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Month: January 2023

Get these 3 competitive advantages by using Cloud ERP for Higher-Ed

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Colleges and universities fight each day to compete with the decreasing pool of faculty, staff, and students. It is important to address academic competition that exists between colleges and universities to ensure a secure future for the organization. 

Cloud ERP systems can help institutions digitally transform and evolve to ensure a higher admission rate, student retention rate, improved employee experience, and other relative metrics of success in the education ecosystem. Most of all it allows an organization to address the changing social and economic standards of education to gain a competitive edge. And hence, technology becomes important to discuss and deploy. 

Technology provides a big competitive advantage to institutions. What most organizations fail to understand is, students and staff are technologically-evolved people. Technology is no longer a privilege but is now ingrained in everything a person does on a daily basis. 

Institutions that are still using outdated technology, or manually-intensive processes fail to engage their students and staff, and hence lose out to the competition. In the same context, we are here to discuss the three ways cloud ERP solutions provide you a major advantage in competition. 

3 Competitive Advantages of using Cloud ERP in higher education institutions 

  • Reallocate Resources

In many cases, the most competitive colleges appear to be those that have more money to spend on marketing and on the facilities at their institutions. Since smaller organizations rely solely on the tuition fee of the students, staying competitive becomes difficult. A cloud ERP can help institutions do both. 

Cloud-based campus management solutions comprise a variety of tools and features that help in better governance of an institute. They comprise admission management, attendance management, examination management, financial management, and other functionalities to improve the governance of the institute. They also automate various operations of the organization to free up the human resource to put to use in the areas where human intervention is most required. 

This blog may interest you:

Cloud ERP vs On-premise ERP Solutions: What is right for your education institute? 

Click here to learn more.
  • Hire and retain faculty and staff

For colleges and universities, being competitive is as much about enabling student success as it is about promoting internal growth and employee satisfaction. Hiring and retaining good faculty and staff also directly impacts the retention rate of students. 

Unfortunately, the manual work, traditional processes, tangled operations, and tiring routine activities demotivate faculty and staff to stay in the sector, given most qualified candidates are leaving the education sector to seek high-paying jobs in other sectors. 

Using a cloud ERP solution can help an organization retain its staff by offering an engaging experience in its institute. Modern ERP can help institutes save money on operating costs and invest it in the  faculty. Secondly, technology and cloud ERP solutions support academic and administrative processes in an institute to improve work experience in the organization. 

  • Recruit and retain best-fit students

Student retention rate is an important factor in evaluative criteria used to rank colleges, and universities locally and nationally. And since students consider ranks when applying at any institute, you need to strategize to draw students to campus and retain them. 

Modern cloud ERP solutions help colleges to recruit and retain students that are academically and culturally more aligned with the organization, hence making retention easier. Also, admission management, examination, student performance management, and analysis are some of the effective ways to improve the student experience at your institute while ensuring higher retention rates.

Conclusion:

Competition between colleges and universities never ceases to exist. But if you are willing to upgrade your institute to have a greater competitive advantage consider digital transformation through cloud ERP for colleges and universities. The handy tool end-to-end automates the processes in the institute and allows easier management and monitoring of the institute. It positively affects the working and experience of all stakeholders to ensure a higher retention rate. Reduced operational cost, efforts, and time are some other benefits of choosing a college ERP solution.

School Management System Trends in 2023 to watch out

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Stay abreast with these school management trends and capitalize on their benefits. Here are 4 themes in education technology for the education sector that are likely to evolve and develop in 2023. 

  • Cloud Technology

Cloud-based school management systems are more scalable and efficient. They give you access to data from anywhere and anytime and secure it through end-to-end encryption. 

Using a cloud-based School Management System would allow education authorities to utilize data to its full potential and stay flexible in operations. Data management, real-time updates, and cross-platform usability of data can be increased through cloud-based education ERP solutions. 

  • Effective and timely analysis

Access from anywhere and anytime does not mean compromising data security. With a strict focus on GDPR compliance, and the use of modern data protection strategies school management software such as Academia ERP provide guaranteed security to the personal and financial data of students, parents, staff, and organization. 

Authorized users can securely access information to perform a variety of operations digitally. This includes getting granular reports on admissions, attendance, finances, student performance, resource allocation, maintenance, etc. The system updates the information in real-time and improves decisioning significantly. 

