Innovative Solutions: Higher Ed ERP Mastery

Education remains one of the smaller but prominent sectors in every country’s economy. Globally, the education sector is growing by leaps and bounds. Though it may not be a major driving force of an economy, the education sector creates a large number of jobs. Surprisingly, the learning industry also generates a significant amount of revenue. According to Statista, the global education market is expected to grow to an astonishing USD 9.5 billion by 2027.

The education sector shows incredible potential for growth, especially as technology integration becomes more prevalent. So, it is safe to say that the education industry is set to become a leading force in the nation’s economy. The use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology in the education sector makes the growth even faster.

In this guide, we shall learn in detail about what ERP is in education, and how higher education ERP systems can be mastered.

Overview Of Higher Education ERP

Data management remains one of the biggest challenges in every industry. Educational institutions are among the places where a large volume of data is collected regularly. This data includes student information, course details, faculty information, assets list, curriculum and class schedules, fees, etc. All this data needs to be managed efficiently to be useful. Conventional management systems in educational institutions are nowhere close to managing the growing volume of data effectively.

This is where higher education ERP systems come in handy.

Higher education ERP systems are software solutions that streamline, monitor, and simplify the administrative tasks of educational institutions. These are designed for use by schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations.

The past few years have seen a significant shift to integrated education ERPs in the learning industry. Growing numbers of schools and colleges are choosing the transition from traditional to technological solutions for managing administrative tasks. Apart from maintaining advanced IT infrastructure for educational institutions, education ERPs also digitize everything to simplify management.

Higher education ERP solutions provide crucial insight into operations. Detailed analytical reports by the ERP give essential data so administrators have the power to make highly effective decisions.

Challenges For Educational Institutions

The increasing demand for education is also the cause of major obstacles in the management of educational institutions. The growing number of students results in larger volumes of data being collected by institutions. This, in turn, causes significant disruption in management when using conventional methods.

Let us look at some of the major challenges facing educational institutions when it comes to efficient management -

Inefficient Campus Management

Managing campus efficiently remains one of the major challenges for administrators of schools, colleges, and universities. It is extremely time-consuming to manually record, organize, and store student information and management data. This tedious task eventually falls on the teachers and faculty and keeps them away from teaching. It causes a loss of quality education and has far-reaching consequences. The situation worsens for higher education institutions as they have even more information to manage than others.

Overall, these tasks can be efficiently managed for teachers and administrators by using higher education ERP systems.

Decreasing Student Retention

The education industry has one of the toughest competition among all other industries. So, every institution needs to ensure a higher rate of student retention for survival. To do this, educational institutions need to find out and fulfill the needs and expectations of their students. The best way to ensure a high student retention rate is to have a good reputation.

Accreditation is an important aspect of building and maintaining a reputation in the education industry. However, the entire process of accreditation is complex and needs efficient overall management. This can be accomplished by integrating a higher education ERP system in your college or university.

Inaccurate Account-keeping

As the education industry grows, the scrutiny on it also grows and includes being monitored by several financial authorities. According to commerce regulations, educational institutions are expected to provide a detailed report of their revenue and expenses. An educational institution can face severe actions against it if it fails to file the required report on time. This also causes the institution to fail in revenue recognition.

Integrating higher education ERP solutions effectively helps streamline management, and to overcome the above-listed challenges.

Need For ERP In Education

Major industries, like manufacturing, medicine, logistics, retail, and more are in strong favor of integrating ERP solutions. They know how powerful ERP systems are when it comes to streamlining and automating important administrative processes. ERP systems for education are designed to do just that.

You can effectively automate the entire operation of your school or college by integrating higher education ERP systems. This means efficient management of admissions, fees, administration, recruitment, accreditation, and more. Every department of your school or college can benefit from using education ERP solutions as they streamline each process for maximum efficiency.

Here are some of the highlighting benefits of integrating a higher education ERP system for schools, colleges, and universities -

• It performs real-time data analysis and ensures consistent communication between parents and teachers.
• It streamlines multiple operational and administrative processes, such as fee management, asset management, budget allocation, examination and assessment, etc.
• It makes managing the entire process of the student life cycle more efficient.
• It automates tedious regular tasks so teachers can focus more on teaching quality education.
• It efficiently records, organizes, stores, and provides comprehensive information on students, faculty, administration, and operations of educational institutions.

