Managing Multiple Schools With USM

Purpose of multiple school branches across the globe

An institution may have various branches in different parts of the city, state, country or across the globe. One of the main reasons to open another branch of an educational institution is the increasing student body and the need of better educational possibilities. The other reason to have more than one branch is an increasing human population. A school in a far away locality cannot be accessed by a population situated in another locality. By establishing various branches of a school, students can access education in the school of their choice, rather than settling for what is available.

What does a multiple school ERP system do?

Multi- school ERP system are meant for schools with various branches across the country. The system provides a similar academic system and processes for all the branches of an institution. This ensures that all the students across various branches have a uniform learning experience and can evolve simultaneously. It creates an inspired teaching and learning environment where all stakeholders collaborate for an overall development of a child. It also provides you a single window to look or manage all your subsidiary schools. The user needs only one parent account to manage multiple branches.

Characteristics of USM’s Multi-School ERP System to manage school branches:

More than 1 admin profiles- All the branches of an institution require their own administration. USM allows various branches to have their own admin profiles, which ensures a smooth workflow that looks into individual needs of the schools and does not burden the parent institution with the workload of its different branches. Also you can create multiple admin accounts specific to school so that one school’s data is not visible or accessible to other school’s admin and they can work on their individual sets of school data

One Sms and email alerts for all- Sms alerts are a way to send across important informations to parents, teachers,and students. Its an easy and reliable way for communication purpose related to academics and other school activities.

With a multi-school ERP system, SMS alerts can be set for multiple branches on one go. This allows the students of all the branches of an institution to get the same information at the same time across the same platform.

The same happens with the email alerts sent by the institution.  The multi-school ERP system can be setup in one click to operate exactly in the same way for all branches of the schools to send emails to the parents, teachers, and students for any information related to the school or academics.

Common plugin for all branches- Common plugin allows the parent institution to manage all the subsidiary branches’ accounts at one place if required. For example, the admin can integrate all the bank accounts of the different branches to collect the school fees in one single account if necessary. The Sms plugin of an institution can also work as a common plugin between the branches to send same sms or emails across the participants of all the school branches. The libraries of all the branches of a school can also be managed by common plugin. Common plugin makes simultaneously administering and managing all the branches easier.

USM efficiently manages various branches of an institution with its ERP. It makes the process of managing different branches effortless and hassle free and less chaotic.

Case Study: How USM helped St. Joseph’s Residential School in automating their daily school activities and also helped them to save their Time and Cost?

St. Joseph’s Residential School is a Sr. Secondary English medium school opened and administered by the St. Joseph’s Mission Birsinghpur Pali(M.P) to provide better educational facilities in a homely atmosphere to the children of the citizens of India. It was founded with a focus to provide a holistic education with a strong sense of values, combining academic excellence, state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities matching the global standards. They wanted to establish an institution that would provide education in imaginative, creative and positive ways to bring out the best in the students of different learning and performing abilities. They wanted to establish a community where children can discover who they are and where their interests lie, giving them an opportunity to utilize their energies positively. The institution envisaged an atmosphere where they would have the courage to take their minds for a walk and ask questions; a comfort zone where they would think and relax.

Challenges faced by the school:

1. Manually managing all the school records and data was not only a time-consuming process for school administration but there was always a risk of getting records damaged or lost.

2. The school had hundreds of admission inquiries daily. St. joseph school looked for a platform which can collect, sort, and manage all the data at a single system and thus save time and labor cost.

3. As the number of admission increased, the fee collection process became more difficult and time-consuming. The school was not able to keep a record of all paid and non-paid transactions, nor were they able generate electronic receipts.

4. Earlier the school practiced a conventional method of maintaining attendance and timetable for all the classes of the school. This consumed a lot of time and efforts of the admin as well as of the teachers

5. The school’s staff management system lacked efficiency. Previously it was very chaotic to maintain the payroll structure of each teaching and non-teaching staff.

6. Managing the school transportation manually was also a handful job for the administration.

7. St. joseph school lacked effective communication between parents and the school. The important news related to the school did not reach to the parents on time.

8. Also managing homeworks, assignments, and examinations of various classes proved to be tiresome and ineffective.

USM helped St. Joseph’s school to automate the organization. All the operations of the institution were digitised to improve the overall performance and the efficiency of the school. USM software consisted of various modules to manage the entire activity of the school & students, like admission, timetable, examination, messages, fee collection, reports, transport, library, events etc. It reduced the functions of Administrators, teachers, staff, and others by providing a platform for them to monitor various activities of the institution.

USM’s solution to overcome all the challenges faced by the Institution:

1. USM offered a unique solution by providing a software that can store and back up all the school’s data on one platform. It helped them store records or documents in a single location & authorized staff to easily access all records from anywhere at any time.

