Higher Education Management: Why an ITS Integrator Is The Answer

Higher education management significantly impacts both small and large higher education institutions. The processes and practices in place with regard to higher education management could mean the difference between success and failure, making this one of the essential elements for these institutions to get right. But getting these processes right is easier said than done? With so many different moving parts, the complexities of higher education management are creating many challenges. Below we examine how technology, specifically, Adapt IT Educations’s ITS Integrator software, is utilised to simplify these complexities, meet challenges and streamline processes.

How innovation has changed the processes of higher education 

To fully understand how this particular solution can enhance higher education management, it is essential to know how technology has changed and adapted to the needs of the education sector below and what impact this is having on both universities and colleges and students.

You may have heard of two specific buzzwords, digital transformation, within the context of innovation within this sector. This is an essential topic to discuss because it significantly impacts how higher learning institutions function. 

Before technology was being utilised in these institutions, many of the management processes were being handled manually, using elements like excel documents, paper documents and filing. Although this kind of system had previously worked, the sheer number of students entering the higher education sphere and the growth of this sector have meant that these solutions are no longer efficient and are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. For example, looking up student information would require looking in the files and tracking paperwork, which costs the institution time and valuable resources. On the other side of the coin, students were becoming more and more frustrated with a lack of access to information and the time needed to acquire this. This is where digital transformation comes in.

Digital transformation focuses specifically on utilising technology to better experience and streamline processes and operations. With the growth within this sector, higher education institutions have needed to adapt to the new needs of students and the institution as a whole. Innovative software solutions have provided institutions with a way to do this. 

This technology allows students to engage more with their studies but provides them with quick and easy access to all coursework and timetables and provides an efficient way to ask questions and find information. All of this significantly and positively impacts the student experience, which enhances student recruitment. With this technology, an institution can provide students with a rich learning environment and experience.

On the university side, this kind of fit for purpose technology can streamline processes, operations and functionalities across all institutional departments. This ensures complete alignment and easy access to all information related to student management, financial management, HR management, and reporting. With a complete holistic view of all operations and processes, it becomes easier for higher education management to identify problems or opportunities and make informed decisions.  

ITS Integrator solutions for higher education management

In recent years Higher education institutions have turned to technology, for higher education management, in some form or another. For these institutions to continue to stay relevant to their customers – the students – they need to transform the way they are doing things, their operations and processes. One way of doing this is to incorporate innovative integration technology like ITS Integrator. This software system is used to streamline and automate daily operations and provides departments with integrated management information to support decision-making at various levels.

This technology provides higher education institutions with a support system and a way to meet the new transformation challenges facing the sector. This education management system aims to assist institutions in saving costs, staying relevant, maximising resources and enhancing the student experience. Below we deep-dive into the ITS Integrator products and how they can benefit higher education management.

ITS Integrator – A modular Solution

ITS Integrator is a cost-effective ERP system that can be implemented across various departments to streamline all operational processes. This modular software solution is innovative because it can integrate into multiple systems. As an educational institution, this means that you can choose which modules to implement and the specific modules that speak to your institution’s unique needs. Let’s look at the modular product solutions that benefit an education management system.

Student management

ITS Integrator Student management system is software that simplifies and reduces time spent on managing student data, scheduling and communication. It’s vital for educational institutions to make use of software that helps save costs, simplify complex processes, reduce errors and paperwork, and generate reports for more effective decision making. This solution offers institutions this functionality and the ability to manage student recruitment and applications, registrations, the number of students allowed for qualification and reserving places for repeating students.  It even provides a Student Education Plan that a student might need or want to aid during student counselling interventions. Adapt IT’s Student Management software also includes a self-service function for students. This solution:

• Simplifies and automates complex processes
• Saves costs due to less time spent on manual tasks
• Enhanced organisation of data
• Ensures compliance to statutory requirements, including audit trail
• Integrates easily with 3rd party vendors
• With the self-service option, students can complete registration faster
• Provides a better student experience
• Allows access to the self-service option via mobile devices, which makes it convenient for students
• Easy to implement so that your workflow is optimised
• Effortless legislative compliance from the Edu.Dex and EDLES upload functionality
• Lecturer self-service functionality allows lecturers to enter their marks digitally, and the automation of the system provides quick turnaround times.
• Works with distance and cooperative education processes
• Institutions can develop their front end (for student registrations) that fits their institution’s look and feel.
• Keep on track with student debtors and simplify time-consuming tasks
• Simplifies and enhances bursaries and loan management processes to keep everything organised.