  • Integrated systems

Easily integrated school management systems would be very popular in 2023. Right now, a school may be using a number of educational technologies in the ecosystem. The problem arises when they work in silos and do not share a centralized data repository to function in a unified manner. 

Hence, modern school management software is likely to resolve it by offering a greater degree of integration. School management systems would become a centralized database, a unified platform that to and fro share the data with authorized users and tools to provide a wholesome work experience and improve communication, and data usability while reducing operational time. Check out complete Academia ERP integration options.

  • Automation

Automation is going to take a centre stage this year. There are tens of activities that tie up your resources in routine tasks every day — hampering their efficiency and productivity. With automation, you can pivot these tasks to technology and allow your resource to contribute towards the betterment of students and schools. Also, this significantly reduces your operational cost and time. 

Are you ready?

If your current school management software misses any or all of these features it is time you think about change. Connect with our ERP experts and learn how Academia ERP can help you utilize modern technology trends and improve your institute’s functioning. 

 

Five reasons to use paperless admissions at your school

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Technology is advancing at the speed of light. However, most K-12 schools still use massive amounts of paper in their day-to-day operations. 

It is estimated that a school uses up to 2000 papers per day, which adds up to 360,000 papers over the course of 180 school days. 

The number easily goes up to cause a major dent in the productivity and efficiency of a school during admissions. Not only is admission one of the most labor-intensive processes but it is infamous for eating up a large chunk of a school’s resources and funds. 

As the days between you and the next admission cycle close, as an admission director in India, you must start thinking about changing your methods. One way to do it, using education ERP software to end-to-end digitalize your admission process and go truly paperless. 

 5 Reasons to have paperless admissions at your school

  • Go paperless and cut costs

Education institutes in India are already battling overstretched funds. Needless to say, every penny counts and you need a sure-shot solution that can increase your admission rates and reduce your operational cost. 

Education ERP solutions come with an admission module, which allows you to digitalize your pre-admission and admission phase. You can use the toolset to manage campaigns, and inquiries, covert inquiries to applications, receive online payments and manage receipts, manage multi-staged admission processes, and so much more. It also comes with highly-configurable reports that can provide you with real-time insights on a number of requirements, conversion rates, admission rates, demographic reports, campaign spends, and more. 

Right from receiving an application to releasing admission results to enrollment an education ERP with an in-built admission management system can help you digitalize the process end-to-end. Hence, significantly reducing the cost spent on paper-bound operations. 

  • Save time and space

Working with papers is hugely time-consuming. They are hard to organize, eat up a lot of space, and make it very difficult to find any key information at the right time. 

When you have an education ERP, you can easily retrieve information about any applicant in seconds, and assist your applicants better. This not only accentuates the experience of an applicant with your school but also increases your admission rates. You don’t have to manage the bulky files at all and worry about keeping them safe and organized. The software sorts things out for you and gives you an enormous amount of cloud space to store information securely. 

  • Improve Security

If you are storing confidential information in form of papers, you are risking your privacy. Go for education ERP software that follows GDPR compliance and provides end-to-end encryption of information. They are more secure and provide role-based access to information along with multi-layer security. 

All this would ensure that only authorized person is able to access the information. Login would require users to undergo multiple layers of authentication and user verification, and most of all the information is stored securely in the cloud, hedged from a range of cyberattacks. 

  • Keep track

You may not be able to track who has accessed documents as papers but when it is digitized you have complete control. Track who has viewed, accessed, changed, or restored and saved documents with education ERP. the advanced solution keeps a log of all the actions that are taken using the application and allows you to avoid data duplication and ensure data security. 

  • Sustainability 

If the ‘Go Green’ agenda is still on paper in your institute, education ERP can help you realize it. Embrace sustainability and work towards going eco-friendly by digitalizing institute processes. 

On average a school produces 22 Kg of waste per year, which is large and generated from paper. As an admission director, you can significantly reduce it by embracing paperless operations and supporting a great cause. 

Wrapping Up 

Here are 5 reasons to go paperless in the admission process through School Management System/School ERP. But it is only the start, learn how each process at your institute can be digitalized to help you reduce your paper expenses by 95%. Connect with our ERP expert today. 

