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The Client
Sharada Mandir HS , one of the top schools in Goa , imparting quality education of international standards since 1966 with a strength of over 1600 students .
The Challenge The school had computerized operations in the areas of billing , school stores , academic records etc since early 90s using stand alone software modules developed in Delphi and firebird . The disconnected nature of these systems led to problems in coordination and most often resulted in duplication of work . A need was felt to move over to a centralized software which can coordinate these activities and to automate much of the operations. Apart from replacing the old software , the new system was to progressively change the workflow with resource planning for the new academic year in terms of study materials required , fee structure etc. The billing module had to accommodate interaction with external entities like the banks to update the payment details . Another aim was to involve all interest groups : academic and administrative staff alike in the day to day functioning of the system. The software had to have the capability of linking it to the web interface for remote access by the parents as a possible future extension to the software.
The Solution
A school is a complex entity with diverse functions of academic and administrative nature coupled with the requirement to get customized MIS reports and trends for better decision making. We planned the project in 4 phases in which the basic structure was taken up first as a platform for the 3 modules namely academic , stores , fee . The tool was chosen to be PHP-MySQL running on a Fedora Linux box. The billing module interaction with the bank was achieved using XML data transfer to the customized software module installed at the bank. Due to the enormous amount of transactions , the database was optimized with required indexing and provision of a lean live database and backup database for dumping historical data. The workflow was kept flexible with options to change the roles of the users or to disconnect a designation from the workflow chain for a particular function. For example A material request by staff has to be verified by the superior and authorized by the school administrator before issued by the store keeper ; this flow can be effectively altered by removing one or many of the intermediary roles without any programming intervention. This was achieved by an "authorization matrix" that defines the activity paths and the designations involved in it.
The legacy applications were taken out one by one after successful parallel runs, thus saving the effort and cost of routine maintenance and programming changes that were a compulsion with the old packages.
The school has its operations coordinated with a centralized system , saving much time spend on these activities. The academic system produces MIS reports and trends which used to be prepared manually. Similarly , store billing and reflection of the same in the fee collected is done without any effort with the system monitoring issues of material to students.
The Result
The legacy applications were taken out one by one after successful parallel runs, thus saving the effort and cost of routine maintenance and programming changes that were a compulsion with the old packages.
The school has its operations coordinated with a centralized system , saving much time spend on these activities. The academic system produces MIS reports and trends which used to be prepared manually. Similarly , store billing and reflection of the same in the fee collected is done without any effort with the system monitoring issues of material to students.
The new website www.sharadamandir.edu.in takes care of the latest developments on the Web |
