How to choose right University Management System?

Universities operate completely different from schools and colleges. Usually, there will be multiple colleges under one university. This complexity of multi-layered management with multiple colleges under the same organization demands an enterprise-level solution to be implemented as the university management system. There are many providers in the ERP software market who provide university management software solutions with prices varying from thousands of dollars to a million dollar plus.

Now a days there are various options are available in the market, but how do you know that which ERP solution fits best in your organization. Well to clear this confusion below we have highlighted few points, let’s see what to considered before selecting a right university management system:

Choosing the Right University Management System

To select the right software for your university it can take months or even years as the selection process is usually a long and detailed process for universities. This upfront effort ensures that you are selecting and implementing software that can provide value to the university for the next 5 to 10 years.

For a school and college, it will be easy to replace the existing management system with new software with the help of data export tools. For universities, the replacement process will take some time as a fresh implementation because of the complexity of data and the upfront customization required.

What are the steps to follow?

1. Form an a-team for the purpose of software selection and implementation. This team can include teachers, administrators, management, and parents. The a-team must contain a maximum of 6 or 8 members. It is preferable to select parents from IT or software background. You can include a member of alumni also. The a-team can be given the complete responsibility of shortlisting, purchasing, and implementing the software. The leadership and management have to provide complete support to the a-team.
2. The a-team can then start the process by studying the software used in other universities. This is a critical step as you will come to know the different software available in the market and the challenges and advantages faced by other universities while using this software. Document all observations to be referred to while selecting and purchasing the new university management system for your university.
3. Make a 5 year Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) plan. In TCO, you can include all possible costs expected to purchase and maintain the software for the next 5 or 10 years. This must include all different types of expenses like hardware cost, maintenance cost, salaries of dedicated/part-time resources, customization cost, etc. Check with the vendor for further details of TCO and make sure the vendor also agrees to the same.
4. After this, you can go ahead with demos from different vendors and accept estimates and quotations for the software and implementation. Based on the points given to the software and its vendor and the budget available, you can choose the university management system to be purchased.

Features To Consider

• Admission Management

University admissions are a complex process that involves multiple steps from the student and university side. The application for different courses will vary and can be configured online for collecting applications. Most of the time it also involves reference checking and due diligence for the applications to be shortlisted. All these can be automated using the university management system.

• Attendance Management

Recording and managing attendance of university students is a primary function of the university management system. This is achieved through the integration of devices like RFID, Biometric, IoT, etc. Attendance is a major element in the grades of university students and only a university management system can automate the linking of attendance with grade books and at the same time reduce the complaints from students and parents.

• Online Examination

With UMS, universities can computerize the total examination work. Conduct descriptive or MCQ type questions such as admission entrance test, employee recruitment test, surprise classroom test, subject or topic wise test and more.  After evaluating the examination teachers can publish the result, and instantly a notification is sent to students/parents.

• Online Learning Management

To simplifies the online learning and teaching Fedena now integrate with various video conferencing system such as Zoom & Big Blue Button; (soon integration with Google Meets and Microsoft Teams is coming in Fedena). This let universities to seamlessly deliver quality-education to students’ without any halt.

• Human Resource Management

The human resource modules inside UMS helps the university to manage the teachers and faculty by taking care of leave management, payroll generation, payslip generation, certificate storage, etc.

• Fee Management

Even if state-funded, the universities will have to manage the fee collections from students. For private universities, this is one of the primary requirements. To collect fees online and offline and record the transactions in a single system for future audits.

• Placement Management

Job placements for all students is a preferred target of all universities. This can be automated through the placement module in UMS. The placement module let coordinators to organize and conduct placement effortlessly, also, students can apply for the placement event online and can check status.

Future of University Management System

A lot of new technologies are emerging like Artificial Intelligence(AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics, etc. These technologies will play a major role in how universities are digitizing their operations in the future. The university campus will become responsive and smarter. The workload of teachers and administrators will be reduced manifold and we can expect the academic goals to be achieved faster and with reduced expense.