Customer stories

City charter school

Charter school unifies data management. Academic institution boosts accuracy, bolsters base for growth with OpenText Alloy

Challenges

  • Data systems could not scale to meet growth
  • Disparate data sources required manual updates, remained prone to errors

Results

  • Enhanced data accuracy and governance, ensuring latest information is available

  • Saved more than half a million dollars in the first phase

  • Positioned school for growth to triple its student population in 10 years

Story

As the charter school has grown, several different platforms were adopted to handle data management. This includes solutions from major software vendors to manage key functions, such as HR, payroll and facilities, as well as another homegrown system to manage other aspects of the business. These systems all performed different, necessary tasks to manage the school’s operations.

A student working on homework.

OpenText Alloy reduces data input errors and improves the quality of information.


While the technology was beneficial, maintaining up-to-date, accurate data in each of the disparate systems became more difficult as the school system grew. Because data was stored in different systems, accessing applications from non-admitted students when there was an opening to fill or creating class rosters was difficult. Because data was in multiple, siloed systems, changes in one system—an address or name change, for example—did not automatically transfer to all systems, which led to manual input of data. This process was inefficient, error-prone and not supportive of efforts to serve students, teachers and parents effectively.

Phase I of a multi-phased integration strategy focused on the most critical activities that supported onboarding of new students to create seamless communications between student, staff, scheduling and enrollment applications.

The ability of OpenText™ Alloy™ to accommodate a broad range of file types ensures that as data is captured from initial application to registration documents to creation of class rosters for teachers, changes are automatically reflected in all systems. This reduces data input errors and improves the quality of information.

Another advantage is the speed at which data is managed throughout the system, ensuring the most up-to-date information is available to teachers and administrators.

Not only did the implementation of Phase I save the school in excess of $525,000 over three years, but integration was completed within two months—in time for the start of a new school year.

In the first months of the integration process, nearly one-half million transactions were handled by Alloy in a secure, timely manner.

One of the greatest benefits of Alloy is the ability to scale quickly to accommodate growth or new services—essential for a school system planning to more than triple its student population in the next 10 years.

Securing the mission-critical task of onboarding students and creating accurate class rosters, the school system is looking at efforts to integrate other technology platforms to provide a holistic view of data and end-to-end integration processes to further improve accuracy and data governance.

OpenText Alloy accommodates growth—essential for a school system planning to more than triple its student population in the next 10 years.


About City charter school

With almost 16,000 students in nearly 50 schools, this charter school system faced even more growth as the organization set its sights on a goal of 100 schools and 50,000 students in the next 10 years. Today, the organization receives up to 20,000 applications for 3,000 new admissions awarded each year through a lottery system.

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