At iSAMS, we are constantly trying to improve the services to our clients and we are committed to releasing new modules that our existing clients have requested. iSAMS operates an agile development structure facilitating very fast development times for our new products.

We believe that by allowing our existing clients to be the driving force behind the new developments to the iSAMS portfolio, we are creating a "win - win" situation. Our clients get want they want, and we have a very happy client base. We have created a voting system for our existing clients to vote for a variety of development ideas. The items of development with the highest number of votes are pushed forward in the roadmap.

The modules released for the autumn term 2010

New Admissions System

The new admissions system is a module for those schools looking to run a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system for tracking their admissions activity. The new system has a Marketing section which will manage and run the school’s marketing campaigns. This will allow a school to track the progress of an open day, an article in a newspaper or magazine and present detailed analysis on the success of a particular marketing strategy. The statistics section will provide details stats allowing the school to track over several years’ worth of data and to use this data for valuable forecasting.

Below is a list of features that are available through the new system:

Marketing – manage all marketing activity and track success
Statistics – detailed analysis for tracking potential school numbers
Workflows – manage your own workflows and conversion management
Enquiry & prospectus management – categorise enquiries and upload all the school’s prospectus materials
Entrance Exams – setting papers, arranging candidates, timetables, seating plans, parental results, results analysis
Parent Tracking - tracking parents as well as pupils
Calendar & Visits - manage open days and events, arrange visits from one-off parent visits to hundreds of applicants
Communication – track every email, SMS & letter sent to prospective parents
Agency Management – manage relationships with agents
Admission status – the system will date stamp every entry to a parent/child record for more accurate up-to-date records
Other Schools – track feeder schools and maintain better relations with prep schools with up-to-date information

The new system will offer existing schools the option to upgrade or continue to run the current admissions system. The medium term plan is to market the new admission system to non-iSAMS schools who might be looking to adopt a fully comprehensive admissions system to run their admissions department. We believe that the new system will be the most comprehensive, feature packed solution available in the marketplace and we hope that it will generate unprecedented interest.

Fee Billing

iSAMS are launching the new Fees Billing system during the summer. We have been working with a number of existing schools for the last year with a view to adopting the new system for this year’s fee runs. A number of schools approached iSAMS as they wanted to have a fully integrated system and didn’t want to use dispersed systems that didn’t dynamically link, which meant lengthy data transfers and in some cases double entry.

The new fees system will allow a school to run a fully integrated management information system together with a fully comprehensive fee billing system built in. The trials have been a huge success and we are now talking to more existing schools about migrating away from their current systems.

Below is a list of features that are available through the new module:

Build charges offline
Universal Excel import allowing Excel files in any format
Comprehensive direct debit management
Scholarships & awards management
Apply charges, recurring, percentage, fixed sums, discounts, deposits
Synchronises with industry standard accounting packages such as Sage
Customised version of Sage pulling live data from iSAMS directly into Sage
Linked to main iSAMS system for departmental billing

The Fees Billing System is designed exclusively for existing iSAMS school at present but the long term developments will mean that a non-iSAMS school could take advantage of our fees system without the need for the full iSAMS suite.