How Educational ERP is making the educational sector a better place?

Educational ERP software is now becoming mainstream in the education sector. The main reason for the change in demand is how schools and colleges are becoming complex day by day. More data is flowing through the organization and it is always a good idea to keep track of the data and make good decisions based on the data.


ERP solutions are much needed in Education sector, but Why?

The education sector is in no way a small sector, it is growing rapidly and the complexity is near any other sector in the market. To make things worse, the sector competitiveness is increasing and require a data-driven approach.

Currently, schools doesn't care about sound decision making. There are many stakeholders, both internal and external, that needs to be satisfied. The stakeholder satisfactions is a key reason behind the success of the school.

By using ERP solution for your business, you can have the following benefits:

• Communication and collaboration among stakeholders are improved. The increased communication helps the school or college to get feedback and transmit critical information without any delay.
• ERP is known for efficiency. With educational ERP, day-to-day activities are easy to handle and other processes are also automated or improved.
• Parents, teachers and students can easily share real-time data and help each other to improve the overall educational structure.
• Information is streamlined and improved on the idea of sharing valuable data.
• Reporting is inbuilt in ERP. This can help teachers to easily generate reports for students and parents to see and evaluate.
• Analytical capabilities are also built within the ERP. Schools or colleges can take advantage of the analytics to generate reports which in turn can help them to make a better decision.
• Information can be accessed from anywhere. It can be accessed using the browser, mobile or any other terminal.

Like any other software implementation, there are many gray patches that need to be taken care of. For a successful ERP implementation, you should be able to identify key processes that need improvement. Also, working in tandem with other members can really make ERP implementation a success.

At first, it is always a good idea to handle the processes individually and improve them. The Automation of poor processes can only lead to bad results and no one would want the result.

Another key consideration is understanding the student life-cycle. The student life-cycle consists of many issues and they need to be addressed in different modules including the student management software, notifications, enrollment, results, etc.

Working on the small issues can improve the state of the ERP implementation.

It is also important to understand the current process and then try to improve them using ERP implementation. With ERP schools can easily improve on their previous way of working and help every stakeholder to work efficiently and productively.


The role of technology in improving education structure

Technology has entered our life in a very engaging way. It cannot be separated now. Educational institutes can easily leverage the power of technology and make their institutes a better place.

ERP solutions provide a one-stop centralized control panel which can be used to improve the daily work-flow of any school. It also helps in the administrative process and management handling. Information sharing also becomes easy with one-click data storage and retrieval.

To become successful, collaboration is the key. With ERP solution, everyone can easily collaborate and help make the system a better place. Report generation is automated and there is no need to spend hours after hours to generate reports for students and other causes.

Training the School Staff for School Management Software

The education environment is changing and advanced technology is slowly, but substantially replacing traditional, dull practices and moving towards effective school management. In the changing face of education, ERP adoption and implementation has now become crucial.

In order to move out of the phase of early adopters of management software and ERPs, the teachers and the rest of the staff need to be made comfortable using software technology. And this gives rise to the need for contextual and intuitive school management software training.

In order to give the teachers and staff a chance to explore through and adapt to the advanced features of school management software, professional training is mandatory. Only then would you, as a schooling institution, along with the students, be able to reap all the benefits of school management software.

Not only would such training sessions let them grasp its functionality rapidly, it would also improve your staff's confidence in technology and help you realize the potential benefits of an educational ERP software. For the entire process of implementing ERP would go down the drain, if the end-users do not understand how the system works.

Let's take a look at some the challenges one might face when implementing an ERP:

1. Transferring the data: This is one of the biggest challenges a school might face when implementing an ERP. Deciding what to upload and what not requires a thorough scrutiny of the available data. Moreover, the process of transferring is a task in itself and requires training.

2. Requirements: Since each school has a slightly different requirement and there's no blanket ERP available, schools need to diligently browse through different softwares, and this requires thorough knowledge about different school management softwares. So again, ERP training is the only way out.

3. Continuous monitoring: Post the ERP implementation, it's recommended that schools regularly monitor the progress and software's efficient working. However, during the initial months, it's often gets difficult for the staff to comfortably use the software and address the different issues arising. Therefore, training is a must.

A successful training program for school ERP can be roughly divided into 3 sections:

1. Launch Training: A one day, on-location training session for the staff to get them acquainted with the school managing software and lay a suitable foundation. It should involve a superficial training for all the staff and a thorough session for the key users, who would subsequently train the remaining staff in the days to come.

2. User Training: This would involve a hands-on training where the staff would learn about analyzing data, manage reports, and personalize.

3. Improvement Strategies: Once the above-mentioned procedures have been taken care of, the ERP provider would review the staff's progress and provide with a list of key areas the school lacks.