School MIS - Serco Facility- getting started

Although I'm trying to keep this blog updated, work inevitably gets in the way. My school is installing a management information system (Serco Facility), formerly known as CMIS , and the first steps to this involve a mountain of data collection, data entry and checking. I made an estimate that it has taken around 200 man hours to complete this. So if your school is heading down this route, you would be well advised to plan ahead in terms of securing sufficient staff time to complete this. Additionally, the start of the academic year is probably not the best time to do it, especially if you work in a school where students are joining two or three weeks into the term, other students are still changing their mind about which subjects they want to study and new teachers are being taken on after the start of term. Such are the challenges of working in an dynamic and expanding school. So it was with some relief that I finally zipped up all the data files and sent them off to Serco for processing.