/TANF records with school rosters. Results show matches rose from 26,815 of 42,423 eligible children (63%) with the manual process to 39,835 of 45,071 (88%) in production, while paperwork and reporting time decreased. Aspect and partner InRule also added a near-match flagging tool to catch misspellings and address errors, and OPI continues to refine the matching process.

Montana Office of Public Instruction

James Geitzen

IT Services Division Administrator