Author: Hemant Mahajan

COVID-19 was successful at putting us all into a box of four concrete walls. But the human spirit has always triumphed over every challenge and this time technology has a big role in it. Education technologies during COVID-19 were a huge success, but now that the world has reopened we are not going back to the traditional ways of operations. Efficiency, transparency, and effectiveness of the education technologies have opened the long-shut eyes of the education authorities and now that they have truly tasted it, there is no going back but moving forward.
Here we are introducing you to the impact of remote learning and how it has triggered a software shift.

What is changing?
Not to miss out on the perspective, it is important to highlight that the education industry has become more open-minded about technology now. Prior to the pandemic we hardly say the shift towards education technologies and changes in traditional operating methods. Although the redundant system was inefficient and did not meet the primary goals of the education sector in most countries such as reduced cost of education, accessibility to knowledge, improved knowledge retention, and more, it continued. This is surprising as even developing countries and major industries were highly focused on digital transformation even before the pandemic.

Although delayed, the shift towards technology is now allowing institutes to perform better even in a harsh economic climate such as now. Also, teachers are now more focused on providing a personalized learning experience to the students and ensuring higher knowledge retention. The technology of today is transforming:
How schools managed their operations?
How communication becomes more efficient between various stakeholders?
How information reaches students?

Learning Tools
The market is bustling with efficient learning tools that are allowing students to boost learning even in an online learning environment. Also, technologies such as AI, ML and interactive whiteboards, etc. are providing richer learning experiences to the students, especially if they don’t comply with the traditional reading and writing learning process.
Taking communication between teachers and students to next level. Zoom alone had nearly 200 million users per day in 2020, which is more than 190 million that was reported in 2019. From an educator’s perspective, interoperable software such as Education ERP has improved their work efficiency by up to 60% through seamless integration with online learning tools.
Lastly, there are collaboration tools that make online education much more effective and allow more seamless interaction in online classrooms. It is allowing large group communication and collaboration between teachers and students, and even teachers, students, and parents.

School Management Software / School ERP
School Management Software / School ERP (Link: https://www.academiaerp.com/school-management-system/) is an advanced education ERP solution that automates critical business operations in an education institute. The smart school software runs on modern technology and architecture that increases scalability and flexibility. It also serves as a shared database for all academic, non-academic, and financial operations where it provides features to manage finance and payment management, Student Information Systems, student lifecycle management, human resource, and workflow management, resource management and implementation, and more.

Furthermore, the reduced cost of cloud-based solutions has made cloud-based education ERP a popular choice for education institutes. The efficient application is deployed over the internet and provides a different portal for users to perform tasks that are important to their work and interest. Also, there is role-based access in the system core admin portal where an administrator can define users and roles to the employees and ensures secure working over a digital platform.

Another crucial highlight of development in the education ERP sector is automation. As technology advances, more and more education ERP solutions are popping in the market offering process automation in tedious education operations such as finance, administration, data management, timetable creation, attendance, and more.

Fees and Bill Payments
Better internet connectivity and the availability of smartphones have allowed institutes to work more transparently and efficiently. Automated billing and finance solution solutions do not require a person to perform time-taking manual processes such as fee collection, receipt management, late fee collection, and creating no-dues for several tasks.
Also, payments done through online sources such as UPI, credit/debit cards, net banking, e-wallet, etc. are easier to track than manual payment collection. Also, online payment processing brings more transparency to the system benefiting parents and students both.

Way Forward
Education technologies have a booming market. And there are solutions specific to the needs of education institutes to meet their newfound challenges. If you are looking for a robust education ERP solution, consider Academia ERP. It is an advanced education ERP suite that comes with features to automate your operations and bring more efficiency into the system.

Shopping for technology and software may not be as easy as going to Walmart and adding things to your cart. Needless to say, the stakes are high here, and there is no scope for mistakes. You need to be right, and you need to be right the first time when choosing the best Training Management Software / Training Management ERP for your institutes.

Factors such as features, functionalities, configuration, vendor capabilities, customer support and more decide largely whether a product is fit for your institute or not. To make things more simplified for you, here is everything you must know about training management systems and how you can choose the best TMS for your institute.

What is a Training Management System – TMS? Before starting your search, you must understand what you are searching for and what you must expect.

