— VANDANA DEVI SREEJITH

Why Automation Is Indispensable For The Growth Of Your Institute

There is a reason why institutes around the world have been increasingly adopting a technology-centric approach since the turn of the new millennium. Moving towards automation in managing academics is not only guaranteed to enhance student experience, but can also significantly improve the pace of your institute’s growth. Read on to know how!

1. Automation helps in minimizing manual efforts and eliminating human errors

Technology provides you with a valuable platform that can help reduce manual efforts while bringing errors down to zero. Automated IT operations effectively perform the tasks of several people at once, leading to savings on the cost of labour. Processes tend to be streamlined better and accuracy level increases, thus eliminating human errors by a wide margin. Unlike human labour, automated processes require minimal supervision, and are capable of giving a better ROI, along with increased productivity.

2. Automation helps in streamlining the fee management system of the institute

Technology has come a long way in alleviating the burden of fee collection that’s usually part and parcel of the running of an institute, by enabling fee reminder options for your wards who have outstanding fees’ pending, as well as by offering them multiple payment options on their student app, which is helpful in prompting them to do payments via bank or credit card transfers. It also regularly provides reminders to your administrative staff to conduct follow ups with students whose payments are overdue, thus helping institutes optimize payment recovery.

3. Automation is both cost effective as well as time effective

One of the biggest advantages of automation, that has incidentally caused a major shift towards technology in the educational sector since the past few years, has been the ease and speed with which day to day activities are performed – from receiving system generated updates on fees or admissions and timely reminders about scheduled classes or lectures, to getting notifications about early class dismissal or upcoming college events – all this without the need for any manual intervention! Automation makes it possible for your admin staff or teachers to share institute related or examination related updates to several hundred students at one go, thereby saving precious time and effort. Automation turns out to be cost effective as well in the long run, as institutes can employ a lesser number of staff to manage administrative and operational activities, and can themselves turn environment friendly by transitioning to a paperless mode of functioning.

4. Automation helps in tracking and converting potential leads to actual customers

Automation can be a powerful tool for institutes who wish to augment the efforts of their counsellors by providing detailed reports about interested students, potential leads, as well as actual conversions. These reports can be accessed in a date specific or month specific manner to help them identify the peak admission season, thereby mentally preparing the sales team to put in aggressive efforts. Conversely, these reports can help institutes identify the lean periods as well, thus providing them an opportunity to analyze their team’s marketing efforts, and prompting them to take corrective measures as necessary – either by offering limited period discounts or early bird offers. Apart from admission trends, institutes can also benefit from an automated software by viewing reports on the kind of subjects or courses that are most sought after, or even about the faculties who have been rated highly, so that these factors can be utilized effectively by their counsellors in securing more admissions.

5. Automation provides valuable and real time data analytics to support decision making

An advanced institute management software can readily generate detailed reports that help institutes inspect relevant data concerning both academics as well as operations, thus helping them discover useful information, conduct a thorough analysis, reach important conclusions and formulate valuable decisions. Data obtained from system generated reports are real-time and auto-updated, thus helping institute heads track the centre and batches’ progress in a more efficient way. Institutes can take prompt and well-reasoned decisions anytime, either on the academic front or the operational front – thanks to the constantly updated and automatically segregated data generated on their institute’s ERP platform. Moreover, automation being a scalable option, institutes can retain valuable data in an organised way on the software, without the fear of losing them, for years and years – and access them whenever needed, with just a few clicks. Only the owner would retain the complete access over the institute’s data – thus ensuring that no information is modified or manipulated without his/her consent.

6. Automation helps in improving the scalability of business

Any cutting-edge institute management system can help educational institutions standardize operations across its centres or batches, thereby allowing their business to become more centralised. While this in itself is good, an automated system also allows institutes to cover repeated processes digitally, thus saving on time, and helps institutions streamline their backend processes, so that their centres operate more efficiently, helping them grow to scale. A software that has been designed to scale can be adapted according to the latest needs of the institute, and in line with its exponential growth. A scalable system also ensures that as more and more of your staff, students and parents start accessing the purchased software, it would not crash, hang or in any way become unusable or redundant.

7. Automation helps in streamlining staff schedule

Resource allocation is another major advantage of utilising an automated learning management system, wherein the schedules of faculties along with the shifts of the administration and support staff of the institute can be tracked, and even streamlined, if necessary. Both the institute as well as the students are provided with an overview of the teachers’ calendar, helping them book lectures at their available time, without worrying about classes clashing with each other. In case of any last-minute cancellation, the same can be viewed and rescheduled according to the mutual convenience of the faculty and student. Institute heads can also gain insight into the workflow of their teachers, helping them accurately rate their professionalism and performance.

8. Automation is the most environment friendly choice

When you actually think about it, most of the administration work in schools and colleges involves form filling, maintaining records, printing invoices or fee receipts and preparing exam questionnaires – which eventually translates into piles and piles of paper! Adopting technology in the form of automated institute processes not only saves precious time and effort on the part of the admin team, counsellors or teachers and increases efficiency, but also helps your institute take a leap towards becoming more eco-friendly and reducing the consumption and printing of paper – which, in due course, leads to a better brand image.

9. Automation can help scale up the institute’s record keeping practices

Maintaining the colossal mountain of records at your institute can be a tiresome, and often thankless, task. A highly scalable and advanced software, however, offers you powerful reporting features that help you retrieve any kind of institute-related data that you are looking for, to help improve your institute’s administration and day to day operations. Such data includes (but is not limited to) batch count, student information, faculty attendance, resource allocation, course module, admission enquiries and follow up, exam schedules, fee payment updates, registered grievances, lecture feedback, lesson plans and more. This helps you in not only evaluating your institute’s performance as a whole, but in also formulating measures that improve your institute’s revenues.

10. Automation helps bridge the gap between institutes and students

A major reason why automation has gained popularity in recent times is because of the way it managed to revolutionize the traditional classroom, and bring in personalised attention and friendly rapport between the teachers and their students. Not only has this led to students understanding their subjects and liking their courses better, but has also led to greater job satisfaction and reduced burnout for the teachers. The ultimate benefit, is of course reaped by the institute for whom automation has led to goodwill, trust and increased student count year after year.

Although its possible to still go on listing the innumerable benefits that automation has bestowed upon the educational arena, it may be sufficient to say that automation has surely ushered in an era of increased visibility and improved functionality for institutes, which has ultimately resulted in an improved learning environment and a more enriched brand image for institutes, whose leaders can now proudly hold their heads up high!