Admission Management Software for Chain of Schools in India

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Technology has tweaked how we interact with the world. And as technology continues to disrupt the education sector, it is only practical to seek ways to transform the most crucial times of an academic year — admissions. 

Changing Admission Discourse: Traditional Vs. Academia Approach

From how students seek admission to your institute to how you manage your admission process, things are changing rapidly. Technology has managed to pull off the impossible — it has unified the most scattered operation of an education institute. Multiple stakeholders are involved in the admission process, and each department works in silos. Result — mismanagement, human errors, delayed processes, tangled operations, and so much more.

The situation is direr for chains of schools in India as most organizations are yet to adopt technology. Modern education technologies such as education ERP and Student Information System help an institute unify the data across all departments organization-wide. They have specific features to manage the pre-admission and admission phases in a school or group of schools. This helps super admins to manage and monitor the admission process across all their centers.

Furthermore, using technologies such as ML, AL, and Business Intelligence allows institutes to not go by hunch but make informed decisions while admitting any applicant into the institute and efficiently battle increasing dropout rates. 

Introducing Comprehensive App Suite for Admission Management

ERP with CRM features 

Up until now, not only did the various departments in education institute work in silos; most software were following the same suit. Unifying the data was nearly impossible for the education institutes, as most worked on old technologies. But modern technology systems are built to render a unified experience. 

Furthermore, since education ERP software serves as a centralized database, having in-built features to manage various operations is only practical. This helps an education organization put all the business intelligence to use. 

Efficient education ERP solutions such as Academia ERP now come with in-built features of Customer Relationship Management, such as:

  • Enquiry Management
  • Marketing Automation
  • Strategic Remarketing
  • Campaign Management
  • Lead Management 
  • Lead Nurturing
  • Omnichannel Communication
  • Pipeline & Admission Process Management
  • Applicant Support
  • User Management
  • Reports & Analytics
  • WhatsApp Business Integration

Pre-admission 

Pre-admissions are the most ignored phases of an academic year. We need to understand the importance of preparedness. The better we strategize to take on the challenges of the admission phase, the more likely are our chances of winning better prospects and applicants.

Academia ERP brings you a plethora of features for the pre-admission phase. Right from setting up an online application page to setting up marketing campaigns, we do it all. The efficient software helps you in centralizing the enquires from all the market channels and helps in the systematic management of leads. You can use the software to filter leads for follow-up, attend to applicant inquiries, track your spending on marketing channels, and manage appointments with prospects. 

  • Application Manager
  • Advanced Form Builder
  • Student Admission Portal
  • Payment Manager 
  • Query Management System 
  • Reports & Analytics

Admissions

Automation is one of the best things that has happened to many industries. It is convenient, cheap, and reduces time, cost and effort significantly. In the admission process, Academia ERP automates most of the admission-related tasks and operations. This includes token fee collection, appointment slot booking, evaluation scheduling, notifying applicants, providing real-time updates to the applicants on their application status, and much more. Some of the salient features of the Academia ERP admissions module are:

  • Admission Settings
  • Application Creation
  • Form Management
  • Selection Process Setup
  • Final Admission List Generation
  • Reports & Analytics

 

Communication

Seamless communication between various stakeholders in the education ecosystem (internal & external) alone can take the applicant’s experience several notches high. In fact, it also plays a key role in ensuring higher admission rates. At Academia, we ensure seamless communication by unifying all the modes of communication at one single dashboard. 

Meaning whether you want to connect or notify an applicant over email, phone, SMS, WhatsApp, or any other leading communication mode — you get to do it from a single dashboard. 

To reduce efforts, there are bulk messaging options as well. Recently, we have incorporated Multimedia Messaging as well to make communication more creative, engaging, and eye-catchy. Following are some modes of communication we offer in the standard solution, you can also connect with our ERP experts to learn about other integrations. 

  • Email
  • Chat
  • WhatsApp 
  • In-App Calling 
  • SMS
  • Push Notifications

Dedicated Applicant Portal

One of the most important parts of automating admissions is the applicant portal. Using the portal, applicants can apply to the desired courses, track the progress of their application, connect with the support team, pay fees and manage receipts and get real-time updates on the portal through push notifications. In the times such as COVID-19, when commute was halted online applicant portals have worked wonders for many institutes. For dire times such as the pandemic and to evolve from the traditional shell, it is important for institutes to have both digital and traditional processes for admissions. 

