Picture this. Simply, with the click of a mouse, you can know about your child’s progress at school, test results, time-table, home-work and other such details.
Educational institutes, like schools and colleges, are taking to the concept of web-based managed application services or ERP (enterprise resource planning) for managing every day processes in academics. Important data like attendance records, results, events in the year and parent-teacher interactions is put on an interactive platform, like a web portal, to which parents have an access at a nominal charge but which is managed by a third party service provider.
One such provider, riding high on this service is Glodyne Technoserve which hopes to get the first player benefit.
“There are other regional players but they don’t provide full-fledge solutions like we do. Their services are smaller and don’t take care of all the processes that need to be addressed,” Annand Sarnaaik, chairman and CEO, Glodyne Techoserve told Business Standard.
The company specialises in remote infrastructure management and e- governance but two months back it acquired Broadllyne Technologies Ltd, a managed application services provider in the education sector.
The acquisition has broadened Glodyne’s portfolio of managed technology services and brought with it a benefit of 173 clients in the education sector.
Broadllyne’s offerings — Excel and College Excel — have some appealing features. “Everything related to academics like how efficiently can a timetable be prepared, managing mark sheets, feedback to students, online notes, online tests, monitoring child’s performance, etc can be managed through its portal. Also, administrative affairs like managing libraries and hostels, school bus commuting charts, finance management, payrolls et al is handled by our offering,” Shantanu Rooj, managing director, Broadllyne Technologies told Business Standard.
The basic idea of having on board a web-based managed application service for schools and colleges is three to one year old in India according to Annand and Shantanu. 300-odd educational institutes have already signed on the dotted line for a contract with Glodyne. While an execution of Rs 159 crore in the next 12-24 months across 1603 schools/ colleges is in the pipeline.
Once the deal is done, institutions don’t have to spend even a penny for it. Glodyne installs the software and also makes sure a team is available full-time to take responsibility of running the software. It gets its share from the parents who have to shell out anywhere between Rs 50 to Rs 100 per month depending on the kind of school setup.
Another unique application is that of sending SMSes. In case a school bus is running late, an automated message is generated and sent to mobile numbers of parents who have signed up. Similarly, SMS alerts are constantly sent out for various other things related to their child’s education.
The Government is all out to encourage e-governance. What better form of it than to enable students to read notes, view last year’s question papers and do a host of other things online while their parents get to view attendance etc and monitor their children too.
