School management solution authorizes schools to automate the majority of their administrative tasks, with the goal of improving school administration efficiency and effectiveness. However, a school ERP solution is developed for schools that must have certain fundamental capabilities.
Strong Basic Functionality:
Any school ERP solution must ensure to provide its users the basic core functionality that addresses easy automation of routinetasks which would reduce the clerical manual jobs thus reducing school overall costs and promoting accuracy. Functionalities such as online fee payments, autogeneration of fee invoices, HR/Payroll management, Admission related management and provision of the ability to the school to easily communicate withits parents and students through bulk SMS/Email need to be provided.
Provide Customer Value:
The ERP system should be designed and implemented in a way that would promote customer value to the school in termsof providing a future return on investment that can be provided through ensuring decreasing costs of maintenance over the years post purchase of the ERP. Thesystem should also be capable of scalability based on the needs of the school, provision of seamless server maintenance and security by the ERP team withoutany increase in downtime hours during maintenance operations.
Security, Reliability and Privacy:
The ERP solution must provide its users by adhering to the recommended security standards while also ensuring the dataentrusted by the school of their users must always be held securely while also adhering to the GDPR regulations of the particular country regarding user data.Finally, above all, the system has to be reliable.
Customer Support:
No piece of software is without faults, thus a good ERP solution must also be capable of providing its users with quick, efficient and easyto access support options. This can be through online chat or through a support call with the company’s executives. Here the key is to ensure that support isprovided to the customer within 2 minutes or less since issues faced by teachers or other users are in realtime and they expect instant support which if delayedcould act as a barrier for them in effectively discharging their duties.
Future Adaptability:
The ERP solution must also be capable of being adaptableto suit the requirements of the school. The pandemic has ushered in the era of online classes and online assessments. As such, companies providing ERPsolutions must be able to provide schools with new features as and when neededrather than providing a rigid ERP solution that forces schools to look elsewhereto meet their needs.
Mobile and Web Friendly:
The ERP solution will be accessed by different users through different devices, thus core features such as viewing and markingattendance for teachers and students, leave requests, viewing class timetable, viewing school activities list, view upcoming assignments and student bustracking must be easily accessible through the app on a mobile device as well asthrough a laptop in an intuitive manner.
Customer Training:
Finally the most important aspect for the success of anyERP implementation is customer training. The ERP solution provider must havecapable and proficient staff who are well versed with all the functionalities of theproduct as well as solutions for commonly occurring problems. The team shouldtrain respective staff members to handle all the aspects of the ERP in addition toproviding helpful training materials such as walkthrough videos, livedemonstrations and FAQ documents which make the training experience for the user simple and easy to follow.