Academia ERP applicant portal consists of the following features:

  • Applicant Registration
  • Inquiry and Admission Form
  • Declaration and Assessment
  • Fees and Receipts
  • Support 

Wrapping Up 

Education ERP software with dedicated features to manage admission can reduce the need for having multiple software for managing admission operations. Solutions such as Academia ERP offers a multi-faceted approach to institute management. It comes with a variety of features to seamlessly manage the pre-admissions and admissions phase of an academic year. The multi-center capabilities allow you to manage an unlimited number of academies you have across the globe. Most of all it helps you amplify the applicant experience. It provides timely updates to the applicant, updates information in real-time, personalizes your communication with the applicant, and helps manage thousands of enquires you get during the admissions phase. For more information about Academia ERP and how it can help you increase your admission rate, connect with our ERP experts here. 

Manage School Branches using Academia multi-school management system

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Education institutions around the world are evolving from their traditional image and are emerging as big businesses. Some of the best names in the education industry have followed the concept of running their organization as a business and then moving on to become a center of learning. And if you ask us, there is nothing wrong with it. A profitable education system earns good money, which is further invested into facilities, affording the best teachers, providing for extracurricular activities, etc., thus ensuring the overall development of a student. 

Once this theory tests out, education organizations start to branch out. They open their academies in multiple locations and ensure more students are getting access to quality education. However, there is one problem that is very commonly seen with institutes branching out. They lose control and find it incredibly difficult to manage and monitor multiple branches. 

This is where multi-school management systems come into play. 

Multi-school management system

A multi-school management system is an ideal solution for education institutes with multiple branches spread across different geographical locations. The software gives more control to the administrators and allows them to have a 360-degree view of all their branches on a single platform. 

These are efficient and robust web applications that can be accessed over a browser and come with a super administrative portal. It provides super admin, and rights to access information, and perform tasks for multiple academies from a single platform for which they are authorized. These apps are also highly secure and efficient to handle bulk queries at the same time, rendering a high-end user experience. 

  • Fundamental difference between School Management System and Multi-School Management System 

The fundamental difference is in efficiency. If you are an institute that is already using a school management system, you must ask yourself — would you go on buying new subscriptions to the software each time you open a new branch? 

It is economically non-viable and very difficult to manage. Most of all, it would put the data into silos, where a super admin does not get the benefit of accessing data to make important decisions. Hence, if you are thinking about branching out, it is time to switch to school management software with multi-center capabilities. 

  • Helps maintain hierarchy and improves reporting

Typically, if your school organization has started to branch out, it is likely that you would set up a central administration team. This team is responsible for monitoring and managing academic and non-academic operations in all the academy locations. 

A multi-school management system thus allows you to assign roles and responsibilities to this central team. You can manage their access to data, and assign them rights for the assigned school branch. You can also choose to provide selective access to manage security and synergize hierarchy within the software that reflects your organization. 

    • Financial management 

Schools rely on the timely collection of fees to fund their operations. Also, it is very important to track the overhead expenses and increase transparency in financial operations. A lot of schools lose out on money because there is no way to digitally track their experience. This causes discrepancies while financial reporting and account management. 

A multi-school management system offers tools to digitally manage financial accounts and transactions. It also comes with dashboards and reports to monitor and administer the financial tasks of all the academies they are authorized for. Also, they get real-time updates on fee submissions, pending payments, automatically send out fee reminders to students and parents, centrally manage fee receipts, and more. 

  • Centralized Monitoring

Central monitoring of all the operations is one of the biggest benefits you get with a multi-school management system. Centralized administration allows you to ensure uniformity in quality and operations across all the academies in your organization. Using software instead of relying on traditional methods of management brings more transparency to operations and increases accuracy in the reporting.

Furthermore, it is a great toolset to increase accountability and positively impact the productivity of your employees. It also improves resource planning and optimization. For example, a digital library would ensure access to knowledge resources for all the students in the organization rather than waiting for books to be available. Similarly, it reduces manual work and ensures efficient and faster working. 