Financial management

ITS Integrator The ITS Integrator Financial Management Software is used by educational institutions, big or small, to oversee and govern all aspects of the institute’s finances. This software was designed to cater to the fun­damental function of financial control and to form an essen­tial part of management reporting. This includes managing income, cash flow, expenses and assets to maximise the institution’s profitability. The platform streamlines the process of invoicing and bill collection while eliminating accounting errors and ensuring compliance with regulations associated with tax and accounting. This Financial Management platform offers institutions an effective way to budget, invoice, send out financial statements, manage cash, assets, etc. This dynamic platform makes managing your financial processes efficient and effective. The benefits of this product module include:

• Essential finance-related tasks and activities are consolidated, streamlined and automated in line with existing, changing and emerging regulations.
• The ability to implement formal procedures for handling financial transactions and activities, creating overall consistency within the institution.
• A centralised view of all available information across the necessary departments and institution units. This further facilitates accuracy and consistency.
• This platform provides critical information related to the institution; this, in turn, aids in budget forecasting, new business opportunities, asset-based expenditure etc.

The financial resource management module includes the following capabilities:

• Financial structures -This system helps firms manage the way assets and operations are financed and includes components such as accounts required for year-end procedures, VAT registrations and control accounts, budget control requirements, control accounts for automatically generated transactions and rules for retention of balances and transactions.
• General Ledger – This software system caters for the online validation of GLAs; the subsystem of origin and the originator of the transaction are kept per transaction, users can be restricted to specific GLAs, cost centres and departments, and sensitive data is therefore protected. More than one financial year-end can be handled, and all transactions are automatically generated at year-end.
• Accounts receivable – This software system facilitates the creation of debtor accounts (other than students) and recording transactions such as invoices, credit notes, journals, and the generation of statements. It is used for invoicing sundry services to outsiders and keeping a record of student – and personnel loans.
• Income and expenditure budgeting – This software assists in assembling the budget and posting the calculated figures into General Ledger. Budgets can be prepared for multiple years. The software facilitates budget forecasting by the accounts department based on linear regression, percentage increases and pro-rata allocation based on fixed sums of money.
• Finance self-service – This self-service software allows personnel to create requisitions and GRV over the web, do general ledger queries, and submit budget requests.
• Asset management (self-service and mobile) – This software is used to record and track assets for financial and inventory purposes. This provides the institution with vital information on where assets are located, who uses them, and how they are utilised.
• Procurement management – This module caters to purchasing non-stock items, purchasing of stock items, the payment of creditors and all related transactions. All processing is performed at the item level.
• Student debtors – Financial officers will be able to set the financial values to be raised and the rules to be applied for both registration and registration cancellation, and that on registration or registration cancellation of a student, fees will be automatically generated and credits passed.  This applies to both residential and academic activities.
• Counter & Cashbook – This module provides for the receiving of money, issuing ad hoc payments, and processing cash disbursements and fees. The system contains a comprehensive Cash Book and bank reconciliation facility. It allows for the manual and electronic reconciliation of multiple bank accounts.
• Bursaries and Loans – This system allows an institution to effectively manage its Bursary and Loan (Scholarship and Award) funds through enhanced and simplified processes to ensure that everything stays well organised.
• Counter system – This system provides for the receiving of money, issuing ad hoc payments, and processing cash disbursements and payments. The system contains a comprehensive Cash Book and bank reconciliation facility. It allows for the manual and electronic reconciliation of multiple bank accounts.
• Banking interface software – This software is used to electronically reconcile the institution’s cashbook. The value of this lies in the speed with which bank statement reconciliation can occur because the user does not have to recapture the initial data as on the bank statements.

Human resource management

Human Resource Management is a vital aspect of any successful institution, as it focuses on the management of the most critical resource within the institution, your staff. The ITS Integrator Human Resource Management platform streamlines recruiting and acquiring staff, the training and development of staff, and managing staff activities within the institution. This platform ensures that the core institutes’ objectives and daily operations are maintained, and high performance is achieved within the work environment. This is made possible through five specific software features, which include:

• Personnel system – The ITS Integrator Personnel System is highly integrated with the ITS Integrator Payroll System and is linked to all other relevant ITS Integrator systems. The management of personnel can be done via back-office system processes or, when applicable, via the self-service for personnel. It manages the life-cycle of the personnel member at the institution.
• Salary System – This system is a complete payroll system compliant with all Government and Tax regulations in your country. Multiple payrolls can be maintained with their own rules, e.g. full-time permanent employees, part-time permanent employees and contract employees.
• Personnel Self-Service – The ITS Integrator Self-Service system provides online real-time access to the ITS Integrator system, enabling institution personnel to gain access, through a secure login, to the data applicable to the individual. The system can be accessed through a web browser and have a user-friendly interface making navigation throughout the system uncomplicated.
• Salary Budgeting System – This system can calculate salary budgets, showing several consecutive monthly salary calculations for future periods. This is calculated using user-defined criteria to budget for vacant posts, future resignations, etc.
• ITS Infoslips for Payslips – ITS Integrator has created a facility that enables users to give their staff electronic payslips instead of the traditional hardcopy payslip.

