Category: Product

How to Identify and Avoid EdTech Scams

Post author By Dr Darren
Post date July 5, 2023
No Comments on How to Identify and Avoid EdTech Scams

Are you considering adopting EdTech solutions like a school management system, learning management system, or student information system to automate processes in your learning centre? Be aware that there are scam companies in the EdTech industry as well, just like every other business!

We’ve heard from several education business owners about how they were scammed by fake EdTech companies. Hence, we have prepared a guide to help you identify and avoid education software companies that are fraudulent.

Without delay, let’s explore the warning signs to watch out for when dealing with EdTech scam companies.

6 Red Flags of EdTech Scam Companies

To protect yourself from falling victim to EdTech scams, look for the following six warning signs before purchasing any EdTech solutions.

1. Lack of Transparency

Before you decide to work with an EdTech company to enhance your education business, make sure the company is upfront and clear with its information. Scam companies often provide inconsistent or vague details to the public, and beware of those who tempt you with extremely low prices to divert your attention from their questionable actions.

Take your time to examine their website and look for any contradictions in the information provided, like their company address or contact info. Be cautious if their contact details are missing or if they use generic email accounts like hotmail or yahoo. A legitimate school management system company will have a visible online presence with consistent and clear information across its online platforms.

2. Lacking Legal and Regulatory Compliance

Even if you have checked that the EdTech company you plan to work with has an online presence, presents consistent information, and contact details, it’s important not to stop there. You want to make sure that the company is legal and follows all the rules and regulations.

To operate as an EdTech solution provider, companies must obtain licenses and certifications. Verifying the legal status of a Malaysian business can be done through the SSM website. Also, take the time to read the company’s About Page to gather information about its history, certifications, and compliance with regulations. Another way to determine the reliability of an EdTech company is to look at affiliations with reputable industries.

3. Fake Reviews and Feedback

When you’re making a decision, it’s important to consider reviews and feedback from others. Before choosing a school management system provider, check platforms like Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews, or Capterra for feedback about the company.

If there are many negative reviews from customers, it’s likely a sign of a bad company. However, scam companies are getting smarter at faking reviews, so be cautious of short or one-word reviews such as “excellent”, “amazing”, “I like it”, etc. One good way to distinguish authentic reviews from fake ones is that they are usually detailed and sincere.

You can also ask the other education business owners for recommendations and feedback. They might know legitimate EdTech companies to work with.

4. Signing Contracts and Agreements

To protect yourself from being scammed by an EdTech company, it’s important to sign contracts and agreements carefully. Take your time to read and understand the important points before signing. Don’t rush into signing if you’re not clear about something.

If necessary, seek legal advice to ensure you fully understand the terms. Pay attention to clauses related to data privacy, intellectual property rights, and termination terms. Scam companies are skilled at using tricky language in contracts to deceive customers.

5. Implementing Data Security Measures

When searching for a reliable and trustworthy EdTech company to provide a school management system, it’s important to select one that prioritizes data security. Many fraudulent companies don’t take their customers’ data security seriously and neglect to implement data protection policies.

In Malaysia, data protection is primarily governed by the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (‘PDPA’), which aims to safeguard personal data by imposing obligations on data users and granting certain rights to individuals regarding their personal data.

Considering the prevalence of cybercrime in today’s digital landscape, it is crucial to partner with a company that complies with the stated act and makes significant efforts to safeguard the privacy of its client’s data.

6. Poor or Non-existent Customer Support

The level of customer support provided by a company can reveal a lot about its quality. When adopting digital solutions, the beginning stage is crucial to determine whether the implementation will be effective and successful. However, this stage can be challenging as it involves learning new systems and reforming new workflows. It also affects all stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, and admin. Hence, proper guidance and support are necessary to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Reputable software companies recognize the importance of timely and effective customer support. If an EdTech company lacks support channels, it’s advisable to avoid them.

Conclusion

Sticking to the six warning signs discussed in this article will help you avoid EdTech scams. Your main objective in adopting EdTech solutions is to enhance your educational businesses. Hence, it’s important to partner with reputable education software companies like AOneSchools.

With the AOneSchools school management system, education businesses are able to simplify administrative tasks, thus improving productivity. Book a free demo with us to learn more about how we can assist you!

