Managing international schools through iSAMS integration

This is a guest blog by an Enterprise Marketplace Partner

Faria is a huge success story. Founded a decade ago, at much the same time as iSAMS, its founders had a simple enough aim: to move schools away from paper onto a learning platform built around International Baccalaureate programmes. Ten years later, more than 2,000 schools across 120 countries use Faria products for managing international schools.

Faria: an iSAMS partner

Faria understands the importance of systems integration for schools, of providing ready communication between educators and students and their families. The company isn’t greedy – it really wants to make a difference. Their rapid growth – just like ours – has come about not because of fierce sales or large-company investment, but because they’ve focused on making things better for their customers. All of these qualities make them the ideal iSAMS partner.

In fact, for a time Faria was planning to create its own school management information system, which could have been a competitor to iSAMS. The company came to us to ask questions, and the answers that emerged – for both of us – sent Faria in a different direction. They saw how well iSAMS performs and, being natural collaborators and relationship builders like us, realised that international schools would be better served if iSAMS and Faria worked together, rather than in competition.

Now Faria’s impressive products ManageBac, LaunchPad and OpenApply are benefiting from increasing integration with the iSAMS MIS.

ManageBac provides schools with an integrated family and student profile that brings together academic, behavioural, attendance and finance records and enables monitoring in real-time. OpenApply links and handles all admissions and enrolment data and processes, while LaunchPad gives all stakeholders single sign-on and looks after further integration, for instance with Finalsite CMS and Xero accounting.

Integration

With our technical teams working closely together, we’ve achieved integration between ManageBac and iSAMS. This allows a single sign-on for ease of use and two-way data transfer and sync of core student, parent, staff and school information. This cloud-based integrated solution, with the robust iSAMS information system at its core, eliminates duplicate systems, brings together critical school and pupil data in a single place in real-time and is accessible remotely through any device.

The level of integration doesn’t stop there. OpenApply handles admissions and enrolments and the iSAMS integration keeps all systems records consistent as students move through the school application process. The confusion and costs associated with record duplication are consigned to history and Faria’s objectives to transition international schools from paper systems to more effective e-learning platforms are supported by the strength and versatility of the iSAMS system. Moreover, it opens the door for much wider systems integration and streamlining of processes for Faria product users.