Highlight
Industry: Education
Solution: Sage 300 & BankLink
Results:
- Greater administrative efficiency & productivity
- Seamless & timely processing of GIRO transactions
- Peace of mind over information security
Challenge
An independent school in Singapore faced significant challenges in new student enrolment every year. The school administrator had to manually key in all newly enrolled students’ records from the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) School Cockpit System into the students’ database. In addition, the school administrator had to manually update the records of students who were promoted to new classes every year.
As the majority of students make payments via GIRO for their monthly school fees and miscellaneous fees, these transactions were also manually updated on the school’s merchant bank portal. Much time and effort were spent to ensure that the students’ records were updated in a timely manner before the start of every new academic period and to meet GIRO submission deadlines. Seeking a solution, the school approached Stone Forest IT (SFIT) for assistance.
Solution
To address these challenges, Sage 300 (formerly Sage ERP Accpac) was used to maintain the students’ records and generate monthly invoices to students for their school fees and miscellaneous payments. SFIT automated the process of updating their records from the MOE School Cockpit System into the Sage 300 platform. A tool was developed to translate the cockpit file format for compatibility with Sage 300, enabling students’ records to be updated quickly and seamlessly. SFIT also automated the collection process for students’ GIRO payments, translating the transaction data into the merchant bank’s readable format using SFIT’s own innovative solution — BankLink. This helped ease the tedious process of tracking GIRO payments via internet banking.
Results
With the new system in place, the school has greatly improved its administrative efficiency and productivity. SFIT’s own state-of-the-art BankLink solution allows the client to save time and effort through seamless and timely processing of GIRO transactions. Most importantly, the data files are encrypted according to the bank’s compliance requirements, giving the client peace of mind over information security.
The success of these solutions is due to SFIT’s experience in providing customised solutions to automate and optimise clients’ business workflows. Another success factor is SFIT’s ability to understand clients’ needs and translate them into tools that improve their efficiency and productivity.