Each school department has different requirements for their software. For this reason, it can be challenging to find the best technology to suit the entire school and allow departments to stay connected.
Ensuring that all school departments have access to the data that they need and can work efficiently is critical to your school’s daily operations. Your software needs to meet the differing demands of your staff, including finance, admissions, HR, administration staff, and more.
The first challenge to overcome is finding software that can perform and provide the necessary tools for each department. However, once you have found the right solution, how do you get buy-in from the other school departments and leaders?
Switching or migrating your software and data can be a daunting process, and many staff members could struggle when faced with change in the workplace. Changing school processes needs to be worth the time and effort.
At iSAMS, we know that migrating software to a solution that truly suits the needs of your school is vitally important and has the potential to drive a considerable increase in productivity and efficiency. We also understand that change management can be the make or break when switching software. Your entire school needs to be behind a software migration – that's why you need to lead with the solution, not the software.
- Identify the pain points
- Solve the problems
- Pitch from the bottom upwards
- Education and training
- Change management planning
- Migrating to iSAMS
Identify pain points
Chances are, if you’re considering a change of daily software, other departments will be facing challenges with their software too. Communicate with all of your school departments to identify the struggles that they have every day, relating to their technology.
You need to know your school’s pain points and where staff are losing time. Software could be the answer, but you can’t know that without knowing what the problems are.
Take the time to speak to staff members across your school, including admissions, finance, HR, administration, and your own team. Build a list of daily or regular challenges faced by staff.
Once you have identified the problem areas, you can begin to look at solving those problems.
Solve the problems
Work through your list of problems and develop solutions. The answer could involve new software, or changing the way you implement existing software. Either way, the key is to stay open.
You cannot get buy-in for new software from the wider school without proving that there is value for the large majority of staff members. As you work through the list and provide software solutions, the overall answer to your school’s problems will become clearer.
This process is much more effective than simply pointing out your own challenges, or those of your department, to leadership and administration teams. By solving problems across departments, you can work together as a team to bring a change proposal to school leadership.
Not only that, but once your wider school departments see the benefits and solutions for themselves, this will make the future change management process much simpler. Your school staff will already understand the importance of the migration.
Pitch from the bottom upwards
As much as it might seem like the best approach, directly pitching your preferred new software to leadership may not be successful. Ultimately, from their perspective, migrating an entire school’s software seems like a mammoth task that shouldn’t be undertaken unnecessarily. They need to be provided with the whole picture in order to make the most informed decision.
Begin by hosting discussions with your colleagues, in both your department and in other teams across the school. Work with them to identify their problems and how the potential new software could help solve those problems to improve their efficiency and abilities.
You could also get in touch with other schools nearby and ask for their honest opinions on the software that they use. Share these across your departments and with school leadership when you’re ready to push for a change.
Pitching to your colleagues is a lot more accessible and is more likely to naturally have an impact on your leadership.
Education and training
You may have identified what you believe to be the right software solution for all teams, but that doesn’t mean those teams agree with you. Even if they do, they might not be willing to make a dramatic change just yet.
New software training is the key to getting the most out of your new software’s functionality. Your school staff might feel that they’re not getting the best out of the software that your school currently uses, let alone a new one. The best software providers will offer an extensive training catalogue to ensure that any staff member fully understands the solution and how to truly benefit from it.
Most frustration or misunderstanding comes from a lack of education about a new technology. That’s why we offer comprehensive training across teams when you migrate, and continue to provide training options throughout your time with us. The more informed your staff are about our MIS, the more the system can achieve.
Change management planning
As above, investment in new software doesn’t automatically guarantee buy-in from all other members of staff. While you may not need all school departments to be invested in a new technology in order to begin migration, you will need school staff members to be active in change management and training in order to achieve a successful transition.
Effective change management is critical to a positive outcome for both your software and your staff. Big changes can be one of the most stressful experiences in the workplace, with over 70% of employees affected by workplace change stating that they experience moderate to high stress levels.
Before undertaking the migration process and getting started with your new software, build a comprehensive change management plan. At iSAMS, we can work with your data management team to help you understand the full migration process, identify areas for training, and ensure the switchover is as smooth as possible for your entire school.
Migrating to iSAMS
Our implementation and support team will help you to find an MIS migration process that suits your school. We are available to guide you throughout migration and installation, as well as answer any questions you may have throughout.
We’ll never leave you in the dark and are keen to make all of your staff’s first impressions of iSAMS a positive one.
We know just how important whole-school buy-in is for successful software migration. Our MIS offers solutions for admissions, finance, HR, administration, teaching staff, and more – so we’re keen to ensure that every department can truly make the most out of iSAMS.
However, our features aren’t just a tick box exercise. We want to ensure that you truly implement an MIS that you need. Spend time with your key stakeholders to ensure each feature is fit for purpose.
ISAMS also offers a consistent interface, no matter where you log-in. Consistency is key to making sure a software can be taken up by staff quickly and easily.
Interested in learning about our MIS and range of associated solutions and modules? Watch a demo below.