Student Database

Student database\Register

We specialise in developing bespoke CRM database for various business such as Builders merchants and educational institutions. 

We recently completed a project for an educational establishment to replace their off the shelf CRM.

The actual cost of the project was less than the annual support cost of their original CRM.

The requirements were as follows:

Student details

Student name, surname, DOB, address, telephone, mobile, email

Record of which courses the student has taken in current and previous years

Disabilities

Method of enrolment (online, in person, phone, post)

Prospective Students (enquirers)

Student name, surname, email, which course(s) of interest. This should be linked to direct enquiries on the website

Course details

Course code – a simple code which indicates which term / year

Course fee including the possibility to automatically calculate pro-rata payments if the student enrols late, or promotional discounts e.g. if a student enrols for 3 terms at the start of the year they receive a 15% discount

Course start date and duration

Day and time

Teacher

Location

Background information about the course e.g. course description, what to bring, entry requirements, what you can do next, how you will learn.

Contact details for further information e.g. Subject Leader or Tutor

Payment Details

Automatic fee calculation - taking into account course fee, any pro-rata payment, gift vouchers or credit notes.

Method of payment: credit card, cheque, cash.

Payment by instalments – including an easy to follow system which flags up payments which are due. (This applies to relatively few students)

Easy system for processing credits and refunds

2. Functional Requirements

The database needs to satisfy the requirements of various departments and functions in the organisation:

Student retention and management (as in 3. above + typical CRM functions e.g. group emails for course changes or to promote new courses, notifications of new prospectus, events, special offers, advice about room changes or what to bring to class)

Enrolment: online, by phone and in person and the printing of receipts

Course administration & availability - managers should be able to use the database for planning, analysis and reports e.g. which courses are full and have a waiting list, still have availability, costs (materials, books, etc) allocated to specific courses, contribution per course and group of courses or area of the curriculum. Subject Leaders should be able to create new courses and archive/de-activate when they are closed. We should also be able to quickly and easily create and manage registers via the database with tutors possibly updating the registers online so that attendance patterns can be seen easily and reports generated to show this. Registers should include a front page and student contact details.

Reports should include:

Availability of places

Course Closures

Courses by start date and end date /time

Names/Addresses/ Phone/email for each student per course

Students with disabilities

Student Transfers – fee income should ‘move’ automatically with the student

Student Withdrawals

Student Waiting List - (Can this be linked with course availability to notify admin when a place becomes available?)

Tutor contact details

Marketing – we should be able to generate reports easily to analyse students by age, postcode, gender, type of course, daytime v. evening study, most valuable students (i.e. those who take several courses), method of enrolment, how they heard about The Institute, new v. returning students, ethnicity, professional background. 

Website & production of the prospectus

The current database on the website is a course information database. It cannot be used for online enrolments and is completely independent from the QL database. In the past students on funded or co-funded courses needed to provide full information. This funding is no longer a part of our operation and a ‘lighter’ enrolment process should be possible and this must be made available online. 

We would also like to incorporate search options on the website. E.g. search by day and time as well as subject area. 

Currently the prospectus is generated from the course information database which Subject Leaders update and use to input new courses. Once the updating and inputting is complete, the information is sent to the designers to produce the prospectus. The Database Manager then separately inputs all the details on the QL database. We believe it should be possible to enable Subject Leaders to have access to the database and use that as the starting point for the prospectus, website and other uses. The prospectus is, in essence, a report showing courses available and there should be no reason to input the information twice.

In addition we should be able top bulk upload all our courses direct from one database to Hot Courses and Floodlight websites.

Finance – as in section 2. above plus the following reports:

Income and direct costs by course and dept

Credit/Debt

Cash breakdowns

Amount paid per student in course

Which courses are generating profit/loss

Totals breakdown by department.

Debtors Report

Daily anomalies report

Monthly Enrolment counts

Comparisons between different periods