Recently, we caught up with Marlene Francis, Head of Admissions at the The Greenshaw Learning Trust to find out how the MAT has benefited from adopting the Applicaa CRM.
How did admissions run in your MAT before you got Admissions+?
Greenshaw Learning Trust has 24 schools within the trust located in various local authorities across the UK. I created a generic paper form, used across the Trust to ensure that we collected the relevant data needed for census. Then we put it online and schools would either send the student registration form out by post or they would provide the link for parents to complete it online. The data had to be manually entered into SIMS.
The process took a lot of time, it was very labour intensive and we used a lot of paper and postage to send the forms out so everything was done manually prior to Admissions+.
Now we have 12 schools signed up to Admissions+ with more to come on board.
What was the key driving factor that led you to look for an online system?
For us It was a case of we needed a system that could import the data directly into SIMS. Having Admissions+ where the data is now directly imported into SIMS saves us a lot of time.
One of our biggest schools takes 314 students per year into Year 7. So, you know that was a lot of time inputting students’ data, checking it was correct and with handwritten forms, you can’t always read the handwriting or there would be fields missing. We’ve eliminated that by using Admissions+ because the parents key in the information themselves.
This system will not allow them to progress unless the necessary fields are completed. Being able to import that directly into SIMS is now a huge benefit for us in terms of time and cost, it’s really been a lifesaver in terms of saving school time.
How does admissions run now in your MAT?Â
Our largest school went on board in March 2021 and the staff did a little dance when they imported the data from Admissions+ into SIMS because of the time it is saving them. 💃
It has saved us several hours in terms of the manual inputting of data and you’re getting up-to-date information immediately from your parents, so you can rest assured that it’s the most up-to-date information and that nothing is missing. We’re not going back to parents saying ‘you haven’t filled in page two, you haven’t filled in page three, we need this information’.
The key benefit here, hands down, is the fact that the data is imported directly into SIMS.
When I was an Admission Officer we used to work out the time taken to input one student’s registration form manually. We were able to do 4 forms in an hour, so one every 15-20 minutes. We had 314 students to input data for, so you were looking at 78 hours to get all the data into SIMS the old manual way! 😟
What is the Data looking like now in the MAT?
It’s accurate and up to date now!
Even when schools receive the CTF from the Local Authority, the information on there isn’t up to date.
It’s not the most up-to-date emergency contact. It may not be the most up-to-date medical information, it doesn’t have dietary needs on there.
Whereas for us, because parents are now putting the information in fresh when they receive their offer of a place, we can rest assured that we do have the most up-to-date information and it’s been keyed in by the parents.
It doesn’t need any other intervention from us really other than importing it into SIMS which is really quick. The MAT dashboard enables my vision of being able to see where our schools are in terms getting completed student registration forms in and that data being ready on SIMS.
For more information please visit www.applicaa.com