  • Branch Performance Analysis

Using School Management Software with multi-center capabilities allows you to track the performance of all the branches. You can get real-time updates about admissions, attendance, student experience, student success, student performance, parent experience, student satisfaction, everyday work of the institute, and other things. This helps organization owners to take better decisions from the business point of view. 

Wrapping Up 

If you are a chain of institutes or you are thinking about branching out, it is time to think about a multi-school management system. The software product comes with a plethora of modules that efficiently manage admissions, attendance, curriculum, finances, and resources across all the academies. It comes with several reports and dashboards to improve reporting. Most of all, it ensures centralized management of all your academies and gives more control over operations, and decisions. 

If you are looking for a solution such as this, you can consider Academia SMS which is a school management software with multi-center capabilities. For more information connect with our ERP experts. 

How Academia ERP helps overcome the biggest challenges of the UAE education sector?

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

Technology is rapidly transforming the education sector of the UAE. In this blog, we bring you some biggest challenges of the industry and how technology can help institutes to solve them. 

Challenges faced by the education sector in UAE

  • Manually Managing Admissions

Admissions are one of the most mismanaged phases of an academic year. Almost all education institutes that are managing their admissions traditionally fail at assisting students. They are too involved in minuscule tasks that require human intervention at every step. This causes many institutes not to reach the admission rates that they contemplate or have the potential for. It also causes a big dent in the profitability of an institution. 

Handling admissions manually is a toiling task that is prone to numerous human errors. Given the rising number of students in UAE – education institutes need software solutions that can replace the traditional processes and increase efficiency, speed and results. Also, most institutes go by a hunch or admit students on a first-come, first-serve basis. This increases the chances of seeing students dropping out. What modern education institutes in UAE need are program-specific candidate analysis and admission forecast. 

  • Data Management and Security Vulnerabilities

As technology makes its way into the education industry, it has also come under the target of cyber attacks. The use of legacy software with poor infrastructure gives cracks to the cyber attackers to make a breach and steal students, teachers, and institute data. 

With the increasing number of admissions each year, education institutes need to manage data properly. They need software to replace the bulky files that are very difficult to manage and are prone to destruction. They need a practical solution that, year-on-year, efficiently manages student data. 

  • Financial Management

In one single academic year, an education institute faces bulk payments from hundreds of students on a monthly, annual, and term basis. It becomes difficult for administrators to manage finances manually. Many times, students with unpaid fees go unnoticed. Sometimes there are cases of receipt mismanagement. We can say that manually managing finances is a very difficult task, and education institutes need robust finance management software. 

  • Communication Gaps

Parents are becoming more concerned about their ward’s education. However, their professional commitments make it very difficult for them to stay in contact with teachers and administrators at the institute. 

What they need are apps and portals where they can go anytime and track their ward’s performance and participation in academic and extracurricular activities. An education ERP software is a right fit for any institute that wants to reduce this communication gap as the software collates data from multiple departments to provide reports on attendance, examination, performance, etc. 

How Academia ERP helps in solving these challenges? 

  • Cost-cutting and Labor Reduction

Academia ERP is an efficient, 30+ module app suite that helps in task automation. The product efficiently helps in reducing human intervention and end-to-end automating several tasks in an institute. It helps increase transparency in the operations to make administration easy and provides teachers and non-academic staff with a software solution to do most of their routine operations. This helps reduce the efforts and cost of operations and makes institutes more efficient and profitable. 

  • Decisions Making

In-fused with solutions such as AI, ML, Big Data, Business Intelligence, and more — Academia ERP provides you with predictive analysis and provides quantified data on business operations to make better decisions. 

The product also provides granular reports on student performance, attendance, admissions, results, student risks, etc., to help institutes make better decisions on the student end. Reports such as student performance and attendance are also shared with parents/students to ensure complete transparency between parents/students and teachers. 

  • Data in Real-time

One of the biggest qualities of the software is that of centralizing data. The product can easily be integrated with leading education technologies and serves as a centralized database. This means you have a real-time update on all the operations happening in an institute. Plus, this makes the user experience more unified. The data is no longer in silos. 

  • Go Completely Paperless

If you perform paper-bound operations, you know how much you spend annually on papers and stationery. You can completely eliminate that expense by using Academia ERP. The product is an education ERP app suite that provides end-to-end digitalization of your institute. Every operation can be done digitally; you can manage records digitally and reduce your dependency on papers to near zero. 