Benefits Of Higher Education ERP

Now that we know the need for ERP in education, let’s look at the several benefits of integrating higher education ERP -

Simplifies Admissions Process

Everyone knows that the conventional admissions process is complicated and tiresome, for students and administrators alike. The complexity starts with admission forms which require students to fill in numerous information, including names, addresses, parents’ details, educational information, and more. The administrators have to verify all the information by checking the applicant’s credentials and documents attached to the admission application. This is a tiresome process for the applicant and administrators.

However, the entire admissions process can be simplified by integrating higher education ERP systems. It automates every step of the process to make it simpler and more efficient for everyone involved.

Ensures Operational Transparency

Everyone wants educational institutions to be completely transparent in their operations, especially the admissions process. An education ERP solution can easily manage admission applications for different departments of colleges and universities simultaneously. The ERP solution comes equipped to manage admissions into different modules and handles online fee payments effortlessly.

The ERP platform can be easily integrated into other digital automation solutions, such as existing websites, learning management systems, and payment gateways. Besides this, these systems are designed to manage accounts and bookkeeping tasks with extreme accuracy. This way, educational institutions can ensure complete transparency in operations.

Automates Administrative Processes

Today, schools and colleges are required to handle more data than they did in the past. Different departments within educational institutions need to run in cohesion for efficient overall management. This requires having a centralized integral software solution to automate the entire administration process. It lets various departments and administrators stay connected through efficient communication channels. It organizes all educational and administrative activities to make operations smoother and more efficient.

For instance, advanced education ERP solutions have built-in student management features. These features help automate the attendance process using high-tech biometric or RFID devices. This way, teachers can save significant time and resources and spend them on providing higher-quality education.

Streamlines Educational Aspects

Besides administrative tasks, a higher education ERP system can also help streamline educational activities in schools, colleges, and universities. For instance, the integrated learning management module in education ERPs automates curriculum selection, course content design, and scheduling, among other things.

The education ERP systems also contain online examination and assessment features. These features design and deploy different types of examinations over the internet. It lets students to appear for exams from anywhere. The strict online proctoring feature ensures that all online exams are conducted with no risk of malpractice and cheating.

Data Management & Security

Advanced education ERP systems also make data collection, organization, analysis, and access more efficient. Educational institutes collect huge volumes of data on a daily basis. It is important to have an efficient method to store and secure this data as it contains the personal information of hundreds of students and scores of faculty and staff. This data needs to be stored securely. The education ERP system does exactly this and allows access to this data to only authorized users and ensures optimal data security.

However, all this information is simply data and useless unless processed and analyzed properly. Modern higher education ERP solutions come equipped with automated data processing and analysis tools. These systems also generate in-depth reports on various operational and educational aspects of the institution. For instance, the ERP system for education generates reports on attendance, academic performance, and administrative affairs. This gives teachers and administrators an efficient way to make informed decisions.

Cost-Efficient Management

Affordability is one of the major factors for educational organizations to choose a particular service or product. The same goes for education ERP management systems. Despite the initial cost of installation, higher education ERPs are extremely cost-effective as they cut down unwanted labor and resource costs. It automates the fundamental educational and administrative processes of educational institutions to lower the overall cost of operations in every aspect.

This also helps educational institutions to ensure better resource utilization. Using education ERP management systems, educational organizations can manage administrative tasks more easily by allocating their limited resources more efficiently.

Features Higher Education ERP

We now know the benefits of ERP systems in education. It effectively automates and improves overall educational and administrative tasks for educational organizations.

Let’s look at some of the most useful features and modules of higher education ERP solutions -

• E-learning - Higher education ERP promotes efficient E-learning by providing advanced and more efficient ways to receive education online.
• Website - Advanced education ERP software is easy to integrate into existing websites of higher education institutions. It streamlines all website-based operations, from resolving student queries to allowing fee payments online.
• Hostel - Reliable ERPs for higher education organizations are equipped to handle all hostel management tasks, all the way from allocating rooms to managing daily hostel operations.
• HRMS - The HRMS module of higher education ERP solutions handles the complete range of HR tasks. This includes recruitment to regular HR processes.
• Finance - The finance management module in higher education ERP systems automates the management of all financial transactions for educational institutions. These include payments, expenses, and reimbursements, among others.