Today’s colleges require more than just a Student Information System (SIS) and a Learning Management System (LMS). Search the lists of higher education bid opportunities regularly, and you’ll find the typical college or university is struggling to find the right combination of software solutions to manage its many non-traditional tasks. Schools that rely upon commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions may need dozens of them to manage all their operations–and then still wish that each would fit their particular policies and systems better. Custom higher education software solutions from Watkyn can streamline operations, reduce IT and data integrity issues, and provide an integrated, comprehensive system that supports all administrative tasks while being cost-effective in the long run.
Contact Watkyn today to discover how a custom higher education software solution can transform your campus operations and meet your institution’s needs.
How a Watkyn Custom Higher Education Software Solution Can Streamline Workflows
Custom software from Watkyn can fill in the gaps in your present tech stack, replace legacy systems that are no longer performing, and combine as wide a range of functionalities as you like to simplify your IT needs and reduce your expenses. Here are just some of the ways a custom software solution could improve your workflows.
Streamlining Student Administrative Tasks
Custom administrative software for higher education streamlines various student administrative tasks, providing tools for efficient handling of financial aid distribution, academic record processing, and health information management. This ensures accuracy, reduces administrative burdens, and enhances overall workflow efficiency.
Distributing financial aid awards
Custom financial aid software for higher education helps you take in the information students submit to every school and apply it to your specific awards formula and scholarship criteria to produce the right awards for the right students.
Processing high school academic records from applicants
Custom enrollment management software for higher education facilitates the processing of high school academic records, ensuring accuracy and reducing administrative burden–and does it all according to your policies and requirements.
Collecting health and vaccination records
Health information software for higher education can centralize the collection and management of health and vaccination records, ensuring compliance and easy access to critical information in support of your institution’s particular policies.
Course Scheduling
Custom course scheduling software allows you to maximize the use of your space and satisfy the needs of different student cohorts and faculty within the bounds of your particular weekly schedule and semester calendar.
Enhancing Student Success
Custom software solutions enhance student success by providing comprehensive support for academic advising and resource management..
Advising and academic support
Custom student support software for higher education can help in scheduling appointments with academic advisors and support staff and tracking progress toward academic goals and graduation, offering tailored support for better student retention.
Building and organizing the library’s collections
Drive student success with DAM software for higher education that assists in building and organizing library collections, providing easy access to digital assets and resources.
Optimizing Campus Operations
Custom higher education software solutions can empower institutions to optimize operations, enhance compliance, and drive growth. By streamlining key areas such as scheduling, funding, logistics, asset management, student recruitment, fundraising, and marketing, we help you create a more efficient, effective, and compliant campus environment. We can build you a comprehensive suite of tools to ensure seamless coordination of student activities, athletics, property management, and institutional operations, ultimately fostering a thriving and successful institution.
Coordinating schedules, funding, and logistics for student activities and athletics
Custom scheduling software for higher education can provide a centralized platform for coordinating schedules, funding, and logistics for various student activities and athletics. By aligning these activities with your academic calendar and priority events, you can ensure a seamless and efficient experience for students and staff.
Property management for campus housing
Custom asset management software for higher education empowers schools to proactively manage campus housing. By streamlining inspection and maintenance scheduling, we help you identify and address potential issues before they escalate, minimizing downtime and ensuring a comfortable living environment for students.
Boosting Institutional Compliance and Growth
Custom software solutions can boost institutional growth by streamlining key areas such as compliance, student recruitment, fundraising, and marketing. These tailored solutions ensure effective management and engagement across various institutional operations, enhancing overall productivity and success.
Facilitating compliance, including accreditation
Assessment software for higher education ensures that compliance and accreditation requirements are met efficiently, providing necessary tools for tracking and reporting, coordinating efforts across departments, and helping you submit reports with supporting evidence on time.
Student Recruitment
Custom recruitment software for higher education can tailor the student recruitment process to attract the students you want and guide them through your specific application process and requirements with ease.
Enhanced fundraising
Custom fundraising software for higher education can create an efficient donation process to enhance your success with donors by helping you tell your school’s particular story.
Building marketing and communications campaigns
Custom CRM software for higher education can aid in building and managing marketing and communications campaigns, ensuring effective outreach and engagement to each of your key constituencies.
Monitoring security events and responses
Implementing custom security software for higher education can enhance the monitoring of security events and responses, providing real-time alerts and ensuring campus safety.
Managing HR for faculty, staff, and student workers
Custom training management software for higher education can streamline state and federal compliance and other training for faculty, staff, and student workers while following the rules and processes outlined in your employee policies and handbooks.
Four Benefits of Our Custom Software Development Services
There are so many established software solutions for higher education that it may seem like there’s no need for custom software to solve these sorts of problems. However, buying custom software shouldn’t be thought of as a way to fill a hole in the COTS market but rather as a deliberate alternative to participating in that market.
While off-the-shelf software aims to solve the most common problems and incorporate conventional best practices, custom software employs the distinctive practices that make up your school’s secret sauce.
1. Solving All Your Problems and Only Your Problems
As a college administrator or IT professional, you likely recognize key pain points in your operations that off-the-shelf solutions fail to address. Custom software allows you to pinpoint specific needs, bypass irrelevant functionalities, and avoid modifying effective institutional processes.
With custom solutions, you control the development process, ensuring the software meets your unique requirements without waiting for periodic updates. This targeted approach ensures your software is an exact fit for your institution’s distinct circumstances.
2. Bottom-Up Software Design
Custom software development starts differently from that of off-the-shelf solutions, which aim to build their solution based on common industry needs, often resulting in lowest common denominator software. In contrast, custom development involves a discovery process focusing on end users, guiding them to identify necessary functionalities, reports, and dashboards without requiring technical expertise.
Through iterative engagement with the users, a custom software development company refines these initial insights to create a solution tailored precisely to your institution’s needs, ensuring improved productivity and true problem-solving.
3. LONG-TERM SAVINGS
Building a portfolio of point solutions to manage various tasks can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, while comprehensive solutions often address only a fraction of a school’s needs. Custom software development offers a special opportunity for long-term savings.
Though the initial cost may be higher than licensing a single-point solution, combining all your needs into one custom software product that you own outright—with only modest monthly hosting costs—can result in significant long-term savings.
4. Improving Student and Staff Satisfaction
A long list of point solutions costs too much and does too little, frustrating students and staff who have to navigate multiple systems. Consolidating disparate functions into a single app or interconnected series of apps saves users from dealing with numerous point solutions. Involving end users in planning and designing the software ensures a consistent, intuitive look and feel. Comprehensive end-to-end testing and ongoing support guarantee the software is ready and effective.
Building Custom Software Solutions for Academic Institutions
Watkyn has a long history of building custom software and particular expertise in designing and building higher education solutions. Our team has experience working with and in both public and private colleges and universities, including serving in the highest roles in academic administration. Because of this, we can bring both the technical skills and the area-specific knowledge necessary to create your ideal higher-ed software solution.
Contact us to take the first step in building software your students and staff will love to use every day.
