Exercise Teachers Academy Pty Ltd, also known as ETA College, is a renowned private single purpose training institute with 9 campuses across the globe. With its head office in Cape Town, South Africa, ETA has been in operation for over 36 years. This Continuing Education college is evolving and expanding in response to the escalating demand for its online and on-campus sports and fitness training modules.
With a growing number of students, ETA was in dire need of a Student Information System (SIS) to keep up with its constantly increasing administrative and academic workload, while continuing to deliver training excellence. Campus on Cloud (CoC) by AlmusNet was the ideal solution as it equipped ETA College with a fully integrated solution that managed all the admissions, administrative, academic and financial functions.
The Initial Scenario
ETA was utilizing a combination of paper based and aging online systems to manage its core academic and financial functions. There was a growing awareness across all stakeholders that the existing systems were too cumbersome and inflexible for the evolving needs of the Institution. One particular pain point was the lack of a fast track direct admission process, something especially important in Continuing Education. This lack of flexibility in Admissions processing had the potential of resulting in a loss of applicants, and hence a decrease in potential revenue for ETA.
Without an integrated Student Information System, ETA was confronted with a growing mismatch between the evolving needs of business users and the capability of the existing IT systems.
Evaluation of Needs
Keeping in mind the fact that the current system they were using had run its useful operational life, ETA was actively looking for a more advanced and robust Student Information System. In essence, ETA was in need of a system that would not only help streamline their current student related processes, but would also cater for the changing future needs. There was also a need for data consolidation, coherence, security and integrity.
As mentioned earlier, a particular requirement for ETA was a rolling admissions system for its applicants which required a fast track process with an easy to understand interface.
From the perspective of enrolled students, ETA was looking for a system that would help improve the quality of service delivery for the academy’s current students by reducing the time it took to register, pay fees, enroll for modules, generate performance reports and certificates upon successful completion of a module.
Finally, ETA also required timely and accurate reports, as well as advanced analytics to aid informed decision making process for the institute.
In search of the ideal system to cater to its requirements, ETA’s IT department contacted various local and international software companies. After extensive research and detailed study, ETA decided to adopt Campus on Cloud from AlmusNet.
Campus on Cloud provided ETA an integrated solution for our Campus Management. We selected Campus on Cloud for its elegantly designed user experience and rich feature set that spans the student’s full life cycle. The AlmusNet Team made the adoption of Campus on Cloud very easy. Their professional service and continuing support has ensured an enjoyable system roll out at ETA.
Grant Stevenson
National ICT Manager
Campus on Cloud steps in
Campus on Cloud (CoC) is a Student Information System built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. CoC has been built by an engineering team experienced in implementing Higher Education solutions in 25 distinguished universities across 10 countries.
A prominent feature of the Campus on Cloud system for ETA was its extraordinary, yet easy-to-use interface which provided advanced functionality for the administrative staff, faculty and students. Along with that, the flexible and customizable functionality of CoC enabled AlmusNet to configure the software according to the particular needs of ETA College, thereby resulting in a smooth transition to the new system.
Also, the extensive analytics about the applicants, students, faculty and staff provided fresh and comprehensive insights into the administrative, academic and financial performance of the institute.
ETA went live with Campus on Cloud in early 2018. Currently, their implementation of Campus on Cloud automates the following tasks and processes:
- Rolling admissions via user-friendly application forms and a fast track direct process designed for Continuing Education Institutions.
- Class scheduling, Course enrollment and Student management.
- Tuition calculation, Bill generation and fee payment.
- Attendance, grading, progress reports and certificates upon completion.
- Tuition calculation, Bill generation and fee payment.
- Attendance, grading, progress reports and certificates upon completion.
- A Gradebook which incorporates a structure flexible enough to meet the needs of both Continuing Education as well as Higher Education.
- Generation of statistics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on customizable dashboards for in-depth data analysis.
Success overview and future plans
The Campus on Cloud platform truly revolutionized the management system for ETA. By helping the academy achieve a holistic and coherent view of its data across its multiple campuses and functions, overall efficiency was dramatically increased. Moreover, the rolling admissions facilitated by user-friendly application forms and a fast track process resulted in the submission of a larger number of applications to ETA. The customizable dashboards with data analysis tools enabled the ETA to make better informed decisions. Finally, CoC’s delivered security helped ETA manage its data better and smoothly delegate tasks to users as required.
After CoC’s successful implementation, ETA now aims to implement prospect management, alumni management, customized reports generation for government authorities and other advanced features in Campus on Cloud in order to further improve its business processes.
