ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is now becoming mainstream in the education sector. The main reason for the upsurge in demand is because the running of schools and colleges is becoming increasingly complex. More data is flowing through the organisation and it is always wise to keep track of the data and make good decisions based on the data.

Schools and their partners should work in synchronisation to achieve the best ERP for education. You may have certain queries regarding adopting ERP for your educational institute. Below are answers to some of these common queries.

Q: Why are ERP solutions needed in the education sector?

The education sector is growing rapidly and its complexity is just as much as any other sector in the market. To add to this, competitiveness in the sector is increasing and it requires a data-driven approach.

Currently, schools and colleges have not fully embraced this next step in digitisation. There are many stakeholders, both internal and external that need to be on board. Stakeholder satisfaction is a key reason behind the success of a school or college.

Apart from students, parents and teachers, the administrators also benefit by using an ERP solution. If ERP solutions are used correctly by the education sector, it can easily help propel the advancement in education.

Q: We are starting with an educational ERP.  But what are the benefits?

Following are the benefits of ERP for an educational institute:

• Communication and collaboration among stakeholders is 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 and 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.

Q: What are the key pain areas that one should be wary of during educational ERP implementation?

Like any other software implementation, there are certain grey areas 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, notifications, enrolment, 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 by using ERP implementation.

The role of technology in improving education infrastructure

Technology is now deeply embedded in our lives. Educational institutes can easily leverage the power of technology and make their institutes a better place.

ERP solutions provide a centralised control panel which can be used to improve the daily workflow of any school/college. 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 key. With an 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.

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