Business Product

How to Choose the Right School Management System for Your Education Business

Post author By Dr Darren
Post date June 28, 2023
No Comments on How to Choose the Right School Management System for Your Education Business

The school management system (SMS) can help you organize your data, automate many different tasks, and improve the overall productivity and efficiency of your education business. However, if you don’t choose the right school management system, you will do more harm than good to your learning centre.

No one wants that. In this article, you will find out how to choose a suitable SMS for your business and set it up for success!

What is a School Management System?

A school management system (SMS) is a software designed to help education centres manage and streamline the daily administrative tasks. It offers a range of integrated functionalities within a single platform, serving as a centralized hub that automates and streamlines various aspects of school management.

In contrast, a learning management system (LMS) is a software application anticipated to help organize academic processes like creating the curriculum and tracking students’ behavior and progress. If you want to learn the difference between the two in more detail, check out our previous article.

Some of the key features typically found in a school management system are:

Student information management: it enables administrators to keep up-to-date student profiles that encompass personal information, attendance records, academic achievements, and disciplinary records.

Enrollment and admissions: tasks such as application management, document verification, fee collection, and admission report generation can be streamlined.

Attendance tracking: teachers can easily keep track of student attendance and generate attendance reports digitally.

Timetable management: it helps educators in creating and managing school timetables, assigning teachers and classrooms to specific periods, and ensuring an efficient allocation of resources.

Communication and collaboration: automated messaging systems help to improve communication between teachers, students, parents, and administrators. Check out the examples of automated messages and different templates you can use to improve communication and collaboration.

Fee management: it streamlines the process of fee collection, tracking payments, generating invoices, and generating financial reports.

Reporting and analytics: which help you make informed decisions and improve overall school operations.

Staff management: this module helps in managing staff information, including details of teachers, administrators, and other employees. It may include features for attendance tracking, leave management and performance evaluation.

Benefits of Implementing a School Management System

By implementing a suitable SMS to your education centre, it can greatly assist in these two aspects:

Business outcomes. With suitable SMS, learning centres can boost their efficiency, advance their organizational processes, improve communication, and make data-driven decisions based on reliable analytics.

Student and parent engagement. Improvements in educational centres that use SMS go beyond business outcomes. Applying such software will have a positive impact on students’ and parents’ engagement. It will also improve their learning experience and make them more likely to recommend your business to their family and friends.

Key Steps in Choosing a School Management System

Wish to achieve the benefits we mentioned? Here is what you should do to find a suitable SMS for your own education business:

1. Identify Your Business Needs

Before going on a hunt for SMS, make sure to know exactly what your specific requirements and pain points are.

You will be in a position to make a decision about which school management system is most suitable for you only when you know what your business needs are. If the system’s features don’t align with your goals, you won’t achieve the desired outcomes.

2. Check the Scalability and Flexibility

Don’t forget to think about the future of your business. You won’t be in the same place in the next few years, and that’s why you must choose a school management system that can follow your growth.

Imagine the moment five years from now when your learning centre achieves all of its target points. Does the school management system you’re choosing now help you in the future as well?

SMS isn’t something that needs a yearly update. Instead of throwing away your time and money, think about the future of your business and find a school management system that can support the growth of your business and changes in goals.

3. Make Sure the System Offers User-Friendly Experience

You don’t need a school management system that causes confusion and frustration in people who are using it.

To avoid the mess, make sure to evaluate the user interface and its intuitiveness. Imagine what it would be like for your employees, students, and parents. Try to predict their challenges and issues while using SMS.

4. Analyze Data Security and Privacy

Before making the final decision, you need to discuss the system’s data security measures. Ensuring data protection safeguards sensitive data from unauthorized access, mitigates the risk of data breaches, and helps maintain trust.

Prioritizing data security and privacy also ensures compliance with data protection laws, protects intellectual property, and safeguards the reputation of your learning business.

So, if you want your business to thrive, you need a school management system that can keep all the data and private information 100% confidential and safe.

5. Customer Support and Training Provided

Implementation of the school management system is a big step not only for you as a business owner but also for everyone else in the educational centre. To truly enjoy the benefits of SMS, you must ensure it has great customer support that will provide additional information and help for users.