Although training management systems have become one of the most sought-after technologies of the time, not many people know what they are and what they would actually do in their educational organization.

Simply put, training management software is a well-integrated system or an education ERP suite that is built for training institutes specifically. It has all the features and functionalities that can digitally transform all the internal and external processes.

Meaning, faster operations, powerful decision-making, increased productivity, and efficiency. But most importantly, they can get you a really-really high return on investment too, although it is subjective to choosing the right training management.

Advancements and Enhancements to the TMS The integrated system comes with a student information system allowing you to manage the student records across all the training institutes at various locations. It supports your back-office operations and also, allows various stakeholders such as trainees and trainers, and administrators to access the relevant modules and perform various tasks.

However, one of the most outstanding features of a training management system is that of data analytics. With the increased competition in the market, and the increased needs to efficiently manage your institute in terms of powerful fund management, and decision-making data analytics can be a game changer for many training institutes. It relays more transparency in the operations and allows visualization of data through integrating tools such as BI and others.

Today, training management systems have evolved and are more compatible to secure 3rd party integrations increasing the capabilities of the software ten folds. Also, cloud computing increased data management capabilities and allows faster data computing for increased productivity. Another addition to the TMS has been that of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. As much as the technologies have been seen drastically changing other industry sectors, first-mover advantages can give training institutes a major push in the market.

Say “bye” to the biggest industry challenges
Mismanagement of funds
Mismanagement of human and physical resources
Productivity issues
Data security threats
Inefficiency and decentralized data

How to choose the right training management system?
Vision and Long-term Orientation The vendor must be looking forward to maintaining a long-term relationship with your institute. It is important that they have a good rapport in the market and are willing to go the extra mile for your organization to help you achieve your goals.

A vendor that is willing to get into a long-term service contract with you would benefit you in many ways. It would allow you to upgrade your software each time there is a dire need for technical evolution and support. Also, the configuration would help you in meeting your unique needs.

Organization
Every organization is different in terms of processes and hierarchy. It is essential that the software is easy to configure to match your organization structure. This means giving you multi-center capabilities, allowing you to add support for multiple languages, accepting payments through various modes, meeting regulatory requirements unique to your country, and more.

Total Cost of Ownership SaaS-based solutions are gaining immense popularity. They are efficient, cheaper, and give you more flexibility to choose the right plan as you grow. Also, the flexible architecture of the software allows you to ensure high-end security and gives you complete ownership of the product. While choosing the right solution, you must calculate all the advantages and disadvantages, and if you need to invest more money to enhance your infrastructural capabilities.

Implementation / Rollout Once the product is configured the software would be rolled out on your system. It is important that the product offers you high-end interoperability to allow easy exchange of data and information between various software for improved functionality. Testing and improvements in the product too are very important aspects of the product. There might be some initial hiccups faced by you and the team. Make sure the vendor is willing to train your staff to run the product efficiently.

Expertise You must enquire the vendor if they would be providing you with a dedicated team. It is very important as you might require regular help from the project manager and support team to ensure the product is fitting your needs and is always in top-notch condition.

Usability
One of the most important things is features and functionalities. You must list down all the important functions and operations of your institution that are most important to be digitalized. Now one by one, check if each of these requirements is met with the software or not.

In case, somethings are amiss, contact the vendor if they are willing to make those enhancements and customizations.

Considerations Here are some extra considerations. Make sure the software offers an end-to-end web interface. It should be built on reliable technology and offers high-end data management and security solutions. It should allow role-based access and centralization of data. If you are a chain of training institutes, the training institute management software should have multi-center capabilities. Also, the software must match the capacity level to guarantee the necessary quality level through the server system agreement.

Functionalities It must allow you to monitor, manage and optimize your operations. It should come with finance management tools with real-time cost tracking, profitability analysis and optimization, budget monitoring, and more.

Also, administrative tasks that are repetitive should be automated. Should give you digital solutions to most problems allowing you to focus on important aspects of the training institute. Should come with pre-built reports to offer transparency in the operations.

Wrapping Up These were some major considerations while buying a training management system. Hope this guide would help you sail easily through the selection process. Or we have another option for you. You can consider Academia Training Management System which comes with 30+ modules to manage all the operations in a training institute and gives you multi-center management capabilities. Furthermore, the product offers high-end data security, operational efficiency, centralization of data, and more.