These features assist in achieving the following benefits:

• Efficiency of Administration – Manual processes that used to take hours to complete, such as pulling staff records, reporting on absenteeism, skills appraisals etc., can now be done within minutes.
• Access to Information – The Human Resource Management platform is user-friendly. It has been designed with staff and management in mind, ensuring that information is accessible, easy to find, and utilised.
• Ability to make informed decisions – This platform allows you to easily access the data and pull reports on all staff-related elements. It also enables you to make informed decisions relating to staff retention, hiring, skills development, etc.
• Improves employee productivity – This platform allows self-service by staff through their own personal portal, freeing up the time of those in Human Resource (HR) management and improving staff satisfaction overall.

MIS and reporting

The ITS Integrator Management Information System (MIS) is a central data storage system that gathers, organises, stores, processes and analyses information to generate reports. This system assists educational institutions in storing and reporting student and financial information essential to the institution’s operations. This software has been specifically designed with the needs of educational institutions in mind. This software ensures that reporting of different student-related elements is efficient, effortless and accessible. With this software, users can generate reports relating to:

• Student applications
• Student headcounts
• Graduation reports
• Student subject information
• Full-time student information
• Student residence information
• Academic progress reports
• Personnel information
• Financial data
• Accounts receivable
• Cash flow information.

The above reporting capabilities allow for quality decision-making, helps to achieve higher levels of efficiency, improve employee productivity, and enhance the quality of service.

Resource Management

The ITS Integrator, Resource Management software, is a project management tool that enables institutions to manage and allocate resources to maximise efficiency. This tool allows for planning, assigning, and tracking who is working on a project, what resources are required and estimating the time needed to complete the project. It assists in human resource management by identifying resource requirements, resource allocations, and skill sets and managing the resource planning process to ensure the project’s success. This software facilitates the management process for any project, like graduation, a seminar, guest speakers, new course development, skills development workshops etc., from beginning to end, ensuring that each project is a success. Other benefits of using this project management software include:

• Increased revenue
• Improving project delivery
• Providing more visibility and control

The above benefits are made possible by the following module functionalities:

• Contract Management – This software creates, tracks and monitors contracts and agreements. This assists in shortening approval times, increasing contract visibility, ensuring compliance with necessary regulations and improving document management and storage.
• Print costing – This software tool was designed to ensure the effective management and optimisation of all print devices and processes.
• Meal Booking and Point of Sale – The software manages student meal accounts for purchases of meals at different food outlets on various campuses and the pre-booking of meals at residences. The point of sale software manages the payment process for the meals at the outlets and residences.
• Venue reservation software – This tool allows institutions to manage everything in one place, such as their event spaces, equipment, accommodation, residences etc. This enables institutions to handle enquiries and bookings better and provide visibility and reporting on all venues, which assists in identifying utilisation rates.
• Vehicle reservation – This platform allows for managing vehicle reservations related to the institution’s needs.

Timetabling

The Timetabling (CELCAT) software, part of the ITS Integrator system, has been created to enhance course and exam timetables’ administrative and scheduling processes. This state-of-the-art solution optimises resource utilisation and reduces the time spent on scheduling and data capturing, saving time and effort. This software makes timetabling a convenient and practical process for administrators and students. This highly integrative solution has the following capabilities:

• Attendance monitoring
• Automated timetabling
• Room requesting
• Interactive timetabling
• Publication of timetables
• Reporting
• Pay claims

These capabilities make it possible for an institution to:

• Reduction in administrative errors – This software mitigates human errors and easily automates course timetabling.
• Saves on time and effort – The software reduces the amount of time and effort involved in planning a timetable, allowing staff to focus on other tasks and increasing productivity.
• Creates paperless administration – This software allows for the digital storage of this data, resulting in reduced paper use and savings on resources, space and effort.
• Enhances accessibility – Students can access their timetables, with or without authenticated access, on a webpage, making it easier for all students to keep up to date on their course timetabling.
• Keep information secure and safe – When submitting your details, you must give consent for the data being captured. This data is then safely stored and can only be accessed by those authorised to do so.

3rd Party Plugins and Interfaces

ITS Integrator offers several 3rd party plugins and interfaces that add specific features to existing software solutions. When these plugins are installed, additional functions become available, allowing for customising a solution to suit your institution’s particular needs. This enhances flexibility and improves efficiency while ensuring user-friendliness. These plugins and interfaces include:

• MyGate
• DHET
• VeriCred
• Moodle/Blackboard
• MyMarket
• FIHRST
• FoneWorx
• Sierra Library System
• Innopac Library system
• RealPay

Jasper

JasperReport® Server & Jaspersoft® Studio are essential ITS Integrator tools used to compile, design and distribute reports and securely manage the reports, visuals, and dashboards. The JasperReport® Server is a stand-alone embedded reporting server that provides reporting and analytics for both mobile and web applications. Jaspersoft Studio® then gives you the necessary tools to design, build and customise the reports. This software ensures usability and accessibility, offers self-service reporting and saves time and effort. With this module you are able to:

• Access unlimited reports for an unlimited number of users without per-user pricing
• Schedule thousands of reports on a single server
• Secure report access to easily integrate with existing identity management directories
• Simplify report drill-down design and integration
• Enhance conditional printing and formatting
• Access multiple data sources
• Export to different formats
• Utilise flexible reporting server architectures that simplify developer integration efforts for providing secure, organised and interactive reports.

