When to replace or renovate your student information system (SIS)?

The educational ecosystem is on the path of change for various years, and year by year institutions focus to adopt changes in technology that can lead to growth and success of the organization, Student Information System (SIS) is one of the most common technological changes that institutions are focusing to adopt from last few decades, but it is important to check that the SIS you are using is supporting your institution to drive changes along with providing you to deliver modern, innovative technology services being the best student information system for higher education.

Let’s discuss how you can evaluate your current SIS and is it the correct time for you to update or renovate your current SIS software attributing the latest research report by Gartner for “Deciding to Replace or Renovate Your Student Information System With the Fitness Attribute Framework”.

Important things to consider while checking the fitness of your current SIS:

1. Evaluating the capabilities

There are various SIS vendors out there who are providing the same outdated technology for SIS that is restricting the ability to deliver new and modernized services. It is also not wrong to say that most the institutions are using the same SIS without any upgrade for many years leading to restricted growth and advancements in the institutions. 

According to Gartner’s latest research report, it is important to assess the fitness of the institution’s SIS by evaluating its capabilities to function, enable, differentiate, and transform the institution. 

It is important to evaluate the fitness of your SIS based on its:

• Function

The SIS software in your institute must provide the best and most modern functionalities in maintaining the routine operational expectations, performance, uptime, architectural sustainability, routine maintenance, and skillset availability. It should lead your institutional work in a more fast and actionable way along with a touch of modernization and technological trends leading to the overall growth of your organization.

• Enablement

A modern SIS includes a lot of advanced features and not just administrative operations. It should meet business unit requirements being responsible for workflow changes and education-specific functionalities for financial aid regulation, satisfactory academic progress, common core application, international visa regulations, tax reporting, and legislative mandates.

• Differentiation

In today’s modern world, it is most important for educational institutions to opt for change that supports the deployment of unique processes along with the capacity to provide a competitive advantage. Let’s say, in the current situation it is important for institutions to use BI and analytics leading to competitive growth in every way. 

• Transformation

Modern ERP or SIS software works to automate complete processes of all the tasks in an institution that leads to digital transformation focused on aspects like automation, artificial intelligence, digital relationships, personalized interactions, and ecosystem partnering. So the SIS you choose must lead to complete digital transformation along with all the above aspects. 

2. Cost quantifying 

Cost is one of the primary elements of the SIS fitness framework if you are thinking of replacing or upgrading your current SIS software, it is necessary to compare and evaluate the costing involved. 

You can especially compare costs and expenses that you will need to spend on upgrading your SIS versus the expenses you were doing with your current SIS. 

It is important to note that if you are using outdated SIS software, it will include various expenses to meet the current criteria of the technological world, and on the other hand an advanced SIS solution will save most of your institution’s cost providing complete automation of all the processes along with easy access from just one click providing everything efficiently and effectively. 

So take your decision wisely choosing an SIS software that helps you in saving cost-effectively.

3. Develop an SIS modernization plan

This pandemic has taught us to opt for technologies that can ease our work effectively, so the impact of this has created a perception for institutions to evaluate the workings of their current SIS and if it is not meeting their expectation criteria it is better to replace and renovate it as the institutions who are not opting modernization are at risk of being left being in the digital business environment, isn’t it true?

So hope you have got the things that you need to consider while evaluating and checking your SIS fitness. Now let’s discuss the advantages of using the best student information system in higher education institutions.

Advantages of using the best and updated student information system in higher education institutions:

• Complete automation having multiple data backups

Different and modernized from the traditional student information system, an upgraded SIS automatically updates all the data from time to time. With regular and automatic security updates there are very few chances of the student information system getting hacked by anyone leading to complete data security. With all this, it also initiates multiple automatic backups of all the information stored providing the satisfaction of complete data security in any manner. 

• Increased productivity

A technology updated student information system increases the productivity of institutions, it eases out every task providing access to everything with just a few clicks, it manages all the tasks like admission, library management, course selection, hostel management, transportation, all other hundreds of tasks. So having easy access to everything the staff and faculties get the opportunity to use the time and energy in greater productivity and growth of the students and ultimately of the institution. 

• Fosters efficiency 

With the best student information system for higher education, the complete operations of an educational institution get automated. Various things like manpower, time, resources, and paper works, get reduced from every perspective. Meanwhile, these things can be used for better processes driving students’ progress and outcomes. Simply, we can say that a technology-upgraded student information system fosters efficiency making everything simple, efficient, and worthwhile. 

• Comprehensive management 

In an institution, there are various things to manage for every student, so it becomes messy for administrators to manage all the operations of hundreds of students like student registration, attendance, examination, results, and so on. So to ease out all these operations they choose SIS but imagine a scenario where you have opted for an SIS and it is becoming more tricky to manage tasks, the management of all the things will go adverse. So you must choose the best student information system for higher education that is technology updated and can help to automate all the processes with ease, and if you can find one such; then in simple words you can attain comprehensive management of your institution in the best and most effective ways. Just think- isn’t it satisfactory?

Is it the correct time to update or upgrade your current SIS?

So what do you think of the above? Do you think it is the correct time to update your student information system (SIS)? You can also check Gartner’s latest research report that can help you in deciding to replace or renovate your student information system with the fitness attribute framework. Its ideology will help you understand things that you need to keep in mind while analyzing and evaluating the results of SIS software available in your institution. 

Download Gartner’s latest report now!

Wrapping up 

Hope you find this blog relevant and if you think that you need an advanced, modernized, efficient, and the best student information system for higher education, you must check with Academia. It is one of the best SIS solutions having all the latest functionalities that must be there in your institution. We will feel obliged to provide you with a free demo of the system, just reach out to us and our team of experts will be there to manage it for you. 

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