  • Omnichannel Communication with Stakeholders

One of the biggest challenges solved by Academia ERP is that of communication. Using Academia ERP, you get a dedicated dashboard to broadcast your messages to all the stakeholders over email, SMS, WhatsApp, Chat, Push Notification, etc. This further reduces your efforts and brings seamlessness in communication. Using the product, you can stay in touch with applicants, students, alumni, parents, and staff. Also, recently there has been a new add-on where you can share multi-media messages as well using the tool.

Wrapping Up 

Education sector in UAE can benefit from the use of technology, especially education ERP solutions. This advanced software are built on modern technology to unify the experience across various software and brings automation to the routine tasks of an institute. They are fit for schools, colleges, and universities. For more information about Academia ERP, connect with our ERP expert here. 

Role of ICT Team in Education Institute

Posted on by Hemant Mahajan

As technology continues to create wonders in various industries, it becomes essential to discuss its impact and effectiveness. It is vital to define its role and develop implementation strategies. You need to pre-define these crucial things to ensure better results through digital transformation. Strategizing helps an organization stay prepared for any risks and stay practical while analyzing the results.

The same follows for the education industry as well. When discussing the role of ICT in our lives, how can we forget about the transformations it is making in education? The blog would help you ensure technology makes a positive difference in the lives of students, teachers, administrators, and parents. 

What is ICT? 

ICT is a commonly used acronym for Information and Communication Technology. It is an umbrella term used to describe various things that fall under the information and communication segment, like telecommunication (telephones and wireless signals), computer technology, enterprise software, middleware, audiovisuals, and mobile applications. It also covers data management, storage, transmission, and manipulation of information. For more information, you can refer to the following Wikipedia page. 

The benefits of using ICT in education

Technology has recently started to make its way into the education industry. But the good thing is some of the technologies are already tried and tested in other industries, and the education sector has a lot of available literature to learn about them. This gives the industry the required push to start building their understanding of their key challenges and practical tools that can solve them. 

Technology in the education sector opens a whole new realm of opportunities where technology penetrates learning processes, learning methodologies, resource planning, financial management, performance management, reporting, etc. 

  • Technology in the classroom

One of the best ways to put technology to use in the education sector is in teaching. Technology allows teachers to go beyond textbooks and introduce various learning tools to students. From PowerPoints to gamified learning, pedagogy has changed drastically over the last 10 years. 

  • Use of technology tools like laptops, computers, AI, VR, & AR in the classrooms
  • Use online learning tools such as learning management systems. 
  • Use of data analytics for student performance analysis. 
  • Use tools such as Google Meet and Zoom for collaboration between students, teachers, and parents. 
  • Use of tools to manage homework and assignments.
  • Use of education ERP solutions for lesson plan management, program, and course management, timetable management, attendance management, etc. 
  • Technology for Student Engagement 

To create an interactive learning environment, communication with peers and teachers of any student must be seamless. It ensures the exchange of ideas and builds a student’s interest in participating in the learning process. It helps improve student outcomes through student success. Students must be inspired to participate in academic and extracurricular activities rather than obligated. 

  • Use of technology that promotes interactions and two-way communication. 
  • Use polls, messages, and personal and group chat rooms in an online learning environment. 
  • Creating digital space for students to express their opinions and grow effectively. 

 

  • Technology for campus management

Before technology reached the education sector, most operations were done manually. Operations were paper-bound, and mismanagement of resources and finances was widespread. With advanced education ERP solutions, campus management can be done digitally. 

  • Use of Student information systems for student management
  • Use an attendance management system for automating attendance marking
  • Use an admission management system for pre-admission, admission, and post-admission automation. 
  • Use of finance management software 
  • Use of education ERP for resource management and planning
  • Use of software and technology for unifying experience and centralizing information 

And more. 

Wrapping Up 

Information and Communication Technology in education is here to change the experience of all the stakeholders in the system. It is helping teachers build better teaching methodologies and ensuring higher student success through student engagement tools. It allows students to increase their communication with peers and teachers and get access to a variety of knowledge resources. It will enable students to find economically viable options for continuing education. Apart from this, technology has a significant role in administration and management. It allows improved decision-making through data analytics and modern tools. 

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