How does redefining student management enhance the student experience and why is this an asset to higher education institutions?

From the above, it is clear that the ITS Integrator product modules aim to enhance operations and processes. At the core of this solution is the ability to improve the student experience.

You may be asking why this is so important, and the simple answer is that higher education institutions will cease to operate without students. Students are, therefore, an asset to higher education institutions. An institution needs to provide students with what they are looking for. This includes innovation in terms of self-service capabilities and simplifying processes related to course registration, finances and the ability to access timetables and course work from anywhere and at any time.

 ITS Integrator provides all of this and more with its various modules. For example, if a student has a financial query, employees can quickly and easily access the information needed to rectify the problem or provide the student with guidance. Through reporting, management can evaluate course marks and identify concerns or opportunities; for example, if a large percentage of the students are failing a specific course or class, there could be a problem. ITS Integrator focuses on improving the back-end operational elements of an institution and enhancing the student experience.

Case Study: ITS integrator implementation and benefits

We have discussed all the modules related to ITS Integrator and how these impact student experience, but now let’s examine three different examples of how three different institutions are utilising this software in relation to back-end operations and processes.

Case study #1: King Hintsa Further Education and Training (FET) College

King Hintsa Further Education and Training (FET) College has an annual enrolment of 3 500 students and operates across six campuses. This institution faced many challenges, especially in relation to the need for automated and streamlined processes across all business areas.  

The college chose to implement ITS Integrator to support student management, student financial management, financial management, and resource and personnel management. ITS Integrator was used to streamline processes, automate daily operations, and provide integrated management information to help management make better decisions. 

Since implementing this software, the college has stated that having one centralised system to access all information related to students across campuses has been invaluable. The integration across operational departments has made the management of students, finances, and human resources much more manageable and drastically improved operational efficiency.

Case study #2: ORBIT TVET College 

ORBIT TVET College wanted to improve its administration and was specifically looking for a software solution with self-service functionality. They also wanted to improve automation and find a better record-keeping methodology.

Using ITS Integrator, a number of the institution’s processes, which were previously done manually, were automated. The ease of use of the record-keeping aspect of the software also significantly eased the administrative burdens experienced by staff. 

Dr Joe Viljoen, ORBIT Data and Information Manager, says, “New self-service functionality with the associated workflow routing improves efficiency while driving user satisfaction. The upgraded system allows users more flexibility and options in doing their work; additional settings and restrictions give system administrators better control over end-user actions and processing.”

Case study #3: Vaal University of Technology

VUT in Vanderbijlpark is one of the largest residential Universities of Technology in South Africa, with about 15,000 students and 300 programmes. While the university has embraced advanced digital solutions in several areas, it was advised last year that its backup and disaster recovery procedures were not aligned with best practices and needed to be improved.

Adapt IT implemented near real-time backup solution hosted in a Tier Three data centre situated over 30km away, meeting all the auditors’ requirements for best practice backup and data recovery. Adapt IT ensured that the cloud-based solution met VUT’s minimum requirements and saved on the cost of implementing extra hardware equivalent to the current production environment. If it becomes necessary to do a failover to the DR site, the cloud infrastructure can be scaled to the equivalent of the production server, and VUT will only incur costs when they use it.

“When compliance became an issue, we assessed several alternative solutions. Adapt IT’s solution was selected primarily on a­ffordability – at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. We are now aligned with best practice, and the solution delivers DR with warm standby: every time something happens on the server, it is transferred to the cloud server in milliseconds – so it’s close to real-time. Crucially, we are now fully compliant, the auditors are happy, and we can sleep peacefully knowing that should there be any problems, the core business won’t be a­ffected,” said David Ramasodi, VUT’s Executive Director of IT Services.

Conclusion 

There is no doubt that the education system, especially in higher education institutions, is being challenged to transform and shift with the times. Digital transformation has meant that new innovative technologies are coming to the forefront of the industry to simplify and streamline processes and operations to improve the student experience and learning. ITS Integrator is one of these solutions and is helping higher education institutions to manage the entire student lifecycle with the click of a button, assisting with managing finances, human resources and more. This modular solution is changing the way educational institutions work, for the better.