K-12 is an American expression that is used for indicating the public-supported primary and secondary education in the USA, Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, China, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Iran, Phillippines, South Korea, and Turkey. It means student education from Kindergarten to 12th grade, which is approximately 13 years of basic education.

13 years of basic education, thousands of activities every year, and millions of bits and bytes of data that is stored somewhere on your computer or in a large bulky register. In the end, you would realize, managing the lifecycle of thousands of students learning in your organization becomes difficult, and almost impossible due to the inefficiencies found in traditional management.

Modernization of education institutes thus becomes necessary. Accountability has to increase in each department to improve the student experience and ensure higher knowledge retention for better student outcomes. Student satisfaction too is something that is not considered by many organizations as they don’t have the proper tools to render it and also calculate it. With student management software you can change that.

Introducing Academia Student Management System
Academia ERP/SIS is an education ERP suite that comes with advanced solutions to manage your internal and external operations. It has an inbuilt student management module and a data repository with a variety of features and functionalities that allow faster operations, accuracy, and transparency, making lives better for students in your institute.

All 32 Modules Explained

1.Organization Setup
Organization setup is an important tool in your kitty that allows you to set up the software as per your organization structure. It allows you to create departments, manage calendars, add/manage resources, set up fees & payment settings, and more. It is a wholesome tool that leaves no aspect of an education organization untouched and allows end-to-end configuration for optimal working.

 

2. Campaign & Enquiries Management
Pertaining to the pre-admission phase, you get a dedicated campaign management tool for institutes. The efficient system allows you to manage online, and offline enquires, set up enquiry forms, create reports, and get predictive analytics for the pre-admission phase of the academic year.

 

3. Admission management
The traditional management of the admission process has many shortcomings such as missing out on important enquires and lack of communication between staff, and prospects. Battle these challenges with Academia Admission Module that helps you in streamlining all the admission-related processes and increases your admission rate significantly.

Fun Fact: Did you know, False Bay College in South Africa reported 100,000 applications in an academic year after the implementation of Academia Education ERP? Check out the full story here.

 

4. Student Module
One of the finest features of the Academia Education ERP suite, the software comes with a dedicated student web and mobile application. It has all the features and functionality that allows a student to manage their profile and other academic and non-academic operations.

It comes with advanced features such as timetable management, assignment submission, a dedicated drive to store knowledge resources, and communication tools. Also, we recently introduced “Sera” an AI-driven virtual assistant to make app browsing more user-friendly.

5. Fees Management
Fees and Payments is one of the modules in the Academia ERP which streamlines all the transactions happening in your organization. The advanced solution allows you to integrate it with reliable 3rd party payment gateways wherein you can accept online fee payments through credit/debit cards, UPI, net banking, and other options.

Also, the toolset allows you to manage the fee receipts much better. It digitally stores all the information about fee payments and makes it easier for you to keep records.

 

6. Program & Course Management
The feature-rich module is a one-stop solution for you to manage all the programs and courses in your school. It allows you to create study plans, build reading material, capture student attendance, manage timetables, and generate numerous reports on programs, courses, student engagement, student performance, etc.

 

7. Timetable Management
Timetable creation and management can eat hours and hours of your productive time and still not guarantee accuracy and ease. With Academia ERP, you get a dedicated timetable management functionality that allows you to manage the timetable of all the programs and courses.

It allows you to create a master timetable and an extended timetable, and manage them. Also, you can import the timetable directly to the system using a pre-built format that comes with the system.

 

8. Student Attendance Management
Attendance is a repetitive and regular task in all educational organizations. However, it is also taking. You have to consolidate all the attendance data at the end of the day, month and year to calculate the student attendance percentage which is a hassle for the teachers.

With a dedicated student attendance management system, you can do it with a few clicks. This advanced tool comes with reports and analytics and various features to mark student attendance easily to store on a central data repository.

Furthermore, the Academia ERP student mobile application comes with a QR code-based attendance marking system through which students can easily mark attendance. This would completely eliminate the need for teachers to do attendance marking activities on daily basis. Similarly, you can choose attendance Biometric, and RFID attendance marking system integration as well.

