Sydney Catholic Schools

Consistent Processes and Systems for Sydney Catholic Schools

Data management probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you think about schools. But behind the scenes, the way financial information and student data are organised plays a significant role in students’ education experiences. Consistent business practices and centralised systems for storing and accessing data can ensure that student needs are adequately met, and that parents have visibility over their child’s progress. 

The Catholic Education Network (CEnet) understands the importance of creating a safe and connected online environment for schools, which is why it’s undertaking a strategy known as ONCE (One Network, Catholic Education). As part of this, Sydney Catholic Schools (SCS) requested support from Lánluas to configure and roll out the TechnologyOne Financials module and the school management platform Compass across its network of schools.

Working closely with SCS over a period of four years, we successfully implemented TechnologyOne Financials and Compass across the network with minimal disruption to staff and students. Our team stepped up to the task, supporting SCS in providing a whopping 152 schools with onsite go-live support. 

The challenge we faced

CEnet provided Sydney Catholic Schools (and other members of the Catholic Education Network) with a fully-integrated solution comprising TechnologyOne Financials and Compass Student Management. While this provided a good starting point, SCS still faced the challenges of ensuring that the system supported SCS’s specific needs and business processes; and implementing the solution across its 152 schools.

SCS required suitably qualified consultants with strong technical skills in the configuration of the TechnologyOne Financials solution. Our consultants were required to provide advice and the technical skills to configure the solution to support the business processes and make life easier for everyone accessing student data and financial information.

SCS also required a team of consultants to help provide go-live training and support to schools. Recognising that the change management and upskilling of users was key to a successful implementation, our consultants were required to have a background in finance, experience in TechnologyOne Financials from an end-user perspective and strong soft skills such as listening, empathy and patience. It was important for SCS that there was a strong cultural fit.

The solution we offered

Before deployment could commence, a series of workshops were held with the SCS project team to review the solution configuration provided by CEnet. These centred around Procure to Pay, Invoice to Receipt, Reporting and Debt Management. Conducting initial scoping workshops made it much more straightforward when configuring specific solutions, which included:

• User profiles, workplaces and security
• Financial reporting and dashboards
• Supply chain and catalogues
• Bank reconciliation
• Debt management
• Bursary accounting
• Cash disbursements.

The work needed to incorporate considerable change management support for school administrators and users, as not all were confident finance or system professionals. In addition, we contributed to the design and delivery of training, informed by strategic training needs analysis.

Our consultants worked around school holidays, with four deployment segments each year coinciding with school terms. This carefully structured implementation rollout framework and plan enabled all internal and external project consultants to ensure that each school received adequate support at the right time.

Sydney Catholic Schools’ Chief Financial Officer, Hayley Wilding, shares her thoughts on the process:

“With more than 800 finance and admin staff across our schools and system, the success or failure of our implementation was dependent on how we managed the change from an end-user perspective. Critical to this was ensuring we had the resources with the necessary mix of subject matter expertise, soft skills and cultural fit to work directly with our school staff and lead them through the change.”

The final outcome

Lánluas’ support in setting up Sydney Catholic Schools to use TechnologyOne Financials resulted in a streamlined and effective rollout across 152 schools. This played a significant role in bringing CEnet closer to achieving its goal of “one network for all Catholic schools”.

The organisation now has financial and student information software configured to meet the needs of its students, staff and community. As a result, SCS is experiencing the benefits of aggregated, holistic student information and standardised processes. 

These benefits apply to a range of audiences, including:

• Teachers – who can easily tap into student information in one location.
• Parents – who can view information about their child from any device at any time.
• School office staff – who can rely on an authoritative source of information about students, and save time on repetitive data entry tasks.
• School executives – who can easily pull data from one central system, have confidence that they’re meeting Commonwealth reporting requirements, and focus more energy on building positive relationships and making strategic decisions.
• Member dioceses – who will be able to pull reliable and accurate information about students, schools and the workforce from one location, on any device, whenever needed.

Sydney Catholic Schools is now benefiting from consistent financial processes and systems across its network. If your education institution wants to achieve the same outcome, contact Lánluas to discuss how we can help.