What’s more, you want SMS that will organize training and help your employees learn how to use it properly. These two features are critical to the distinction between bad and amazing school management systems.

Final Words

Is the school management system worth it? If you do it right, it can be a game-changer in your learning centre.

To do it the right way, first, make sure to determine your goals and needs. After making a list of your top priorities, ensure to create one for the future as well. You will be able to use SMS to its full potential only if you’re certain about your goals and they align with the system’s features.

When you have a clear picture of what you need, move to phase two: “investigation”. You must ensure SMS has everything your education business needs and also everything that your employees and students call for.

The final phase is implementation. If you choose AOneSchools, you can improve organization and paperwork by digitizing it, increase communication between teachers and parents with automated messages, and most importantly, showcase your institution as reliable, professional, and trustworthy.

The best part? Our team of professionals will help you and your employees implement AOneSchools and provide support and guidelines through the entire process.

More than 2,000 learning centres chose to implement AOneSchools in their organizations and successfully achieved their needs. Want to join them?

Try AOneSchools free demo and take your learning to the next level!

Tags Management Tips

News & Trends Product

School Management System vs. Learning Management System: Which One Is The Best?

Post author By Dr Darren
Post date April 12, 2023
No Comments on School Management System vs. Learning Management System: Which One Is The Best?

Technology is changing so fast that it almost seems like every day we have something new on the market. These changes have a huge impact on every aspect of our lives, and the learning sector is no exception.

So, it’s not strange that every owner of an educational centre asks themselves, “Should I choose a school management system or a learning management system?”. If you have the same doubt, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, you will find everything you need to know about the difference between the school management system (SMS) and the learning management system (LMS) and which one is more suitable for your centre.

Let’s dive in!

What is School Management System

A school management system (SMS) is software specifically designed to manage and support your daily tasks like student data management, tracking student attendance, finance management, new student enrolments, data reporting and others. SMS can help you and support all of your administrative and non-administrative challenges and tasks.

Key Functionalities of SMS

1. Student Management

One of the main features of a school management system is to manage and organize student information like records, enrolment, attendance, grades, etc. Thanks to this function, you will reduce the time and effort spent on these tasks.

2. Student Attendance Tracking

Attendance tracking is one of the most relevant metrics for every educational institution because it can have a huge impact on identifying students who are struggling. With the school management system, you can track student attendance in real time and keep an eye on student progress and engagement.

3. Fees Payment Management

SMS is a true game-changer when it comes to managing the school finances. You can easily monitor and track fees collection, issuing receipt and even visualize your finance performance in one click.

4. Reporting and Analytics

A school management system lets you get useful information about the most important metrics such as student’s attendance, new enrollments, retention rate and makes it easy to analyze on the performance.

Advantages of SMS

Enhanced efficiency. One of the most significant advantages of the school management system is reduced risk of errors and saving time which substantially improve the general efficiency.

Better communication. Thanks to automation in sending notifications and messages, you won’t have to worry about forgetting to inform students or parents and general communication will improve.

Higher quality of data management. A school management system will help you improve managing any important data and statistics.

Improved financial management. Anything from tracking student fees, generating invoices, and receiving payments will be more organised and standardised with a school management system.

What is Learning Management System

A learning management system (LMS) is a software application anticipated to help you with organising academic processes like creating the curriculum and tracking students’ behaviour and progress.

Usually schools and other learning centres use this tool to conduct online exams, track student progress, and organise online virtual classrooms and other activities. Moodle, Schoology, and Blackboard Learn are some of the most widely used LMSs in educational institutions.

Let’s have a look at how a learning management system can perform.

Key Functionalities of LMS

A learning management system will be handy for you when working on any academic activity. It will help you make the learning process easier and smoother.

We’ve prepared a list of key functionalities:

Monitoring progress and performance;
Increasing accessibility without geographic limitations;
Personalising the online training and learning experience;
Effectively updating modules and curriculum.

Advantages of LMS

Innovation and creativity. Probably the biggest advantage of LMS is that it gives more opportunities to learn and go beyond the traditional classroom. At the same time, this refers to both—students and teachers.

Improved reporting and assessment. LMS provides a precise tracking tool that helps educators better understand students’ challenges, strengths, and weaknesses.

Straightforward. LMS is really easy to use and provides smooth access for users.