 

9. Discipline Module
It is important to ensure that students are on their best behavior in the institute and are diligently participating in academic and non-academic activities to ensure growth and better prospects. Hence, Academia ERP comes with a discipline module, that allows you to take disciplinary actions against students.

10. Examination and Marksheet Management
Academia ERP offers end-to-end digitalization of the student lifecycle, right from admission to examinations to alumni. Examinations are the most strenuous times of the year. Not only is it stressful for the students but the administration and teachers too are usually drowning in workload during these times. To automate and streamline this phase of the academic year we have some amazing features.

Academia ERP comes with pre-examination, examination, and post-examination features and functionality that end-to-end digitalizes the entire process. Some salient features of the module are: setting up a grading system, resource allocation, and management, fee collection, hall ticket distribution, mark entry, and reports

11 Assignment Management
A book for students and teachers both the software comes with advanced solutions to allocate assignments, define assignment groups, collect assignments, manage them, grade them, etc.

This is a two-sided feature, which comes with student-side features as well, where they get to see their classwork and assignments, and also submit assignments using the Academia ERP student mobile application.

12. Graduation management
Manage student grades, create report cards, and create a list of graduating students without any chances of data mishandling or mismanagement through Academia ERP.

13. Calendar Management
Manage employee calendar, academic calendar, and holiday calendar on the go and bring more seamlessness in the operations. No more creating calendars on paper and circulating them all across your institute. Create calendars that are well-integrated with all the departments, and also with web and mobile applications – bringing ease into the lives of students, teachers, admins, employees, etc.

14. Task management
Task management is another advanced tool that allows employees to create their own task sheet and keep a track of their day-to-day activities and tasks. This allows more transparency in the system and helps your employees to stay highly productive and organized. To take the experience a notch up, there are also dedicated reports for task tracking.

15. Security Gate Management
Not only data security but we also ace security at all levels. Manage your on-campus appointments, manage visitors and enjoy other features in the software that allow easy management of the security gate.

 

16. File Management
Easy management of files that allows you to secure information related to all academies at one location and perform various tasks. The efficient file management system allows you to upload files of various formats and gives you unlimited storage capacity.

17. Committee management
Manages committees in your organization and its members and activities from a dedicated dashboard without having to take reports from each person. The tool allows you to allocate coordinators and define members with the system which gives you the utmost convenience to manage all committee-related tasks, activities, and communication in one place.

18. Front desk management
A complete solution to manage all your front desk activities. The toolset allows you to check items coming in and going and trackable through item codes. Also, you can keep track of the people receiving or sending items and even bills.

 

19. Transport management
If you have an in-house transport service for your employees and students this tool is a must-have. The tool allows you to manage vehicle types, add stops, and manage vehicles, and routes. It also allows you to get transport reports including that on any due fees.

 

20. Resource booking management
Now assigns and schedules all the resources in your organization and ensures there are no hiccups in academic and non-academic activities. The advanced tool allows you to manage equipment, labs, grounds, transport items, meeting rooms, and more.

21. Certificate and Document Management
Create certificate templates and manage important documents to allow easy management of all the certificates and documents in one place. The software allows various departments to use certification templates as per their usability for improved work efficiency.

22. Faculty Management
An end-to-end faculty management system that automates every step fo the faculty lifecycle. Right from onboarding to recruitment to workload management, the advanced tool gives you features and functionality to manage and ensure higher efficiency in faculty with useful data insights.

23. Scholarship / Sponsorship Management
Allocate funds for outstanding students and help them economically to perform better in their education and in their careers. With this amazing tool, you would be able to allocate a specific budget for scholarship and sponsorship and manage it on the go by allocating it to the students and also generating reports.

 

24. Outcome-Based Education Management
If you follow the outcome-based education theory in your education ecosystem, enjoy dedicated features and functionalities to manage the tasks around it. OBE correlation percentage setting, program and course outcome setting, a variety of reports, and more are some available features that would allow you to manage and perform all tasks for outcome-based education management.

 

A robust placement management system that allows you to add companies, create job postings, manage job applications, monitor and manage the recruitment process and create detailed reports.

