How does a Student Management System Benefit Educational Institutions?

Technology is no longer third wheeling in the education industry. In fact, it has become an integral part of institutes. Many schools have started to adopt technology, we cannot help but notice their positive feedback. Software for planning and management such as Student Information Systems and School Management Software is no longer just a record management toolkit for institutes. They have imbibed great functional capabilities and working towards improving the student experience.

Unfortunately, the adoption rate is not coming anywhere close to the speed of the evolution of technology. Many institutes are still hobbled by their inefficient manual processes. This impacts their efficiency and increases the cost of operations.

As technology goes deeper and deeper, transforming the way schools function — we believe it is our responsibility to introduce people to the student information management system. The blog would help decision-makers in the education domain to understand how solutions such as student information management software can help them tackle their challenges better.

Student Information Management System

A student information management system is a centralized data repository that stores a student’s personal, academic, financial, and health records. As it is centralized, it provides authorized access to this information to defined users in the system and with other trusted software.

Other than that, it comes with many in-built capabilities that help you in the management of an institute. This includes — admission management, attendance management, examination management, student performance management, document management, resource planning & management, timetable management, fee & finance management and so many more.

All-in-all it is a one-stop solution for schools to manage operations that happen on a daily basis and a seasonal basis in an academic year for every single student lifecycle. It provides a start-to-finish solution — right from managing a prospect’s inquiry to making it a student to managing its record as alumni.

It helps an institute go completely paperless in operations and improves transparency and accuracy in multi-level reporting.

For end-to-end digital transformation,

COVID-19 literally put education in a box and if not for the digital tools and technologies it would have been struggling to keep education running. While we live in a digital age, it is unfortunate to see that, schools and most of all education does not use technology.

Now, that most schools are going for a hybrid learning environment, technology in the planning and administrative department has become more important than ever. Accessibility to data and information in real-time, bringing transparency in operations and improved reporting at several levels.

Use Student Management System for:

• Instant access to actionable dashboards
• Simplify data collection and management
• Improved security of data of all stakeholders
• Improved reporting with real-time data accessibility
• Improved Student portfolio management
• Online fee payment enablement through 3rd party payment gateway integrations

How does it differ from an Excel sheet used for student record management?

Many schools use various ways to manage student records electronically. However, the data has zero functional value. You see the data just sits in the system and does not provide any benefit to the schools. Other than that, different departments maintain different records. Any update in one record is not accessible to the other department which hinders working and brings lags in the operations.

A student management system thus puts that data to use and provides authorized access to people from various departments to access real-time information. This increases interdepartmental functioning, improves collaborations, and speeds up processes. It also keeps complete transparency and serves as a central database to support other key modules in the software and integrated tools.

Selecting the right Student Management System

The key to finding the right student management system lies within your institute. Identify the gaps in the processes that you need to fill. Talk with your administrative and academic staff, learn more about the problems faced by parents and students, and create a comprehensive list of things that are absolutely necessary for a student management system.

Do a background check of potential vendors. As the necessary questions and understand what type of data privacy policy they follow. Apart from that, go for a vendor that provides:

• Secure and robust data management
• Multi-centre Capabilities
• High configurability
• Intuitive features and functionalities
• Fast implementation
• A strong 24*7 support, especially if the vendor is in a different location
• Transparent billing system, with no hidden charges
• Support for hybrid, public and private cloud deployment
• Data security
• Seamless integration with other existing software and tools
• Regular updates and upgrades

Closing Note

Student Information Management is one of the key operations in a school. However, it is still managed traditionally which delays many operations and causes holes in the operational fabric of an institute.

To change that, try the Student Information System / Student Management Software which comes with many features and functionalities to improve the efficiency and management of student records.