2. The whole process of admission is digitized in USM. The chaotic process of queuing in the admissions queue is simplified and the software also improves the efficiency of administration by processing the admissions online.

3. The recording of fees and the generation of receipts in the school has been simplified and digitized with the school USM. It provides a platform that enables parents to pay fees online. All due dates and fines for late payments are also automated according to predefined rules and sent to the parents via the software.

4. The timetable module in USM helped in creating and managing different types of timetables. Teachers and administrators can create timetables using timetable module. The generated timetables will be available as class timetable, teacher timetable, and institutional timetable.

5. USM effectively and smoothly manages the tasks and activities of employees. It facilitates the whole process of managing the employee salary. At the end of the month, the software calculates the employees’ salary based on their attendance and automatically sends their salary based on the results. Moreover, payments are made directly to the employee’s bank account with a single click.

6. USM has a function that enables the school administration to track the transport vehicle (school bus). This is an enormous advantage for the school, as it can monitor the routes of its transport vehicle. This feature reduces parents’ anxiety about their child’s safety and restores parents’ confidence in the school.

7. The software has a feature that helps parents, teachers and the school administration stay connected. It enables better communication between parents and school. Bulk SMS, e-mail or special notifications are used to send reminders of school activities such as examination, holidays, fee payments etc. Such communications are easily enabled by the software.

8. It also provides a platform where students can download, upload or submit a homework assignment or homework, notes and project work. The software makes the process easier for students who want to refer back to the old assignments or notes for study or other purposes. USM also allows institutions to manage data related to coursework, quizzes, tests and exams, and to generate reports to evaluate student performance. The system is built around academic goals to improve student learning and outcomes and help St. Joseph’s school make informed decisions.

Since the entire learning process is digitalized, manual work is reduced, which ultimately saves time and money. Everything is managed online, from the admission procedure to the creation of students’ certificates. USM worked effortlessly and efficiently to reduce the workload of St. Joseph’s Residential School.

How USM proved to be a game changer for Anant Utsav School, Bhopal.

Anant Utsav School is a prominent school situated in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The institution is run by Anant Utsav Shiksha Avam Samaj Sudhar Samiti. It was established in the year 2009-10 with an aim to provide the best learning experience to ensure all children make excellent progress and become lifelong learners. The school encompasses of three different streams, PCM, PCB and Commerce for its students at the senior secondary level. The administration managed all the school activities manually. And they were efficient but manually managing all the records invited some errors. To avoid errors in the data storage and to efficiently and effortlessly manage the school at one place, Anant Utsav School opted for Ultimate School Manager.

Challenges Earlier Faced by The Institution are-

The school received thousands of applications each year. The whole process of admission was chaotic and time consuming and would take days to complete the procedure. The institution stressed on online admission portal which was effective and efficient and hassle free.

The most common problem faced by Anant Utsav School was Manual Fee Processing. The school received thousands of applicants on a regular basis. Manually collecting timely fees & to issue hand-written fee receipts was prone to errors. So they opted for a fully automated solution.

They were also facing a problem of communication with the parents of the students. For example, to update parents of their wards performance, they had to organize a Parents-Teacher meeting on a regular basis. Also all the news and other informations related to the students’ academic progress were discussed in the meeting or over a phone call, which proved to be expensive and also time taking. So they wanted an inbuilt sms-email communication center for all communication purposes related to the school.

The third issue faced by Anant Utsav School was manually generating report cards of the students. The existing system couldn’t provide an overall view for them, as the data was fragmented among various systems. The paper based report card could only show the marks of the exam and would miss to portray the progress of the students in detail. The school wanted to track each and every small detail of the student’s progress, which was earlier not possible.

One Solution to all their existing problems- Ultimate School Manager

USM proved to be a game changer in managing all the academic and non academic activities of the school. Each and everything from admission to exams can be managed on one single platform. This online platform is simple and efficient. The admin can monitor everything on their systems or phones. Time and resources are saved. It also helped them financially. The cost of manpower is saved. The software was able to supervise large operations with less manpower.

The chaotic process of standing in the admission queue is simplified and also the software improved the efficiency of the administration through online processing of the admission.

USM helped with the fees management. Fees are collected online and also online receipts are generated and sent to the parents. Parents are also notified regularly about the installments and also in case of late fee submission.

The communication between the school and the parents is also improved with the help of USM. Sms alerts or emails are sent to the parents to increase their involvement in their ward’s education. They are also notified of the school events and other school related news.

One of an important highlights of implementing USM is the online examination module. The students can give an examination from any place in the world. Also the workload of the teachers are reduced. The online report card is also an advantage of USM. The progress of each and every student is recorded in detail with extra remarks from the teachers. The student is supposed to log in to his or her account and can access the report card.

These are few mentioned benefits of USM availed by Anant Utsav School of Bhopal. The software helps the administration to manage the school with just one click. Using USM is that simple!