There is only one question left.

SMS vs. LMS: Which Is The Best For You?

The main difference between an SMS and an LMS is that an SMS focuses on managing administrative tasks, while an LMS is focused on facilitating teaching and learning activities.

In order to decide which suits you the best, depending on the needs of your educational institution. If your focus is on teaching and learning, then an LMS would be suitable for you. However, if the primary concern is to manage administrative tasks, then an SMS would be more appropriate. In some cases, both systems can be used together to provide a complete solution for educational institutions.

If you think you need a school management system, check out AOneSchools—a school management system with more than 2,000 satisfied education centres and 150,000 active users.

Get in touch with us today and find out how we can make your everyday work easier!

Business Product

4 Ways to Boost Your Education Business Growth With School Management System

Post author By Dr Darren
Post date April 5, 2023
No Comments on 4 Ways to Boost Your Education Business Growth With School Management System

4 Ways A School Management System Can Boost Your Education Business

As the owner of an education centre, your main goal is to see your business grow. The truth is, the education business is getting more competitive by the day. To remain at the forefront of the education industry, it is crucial to stay up to date with the latest trends.

The school management system is a new revolution that is not only time-effective but also cost-effective. Making it one of the best tools to assist you in running an education centre. In this article, we will be looking at 4 simple but effective ways to grow your education business by implementing such systems.

Challenges Most Education Centre Face In Malaysia

The greatest challenge most school owners face is relying on manual operations. Hence making it difficult to track student management, administrative tasks, and general school progress.

Also, parents want to be kept abreast of the progress of their children’s performance in school, as well as children’s attendance and class schedules. Failure to provide these basic services can result in losing students to competitors.

Below are some other challenges that education centres in Malaysia are still struggling to find solutions to:

Relying on paper-based processes
Lack of analytical data to evaluate the business performance
Lack of a proper system to evaluate teachers’ performances
Not having a sophisticated payment system for invoices and finances
Employing more administrative staff for daily operations
Unable to connect with parents informing them about their children’s well-being at school

How To Grow Your Education Business?

To make your school grow, the three key things you need to focus on: school management, staff management, and student management. Once you can get these three things right, there is a high chance of succeeding in your education business.

As a school owner, tracking the business metrics of your education centre is essential. Having data to work with will help you identify the areas that need improvement and develop insights on what to do next.

Also, parents are looking for schools with high educational standards, organised management, and the safety of their kids.

Whether you are looking for ways to manage your admin and teacher or seeking ways to make school operations more effective, you need school management software to achieve that.

4 Ways A School Management System Can Help To Grow Your Education Business

If you are not tapping into the benefits of using software to facilitate proper school management already, below are some reasons why you should start today.

1. Cutting Down on Overhead Costs

Instead of hiring more administrators to get some basic paperwork done, did you know that there is software to handle that for you? All you need to do is contact a school management system company in Malaysia, and you will be surprised at how much money you would save just by doing that.

2. Saves the Time of Teachers and Administrators

Working with a reputable software company can help you automate most jobs that would have consumed the time of teachers and administrators. You can automate things like attendance management, fee collection and finances, timetable creation, and create a better way of communicating with parents.

3. Makes Life Easier for Parents

It will be the joy of every parent to know that there is a one-stop online platform where fees and other education-related activities can be handled. Also, parents can get notifications on their mobile phones informing them of the well-being of their kids. Having this system in place would be a huge plus for your learning centre. This is because parents love to be updated on their kids’ progress.

4. Helps Track Business Growth

Running an education centre without proper business performance and data analytics can negatively impact the growth of your business. You need data to analyse how your business is faring so that you are able to make some tweaks to improve your efforts. This is where a good school management system can help you manage all of these aspects.

Work With AOneSchools To Boost Your Education Business

If you own an education centre in Southeast Asia and are looking for ways to grow your business, AOneSchools is what you need for a proper school management solution. AOneSchools has a team of professional software developers who strive to improve the efficiency of your school’s operation.

AOneSchools has been operating since 2015, and we understand what it takes to see an education centre grow. Whether you want a solution for lessons management, student management, or school management, rest assured of getting the best services from us.

Simply get in touch with us today, and our representatives will be happy to assist you with everything you need.