 

26. Hostel Management
Hostel management software is designed to manage all the hostel activities like admissions, fee collection, receipt management, mess allotment, hostel stores and maintenance activities, inventory management, and more. The tool also comes with attendance marking system and a variety of reports on room availability, attendance, occupancy report, fees report, and more.

 

27. Election Management
Take your school elections online with a feature-rich election management tool. Academia ERP allows you to manage elections across all the locations and academies for various positions on the go. The digital solution comes with tools that bring transparency to the election and voting processes. This allows you to ensure school elections are centrally managed and also, fairly.

28. Thesis Management
Get a feature-rich thesis management dashboard that allows you to administer, monitor, and evaluate the progress of the thesis creation, submission, and approval from a single dashboard. Furthermore, it comes with a filter system that allows you to filter-out students based on various factors.

 

29. Infirmary Management
Manage inventory, staff, infirmary beds, student health information, and more through a single dashboard.

30. Messaging and Notification
Enjoy an omnichannel messaging and notification system that allows you to communicate messages to teachers, students, and parents easily over the phone, email, and chat from official sources.

31. User role allocation and management
Manage software users easily from a single dashboard and allow and deny access to the employees based on their work profile and organizational hierarchy.

32. Analytics and Reports
Analytics and reports are one of the most outstanding features of Academia ERP. The software comes with advanced reports that give you a granular view of the processes and operations. Fueled with AI and ML these reports brings predictive analytics to your system where you get to make data-backed decisions and ensure better working between various departments and improve processes.

Facebook parent company Meta is warning 1 million users that their login information may have been compromised through malicious applications. The company identified 400 android and iOS apps that were specifically designed to steal Facebook login information such as usernames and passwords.

This leaves people thinking if a top-notch company like Facebook fell prey to malicious cyberattacks, what is the chance it could not happen with smart school applications?

Given the vastness of the situation, if you are a decision-maker at your institute, it is your responsibility that the smart School Management Software (Link: https://www.academiaerp.com/school-management-system/) that you use is following high-end security protocols to protect sensitive information. To help you ward off security threats, here are some useful tips.

Tips to protect user login credentials for your School Management System or Smart School Apps?

Password Hashing You must handle consumer login information with utmost care. You must contact the vendor and understand how they are storing the sensitive information of the users. If they say, it is stored as a plaintext password, it is a red flag. Go with software that uses password hashing technology and does not reverse the encryption in any attempt of cyberattack.

Biometric Authentication Smart devices are now embedded with biometric authentication tools. If you want to take the security of your school apps a notch higher, consider biometric login.

Biometric login provides you an added security as they would only open the app through fingerprint, retina, face, or voice recognition which is not an easy task to replicate. Also, it is impossible to make breach unless the criminal is in the physical vicinity of the user.

Two-factor Authentication Two-factor authentication is a proven solution to guard the app against unauthorized logins. The powerful system would add multiple layers to the login process and if the hacker is even able to get through the first layer, there is no chance they can get through the second authentication test. This would offer a great degree of certainty about the login credential security of the students, teachers, parents, and employees.

Make sure each layer of authentication should be designed and tagged smartly. You must authenticate a user based on any unique factor, such as OTP verification through a code sent to the user over the mobile phone.

Password Hygiene Always force your users to choose a strong password, it is for their own safety. Take measures such as:
The password should not include personal information (names, phone numbers, birthdays, pet names, or any other publicly available information).
Do not allow dictionary words, proper nouns, common combinations of numbers or letters, etc.
The minimum password length should be 10 characters.
Password should be a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters.
Encourage the use of special characters in the passwords.
Suggest using a unique password for each application.

Limit Login and Password Reset Attempt Limiting the login and password reset attempts is going to be a good add-on to the security. It would top off all the measures and allow you to ensure the iron-clad security of the user account.

Also, in case of any brute force attack, you can choose to inform the user of the attempts and ensure if it were they or someone else. In case, it’s not them, they can reset the password immediately and secure the account.

Limit Session Length Session length is usually underestimated but can be a strong tool to ensure the security of your application. Never go for an indefinite length of the session. You must define a time when the account would stay logged in on the app and would automatically log out.

Wrapping Up These were some tips for you to ensure login credential security on your School Management System. If you are looking for an Education ERP provider that follows all these protocols and has an international standard for security go with the Academia ERP solution.