SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows provides a practical and easy to use system for the day to day management of Advisory and School Support Services. With a focus on saving time and reducing costs, it supports the strategic planning and quality assurance role of Local Authorities. Whether you are a large or small authority, SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows will help you with better day-to-day administration. With its simple diary of work for Advisers, basic record of School Visits together with Schools information the system has immediate and significant business benefits.
The Adviser and Officer Diary
Advisory and Inspection services can be more effectively managed with the software’s individual Adviser or Advisory Team Diaries. A simple and easy to use diary allows dates and times of Schools Visits to be logged. At-a-glance calendar views bring you immediately up-to-date on diary commitments. Simple reports of Schools Visits can be recorded – with optional School Assessments with a full assessment and School Status History. Extensive details of service level agreements and contracts with Schools, where required, can be held with a comprehensive profile of the services delivered to meet them. Full details of School Visits undertaken by Advisers can be recorded, including: EDP priority, the type of work undertaken, the scope of the work, specific objectives, any associated costs & revenues, preparation time and reporting time involved. Who requested the service, contract details, if applicable, and the date, time, and duration of the visit can be logged. The software aids the planning of Adviser workloads and time commitments, as well as providing an indispensable tool for monitoring and evaluating the support provided to Schools by the Local Authority. Highly flexible and user definable, the software permits as little or as much data to be held as and when required.
Easy to Use Quick Administration
SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows includes many easy to use features: Wise Owls provide guides on how to use the software; Quick Administrators allow the production of Word™ Documents and other administrative tasks in a quick and automatic way without leaving the software; Administration Checklists audit and check whether key tasks have been completed on time; Business Rules allow the user to modify many aspects of the software to operate in exactly the way they want.
Model to How You Work
Given the wide variety of practices in Local Authorities, SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows can be used to plan and schedule in advance Adviser commitments on a weekly, monthly or termly basis or simply record Adviser Support Services after they have been delivered. Similarly, the data can be collected as a result of each Adviser entering their own commitments via the Diary features of the software, or via paper based whereabouts or diary sheets entered by central administrative staff or, again, by maintaining records of work done for each School.
Costs and Revenues
Costs involved in, or revenues resulting from, the provision of School Support Visits can be logged together any costs associated with preparation time. It includes extensive facilities for recording all consultancy costs – with user definable cost categories, years, budget periods and budgets - allowing a wide range of costs analyses and consultancy activity reports to be provided.
Team Diary
The diary system provides data entry for name of Adviser, Date and Time in hours or minutes or half day sessions, description of activity or work to be done, type of work and nature of work, School or client organisation together with contract references. Date clashes are checked. Work carried out to support Schools and delivery of any contracts can be fully and comprehensively described. Data available includes: contract reference and system generated job number, date, time and duration, type of service, category of work, description and details text. If required, the specific focus of the visit can be logged, allowing the use of the keyword search engine. Where more than one Adviser is engaged in the same visit to a particular School on the same date and time, these can also be recorded. Where required, the estimated costs and revenues, as well as actual costs for these visits, can be managed. Costs categories are user definable. Visits may be evaluated.
School Visit Reports and Assessment
Assessments of Schools undertaken during Advisory visits, or as part of a specific School inspection, can be recorded and analysed within the Schools assessment record. The date of the assessment, the assessment criteria or JRF coding with description (user-definable assessment tables are supplied), and the assessment grade can be entered, with a weighting and numerical value, if required. Further notes and comments can also be added.
Contact Manager
Keeping in touch with Schools is easy with SDMS’s integrated Contact Manager, allowing all Advisers to have an up-to-date picture of all discussions and plans in progress with Schools. A record of all contacts with Schools, such as letters, telephones and e-mails is easily maintained, giving contact by date and time. First contact, last contact, next contact, follow-on actions and last updated fields are also included.
Powerful Reporting
A full and comprehensive range of standard reports is provided giving detailed analysis of Adviser Resources, Commitments, and Local Authorities’ Support to Schools, School Status, Assessments, Costs and Revenues by Contract Manager. An enhanced feature of SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows is the Report Viewer and Editor, which allows full user control over report outputs including: font style and sizing, bolding, underlining, cut and paste and many other word processor options. Each Standard Report may be customised by easy to use customisations screens, as well as exported to spreadsheets and e-mailed. SDMS Report Writer: Crystal Reports™ is an optional module providing further reporting.
Audit Trail Module - Industry Standard
The Audit Trail Module provides the ability to track all changes to the data entered in SDMS Software - when the change was made and by whom, thereby providing compliance with industry standards for data management with full traceability, accountability and security. This module uses the latest in Pervasive Database Technology – AuditMaster™.
SDMS Adviser: Web Options
SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows is fully integrated and also available with: SDMS V Staff Development for Windows and SDMS V e-Training with e-Adviser for Web and Intranet Access. Alternatively the Windows software can be deployed as a Thin Client application with Citrix Metaframe or Windows Terminal Services.
SDMS V Adviser Integration and Synchronisation Module for MS Outlook™
SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows combined with SDMS V Adviser Integration and Synchronisation Module for MS Outlook™ allows greater flexibility and ease of use for Education and Children's Services. It consists of two elements. The SDMS Outlook Client, providing a special diary entry screen for Advisers and other officers to enter details of School visits and other appointments. And, the SDMS Synchronisation Component which ensures that key data such as Schools, Advisers and School Staff are imported and updated in MS Outlook™ and that entries made in the SDMS Outlook Client are synchronised with data held in the SDMS V Adviser and School Support for Windows. This gives a “Corporate Adviser Visit Record."
